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Criminality
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Magwitch is more of a thug busting up a pawn shop than a smooth criminal: that role is left to the gentleman-like Compeyson. The novel is full of criminals, from Orlick to Magwitch to Molly to Arthur Havisham—so many, in fact, that we have to ask if criminals are really a "class" in the way that a lot of nineteenth-century people thought, or if people become criminals out of misfortune and harsh upbringings. Are these miscreants born bad, or are they driven to crime by neglect and forced back to it by an unjust legal system?
Pip's first encounter with Magwitch prevents his ultimate happiness: he would eventually have become happy with his life on the marshes if Magwitch hadn't started funding him.
In Great Expectations, law and justice have more to do with appearance than with action.
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