How gratifying to chuck dirty money back in the face of a would-be benefactor. Such moments mark literature. Pip refusing funds from Magwitch, a convict. Will Ladislaw disdaining the charity of George Eliot’s corrupted Bulstrode. The statement is this: scruples do not belong only to the rich. There is a price at which I, too, cannot be bought.
And yet. In these great works of fiction, tensions are drawn out, questions raised. Ladislaw accepts support from another flawed man, Casaubon, of whom he disapproves. Hypocrisy? Or the observation that in a hard world pragmatism has its place – that beggars can be choosers only on occasion? And is Pip right to cast away the reformed and grateful Magwitch? Are all paths to atonement thus to be closed?
