Analysis # 3 - Marxism, Ideology, and "Great Expectations"

The theory of Marxism talks about the need to destroy the hierarchal class system that is structured on the basis of property ownership or economic wealth. For example, "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property" (Manifesto of Communism 34). In other words, you are what you own. This theory can be applied to Althusser's text, "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses" because it talks about how we view ideology only as say a group of ideas or beliefs but that they are also materialistic in that they are tangible for us to see. According to Althusser there is a dependence of the individual on their conditions of existence, that creates a material representation of themselves to the world that is represented through class structure and production in the economy. For example, "...'individuals' who live in ideology, ...representation of the world whose imaginary distortion depends on their imaginary relation to their conditions of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of production and to class relations (ideology = an imaginary relation to real relations). I shall say that this imaginary relation is itself endowed by a material existence" (Rivkin 695). Whole ideologies of cultures are shown through class structure and systems. A person is identified of their class position by their job, place of residence, and clothing. They are defined by the social strutures in which are built and the economies that are class separated. Those that are subject to the subjection (which are the proletariats) of the Bourgois give that subjection freely because they are given the idea that they are free, when the one freedom they do have is to submit their freedom. For example, "a subjected being who submits to higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission" (Rivkin 701). They are held captive to society's set position for them. Never able to penetrate the scale of the Bourgeois, the Proletariet becomes stuck or cemented into the position that has been given to them. Thus their lot in life is to fullfill that role that society has molded for them. Fullfilling the need for capital through their acts of labour. Marxism yearns to try and stop this act of exploitation of the laborer, "All we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it" (Manifesto of communism 36). What it comes down to is that the Marxism theory has good intentions to try and give more power to those who do not have much.
In the novel "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens it shows the class differences and the subjection of the proletariet (Pip) from the Bourgeois (Estella). Estella is from a priviledged background and so looks down upon Pip because he is from the working class. She saysin the clip below, "But he is a common laboring boy. And look at his boots!" Insulting his appearance by his attire because he is not of the upper crust or the Bourgeois. She also points out his different dialect when he calls one of the playing cards Jacks instead of Knaves. "He calls the Knaves Jacks this boy! She's commenting on his use of slang words instead of the "Proper" wording, spreading the class difference even further. Then she also points out his hands that are rough which would signify those who had to work hard for their money. "What course hands he has". Finally she insults with the comment, "You stupid, clumsy laboring boy". Because of their class difference she is labling him as "stupid" and "clumsy". Using labels she may have learned from those around her. Later when Pip is in bed he ponders over her insults and thinks about what Estella would think of his family. What Joe does for a living, one of the common forms of labor, a blacksmith. "I thought of Estella and how common she would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith". Finally he thinks about in bed something as simple as his sister and brother in law sitting in the kitchen during the evening and how utterly lower class that would be to Estella. "I thought how he and my sister were sitting in the kitchen and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common things". She has opened Pip's eyes to the attitudes and class differences that Marx talked about in a capitalist society and the exploitation of the Proletariet.


Works Cited

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing 2004

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Charles H. Kerr & Company. Chicago 1908