Throughout time there has always been a certain stigma associated
with lawyers; cold hearted and power hungry. Dickens does not stray far
from the mold with the character of Jaggers. In the novel's first encounter
with the London lawyer, he tells Pip that he is paid for his services,
otherwise he would not be there, meaning he is only there because of the
money, only reenforcing the stereotype. Jaggers is used as a symbol of the
legal system in that he is not concerned with moral values and is more
concerned with status, power and money more than justice and what is right.
After each case or meeting with a client, the stoic lawyer cleans his
hands, and sometimes did as much as to wash his face and clean under his
nails, as if he was cleansing himself of the people just dealt with,
putting himself on a pedestal over the general population.
For all the lawyers in today's legal system that represent Jaggers,
there are also that many that represent Wemmick; a professional struggling
to keep his personal and work life separate. At the office Wemmick appears
to be a robot, as if he has no feelings, and is there to do his job and
nothing more. Pip sees the drastic change of attitude in Jaggers' assistant
when he first goes to Walworth, noticing his change in attitude the farther
away from the office the pair got. Wemmick admits to Pip that he purposely
leaves the office at the office, and home at home, never mixing the two.
People in today's legal system are still fighting Wemmick's fight. Keeping
a person's home life and work life separate is most certainly a difficult
task which has not changed since the nineteenth century world of Charles
As Dickens points out, lawyers are far from the only problem with the
nineteenth century legal system. How the courts were run and the way
criminals were prosecuted was far from ideal and fair. There were harsh
punishments for small crimes. Stealing...