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Paradox
Definition of Parody
A parody is a work that mimics the style of another work, artist, or genre in an exaggerated way, usually for comic effect. Parodies can take many forms, including fiction... read full definition
A parody is a work that mimics the style of another work, artist, or genre in an exaggerated way, usually for comic effect. Parodies can... read full definition
A parody is a work that mimics the style of another work, artist, or genre in an exaggerated way, usually... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Mr Wopsle Says Grace:
Dickens makes an allusion employing a parody of the stereotypical English churchman in Chapter 4, when Pip describes how the officious Mr. Wopsle says grace at his family's table:
It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation — as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third — and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.
When characters act pompously in a Dickens novel, the author is most often indicating that they shouldn't be taken seriously by the reader. Mr. Wopsle is a parody of the self-important Victorian clergyman, who takes his own voice so seriously that he later moves to London to become an actor. The officiousness and silliness of Mr. Wopsle shows in his hyperbolic "theatrical declamation" of a simple mealtime prayer with friends. This is a strange occasion to speak in "theatrical" tones, but no one except Pip seems to blink an eye at either its delivery or "aspirations."
The "Ghost in Hamlet" and "Richard the Third" that Dickens alludes to are characters in plays by William Shakespeare. Both are kings, both are known for ominous and dramatic speeches, and both are very long-winded. It's also notable that Mr. Wopsle's silly "grace" drags on, and Richard III and Hamlet are the two longest plays that Shakespeare wrote. Pip, in his position as first-person narrator, remembers this incident with tongue-in-cheek humor, describing it in a way that his childhood self, unaware of the finer points of Shakespeare, wouldn't have understood at the time.
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