[1]  I will adopt Roland Barthes’s terminology of the Text and the Work. The Work, according to Barthes, is “concrete, occupying a portion of […] space; the Text, on the other hand, is a methodological field […] While the work is held in the hand, the text is held in language; it exists only as discourse” (271).

[2] The ‘Wandering Jew’ is a reoccurring character in Dickens’s work, perhaps most notably in Oliver Twist.

[3]  A Freudian would most likely, at this point, wish to trace the sexual, and Oedipal reasons for this fight as well (Pip wishes to usurp Joe in order to have sex with his sister-(pseudo) mother). However, as we shall see, it is not my intent to do so.

[4]  It must be noted that Pip’s servant was named “The Avenger” (292).

[5]  Some of the Freudian reasons why Pip’s unconscious would wish Magwitch dead: 1) Magwitch, as Pip’s new surrogate father, becomes the second target of the Freudian Oedipal complex (to commit parricide) after Joe; 2) Magwitch’s return has put an end to Pip’s jouissance as a gentleman (gratification of immediate pleasure) as Pip cannot take the money any longer; 3) Magwitch, as the convict on the moor, caused the young Pip’s unconscious much childhood fright and trauma which is surfacing as revenge.

[6]  Footnote from the original text: “Es kann mir nix g’schehen!” This phrase from Anzengruber, the Viennese dramatist, was a favourite one of Freud’s” (425).

[7] Gallop takes her paraphrasing from: Lacan, Jacques. Le Seminaire II: Le Moi dans la theorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1975.

All material Copyleft t.c. van Veen, 2000