Mr. Wopsle Quotes

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation, – as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third, – and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 4. Mr. Wopsle is a pompous church clerk in Pip’s village who loves the sound of his own voice. In the novel he is served up to the reader as an object of comic relief and social satire. Pip describes how the officious Wopsle says grace at Pip’s family dinner table as if it was a theatrical Shakespearean production. Dickens makes effective use of hyperbole and parody here to take a poke at the self-importance of English Victorian churchmen. The “Ghost in Hamlet” and “Richard the Third” are allusions to characters in William Shakespeare plays.

“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name, – “swine were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an example to the young.” (I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.) “What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 4. The absurdity of pompous Mr. Wopsle moralizing and lecturing to Pip at Christmas dinner is exquisitely mocked here. With an air of self-importance he preaches to Pip about gratitude and gluttony, unfairly criticizing the boy as a gluttonous pig. His comments include inappropriate references to the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This is the Bible story of a young man who squanders his inheritance, is forced to work as a swineherd, and longs to eat the food of the pigs. All this takes place while Wopsle and other guests are enjoying a pork meal at the Gargerys, Wopsle even singing the praises of the “plump and juicy” meat. Dickens serves up a delicious layer of irony and satire in this passage.
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