Justin Chen
Professor Quint
Lit 120: Paper 2, Topic 3

Loyalty and the Construction of Moral Agency in Great Expectations

In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the characters of Joe Gargery and Mr. Jaggers represent two very distinct spheres in the life of the novel’s protagonist, Pip. With his unflagging work-ethic and indomitable goodwill, Joe embodies many of the positive characteristics of the small backwater village that he inhabits. Jaggers, on the other hand, displays a worldliness and lawyerly cunning that reflect the sophisticated metropolitan environment in which he operates. Yet despite these marked differences, both characters play a similarly crucial role in Pip’s moral and social development throughout the novel. Indeed, it is through his interactions with these two steadfast guardian figures that Pip ultimately discovers his own sense of moral agency and the true value of loyalty.

Both Joe and Jaggers play a direct role in the formation of Pip’s fortunes—Joe by bringing him up in the forge and providing for his early welfare, and Jaggers by physically dispensing the monetary gifts furnished by Pip’s mysterious guardian. Even in this basic congruence, however, there is also clear evidence of the two characters’ differences. Unlike Jaggers, who adopts a more detached role, Joe directly watches out for Pip’s welfare at home, especially with regards to the dangerous Mrs. Joe. He recalls later in the novel, “I done what I could to keep you and Tickler,” the dreaded switch, “in sunders, but my powers were not always fully equal to my inclinations” (57: 436). (1) Thus, Joe demonstrates a willingness to physically intercede on Pip’s behalf.

Jaggers, meanwhile, maintains a much more distant and impersonal relationship with his adopted ward. Though he watches out for Pip’s monetary interests to a certain extent, Jaggers never seeks to elevate his own role beyond that of a neutral intermediary, and indeed is careful to limit his interactions with all his clients, including Pip, to matters strictly pertaining to business. For example, after hearing the various advantages that will result from his secret benefactor, Pip declares that he “had always longed for it” (18: 131), to which Jaggers sharply responds, “Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip…keep to the record” (18: 131). Jaggers’ businesslike nature and emphasis on privacy is also evident in his oft-repeated adage that “everybody should know his own business” (51: 381). Thus, while both of Pip’s guardians play indisputably large roles in Pip’s well-being, Joe’s involvement is clearly the more intimate of the two, and this fact later becomes important for understanding his important role in the shaping of Pip’s moral agency.

Where Joe and Jaggers are perhaps most similar is in their relationships to their respective home environments. Joe stresses throughout the novel that he is only comfortable in the area he knows best—the forge. As he admits remorsefully during his awkward visit to Pip’s London apartments, “I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes” (27: 209). Pip himself is aware of this fact from very early in the novel, when he observes that “in his holiday clothes, [Joe] was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances than anything else” (3: 20).

Jaggers, on the other hand, is clearly in his element when in the city. The first time Pip gets a glimpse of Jaggers in his official capacity is at his office, where he briskly dispatches of an entire line of supplicants who are all equally distressed at being turned away so summarily. Jaggers is so obviously in charge of the situation that he does not hesitate to lambaste one cowering man as an “infernal scoundrel” (20: 155) and a “blundering booby” before dismissing him “in extreme disgust” (20: 156). His actions are nothing short of imperious, perhaps more suited for a king in his court than a street smart lawyer operating in the bowels of New London. Although one could never imagine Joe acting in a similarly supercilious manner in his forge, the sense of belonging and familiarity that both men exhibit in their respective native environments is strikingly similar.

Despite the ease with which he does his shady business, Jaggers insists on separating business from his private life, as is evident in his handling of the dinner party at his home. Pip observes that almost immediately after the last of his guests has left, Jaggers can be found “in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of books, already hard at it, washing his hands of us” (26: 202). This description suggests that Jaggers views the evening as nothing more than a somewhat distasteful task, an event whose execution requires subsequent cleansing by total immersion in the purity of his legal material. As Wemmick puts it, “The office is one thing, and private life is another” (25: 194). He explains to Pip, who is surprised to hear that Jaggers knows nothing of Wemmick’s castle or his aged father, “When I go into the office, I leave the castle behind me, and when I come into the castle, I leave the office behind me” (25: 194).

The distinct separation of public and private life that Jaggers requires is evident from these remarks. Just as Joe is happiest laboring over the roaring fire in the forge, so too is Jaggers most in his element when dealing with the convicts and other disreputable characters he knows best. And just as Joe can feel out of place when removed from his native environment, so too does Jaggers display a distinct discomfort about mixing his personal and his official dealings. Thus far, then, both characters appear to share a number of common traits.

Yet the fact remains that the two worlds represented by Joe and Jaggers are actually vastly different, and this presents a difficult situation for Pip, who finds himself torn between the two. Pip could easily carve a peaceful, uneventful life for himself in the forge as Joe’s apprentice, perhaps later going on to marry Biddy and to become the village blacksmith himself. Yet this Rousseau-ian retreat into a sort of wholesome semi-retirement does not entirely appeal to him, for he is constantly distracted by the glittering allure of high society, an indolent lifestyle, and the elusive hand of Biddy’s more glamorous double, Estella. The two paths open to Pip are clearly divergent—he must choose one at the expense of the other.

Again, though, the tension between the opposing worlds represented by Joe and Jaggers does not translate into a conflict between the two characters themselves. In fact, both Joe and Jaggers turn out to have even more in common than it first appeared; they each prove to be essentially moral individuals who share the one characteristic that Pip sorely lacks: fidelity. Both characters remain devoted to their ward until the very end of the novel. Indeed, it is only in retrospect that Pip ever realizes how much he has relied on the loyalty of others, and how much harm his own inconstancy has done to others. At one point fairly early in the novel, Pip as narrator laments, “Oh, dear, good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to…I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my arm, so solemnly this day as if had been the rustle of an angel’s wing” (18: 132). It is only when he is on the verge of death and Joe’s efforts are all that keep him alive that Pip finally “lay[s] there penitently whispering ‘O God bless him! O God bless this gentle Christian man” (56: 431).

Joe’s dignified devotion, manifested in his continued insistence throughout the novel that he and Pip are “ever the best of friends,” is ultimately the main factor that impresses upon Pip the value of loyalty. There are numerous examples of Joe’s loyalty throughout the novel. For instance, when Jaggers offers to provide monetary reimbursement for Pip’s absence from the forge, Joe becomes indignant and protests, “Pip is that hearty welcome…to go free with his services… But if you think as money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child…” (18: 132). Admirably, Joe refuses to associate a family member with any sort of monetary gain.

Just as Joe attempts to aid Pip but refuses to compromise his own integrity in the process, Jaggers also does his best to be helpful within the confines of his own role in the novel. He makes it very clear that he “admit[s] nothing” (51: 384) before he will explain to Pip his own role in the unusual story of Estella, the “one pretty little child out of the heap who could be saved” (51: 384). It is evident from this confession that Jaggers, like Joe, is also a fundamentally moral man. Though he is at first presented as a cold, calculating lawyer with a dubious occupation, his loyalty to his clients parallels Joe’s loyalty to his family. By demonstrating the value of faithfulness, both characters play important roles in Pip’s moral development.

Perhaps more important than Joe’s and Jaggers’ loyalty to others, however, is their faithfulness to themselves—and it is this aspect of loyalty that Pip, in all his misguided pursuits of others’ expectations for him, lacks most of all. As discussed above, Joe remains true to his own moral convictions, refusing to be bought off by Jaggers and maintaining an unmistakable dignity in the process. Jaggers, too, in his strict adherence to a mechanical impartiality, also upholds a definite moral consistency—he and Wemmick both refuse to let their questionable clientele in any way tarnish their private lives. It is only Pip, hopelessly confused about his own identity, who cannot demonstrate loyalty to anyone else in the novel. Even Estella, the one character whom Pip pursues with any arguable degree of consistency, cannot be said to enjoy his loyalty. Rather, Pip himself admits to conflating her with his own nebulous and poorly defined notions of nobility and the upper classes, and he pursues her not as a potential lover, but as a symbol of the life that he desires.

Ultimately, it is his regard for Joe that causes Pip to undergo a process of self-recognition and repentance. At first, Pip observes that “there was no change whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes then, he was in my eyes still; just as simply faithful, just as simply right” (57: 435). Yet he finds that as he grows stronger and less dependent on Joe’s care, the two of them become more distant from one another. This regrettable state of affairs causes Pip to ask himself remorsefully, “Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and to think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast him off?” (57: 437, my emphasis). Thus, by the end of the novel, Pip realizes that the strain in his relationship with Joe is entirely a product of his own behavior: “The cause of it was me…the fault of it was all mine” (57: 437). Through his observations of others’ loyalty, to themselves and to others, Pip finally discovers that sense of moral agency which he consistently lacks throughout much of the novel, and he regrets his own lack of constancy.

Joe Gargery and Mr. Jaggers, then, have much more in common than just their interest in Pip’s welfare. Though it is true that they inhabit vastly different cultural and economic groups, they both nevertheless recognize their own areas of expertise and share a certain fundamental morality. As Pip undergoes his journey of self discovery, he gradually realizes that the consistency of character demonstrated by his two guardians is something he himself does not possess. In his confused attempts to become a “gentleman,” he allows others to impose their great expectations on him and dictate his entire life—and it is this sacrifice of his own fundamental agency that he eventually regrets most of all. Joe and Jaggers are among the few characters in the novel who do not force their expectations on Pip. Rather, they both maintain a steadfast and undemanding devotion to Pip, and it is ultimately their faithfulness and constancy that impress upon him the value of loyalty to others and, more importantly, to oneself.

1) Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Since this is not the version of the text used by the rest of the class, citations are in the format (chapter: page) for easier reference.