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Mr Pip Research Paper

Decent Essays

A more subtle limitation to formal education surfaces when both Walker and Jones raise the question: To what extent can certain forms of education escape the colonial texts? In Jones’ novel the reader may question the value of Matilda’s education as it could be seen as an extension of the colonial project. Most of Matilda’s education happens in the classroom, in a formal environment instructed my Mr Watts, a white man. Matilda begins to believe that Great Expectations is ‘the greatest novel’. I believe that this novel (Mister Pip) has a very strong post-colonial accent. Jones is suggesting that Matilda’s education relies on the white colonial power, only they can provide her with education. This is suggested in the manor that Mr Watts almost …show more content…

Does this not demonstrate the idea that Jones is suggesting that adopting the white culture is better for her? The use of ‘PIP’ in capital letters means that Matilda wants to draw attention to the world and cares more about Pip than her own ancestors leading to a fight with her …show more content…

In the end she escapes her life in the island and, follows her devotion with Mr Dickens and carries on studying him for her PhD in which she says ‘Pip was my story, even if I was once a girl, and my face black as the shining light’. Here Matilda says ‘ even if I was once a girl…my face black’ this clearly demonstrates how Matilda feels transformed by studying Dickens and coming to London ‘ even if’ implies that she now fully accepts that she is not the person she was before. Dickens and her formal education have changed her, even made her view herself as a white person as she says ‘even if… my face as black as the shining night’. Despite this, it could still be argued that the colonial tinge in this novel is not intended by Jones even if he himself is from New Zealand, we cannot forget the fact that Australia did invade Papa New Guinea and colonise it. However, in the end of the novel Matilda wants to come back to her home, she wants to leave London and return to Bougainville. She wants to ‘try where Pip had failed… (She) would return home’. Here Matilda realises that her home us where her heart and she belongs there, suggesting that she now sees the negative aspects of her formal education as it had ‘failed’ her in the

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