I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free use of my limbs.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 4. With irony and humor, the adult Pip recalls his miserable upbringing as a child at the hands of his sister. The wicked wit of Dickens has young Pip describing his home as more like a prison and Mrs. Joe his jailer rather than a caring sister. Brought up to feel guilty from an early age, he is made feel like he is a delinquent or convict. Two similes emphasize how Pip is treated as if his existence was a crime. He speaks of being treated like he insisted on being born and his birth violated everything logical and morally right. And when being fitted for a new suit, he tells us that the tailor was ordered to make it tight-fitting and “like some kind of Reformatory.” In Dickens’s time a reformatory was an institution where juvenile offenders were sent to be reformed. The child Pip saw himself being reared as if he was a young offender.