Different Treatment of "Swine" and "Puppy" Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens explores the popular attitudes of his contemporary readership towards social welfare and the treatment of the poor. He does this by setting the book in a time before certain social reforms, reforms Dickens thought inhuman, had been implemented. Great Expectations was published serially in 1860 and 1861. The time period the story encompasses was from 1812 to 1829. It is important to note that the period between these fictional events and the book's publishing was one of social upheaval in Victorian England. Most notably, in 1834, legislation known as "…