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Allusions
Book 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Use of Dialect :
Great Expectations contains lots of representations of Southern English working-class dialect, from the Kent area of the "marshes" and from London. For example, in Chapter 1, the convict Provis speaks very differently from Pip's own genteel diction:
“You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate."
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Lunnon Town:
As part of their education, Victorian children were often required to learn psalms, poems, and songs. In Chapter 15, Dickens employs the regional dialect of Kent to give a sense of realism to the end of Pip's otherwise "preposterously" silly and inadequate education. This education consists of Biddy teaching him everything she has successfully learned. One of these items is a "comic song" which she has "bought for a half-penny," transcribed in idiomatic Kent diction:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When I went to Lunnon town sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Wasn’t I done very brown sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Related Themes:
