Class and social mobility are among the richest topics available in Great Expectations, since Dickens populates the novel with characters occupying nearly every rung of Victorian society, from Magwitch's criminalized poverty to the Pockets' precarious gentility to the established wealth Miss Havisham represents. This richness is exactly what makes feedback on these essays tricky, since the topic is broad enough that generic comments like "discuss class more specifically" rarely give students a concrete path forward.

One of the more effective feedback strategies is asking students to identify which specific character functions as their strongest piece of evidence for their claim about social mobility, then explaining in the margin why that character alone does not fully prove the broader argument. This kind of targeted comment pushes students to acknowledge the novel's genuine complexity on this theme, since Dickens presents social mobility as possible but costly, rather than as either purely achievable or purely illusory.

Joe Gargery is a particularly useful character to flag in feedback on this topic, since students often overlook him in favor of Pip's more dramatic rise, even though Joe's stability and quiet dignity offer an important counterpoint to the novel's more anxious treatment of ambition. A comment directing a student back to Joe, when the essay has focused exclusively on Pip's trajectory, often opens up a richer, more balanced argument.

It also helps to flag essays that treat wealth and class as identical concepts, since Dickens is careful throughout the novel to distinguish between having money and having genuine social standing or moral worth. Pip's discomfort in London, despite his new wealth, is a direct illustration of this distinction, and feedback that draws attention to this gap tends to push students toward a more precise argument.

Feedback Language That Moves Beyond "Be More Specific"

Telling a student to be more specific rarely produces a better second draft, since the student usually does not know what specificity would look like in practice. More useful feedback names an exact gap, such as an unexamined assumption or an underused character, that the student can act on directly.

• Which character has been left out of the argument who might complicate or strengthen the claim
• Where does the essay treat wealth and class as the same concept when the novel treats them differently
• Has the essay addressed both the possibility and the cost of social mobility, or only one side
• Does the essay acknowledge Joe's quiet stability as a meaningful counterpoint to Pip's anxious rise
• Is the argument grounded in specific scenes rather than in general statements about Victorian society

Using Class Discussion to Preempt Common Gaps

Running a brief class discussion mapping out every character's social position before the essay is assigned can preempt many of the gaps that otherwise show up in first drafts, since students see the full range of class positions available to write about rather than defaulting to the two or three most obvious examples. A simple visual chart placing characters along a rough social hierarchy tends to make this range concrete and memorable.

This discussion also gives you a chance to introduce the wealth-versus-standing distinction explicitly before students draft, which reduces how often that particular gap shows up in the essays you eventually grade.

Balancing Historical Context With Literary Argument

Essays on this topic sometimes drift into general historical summary about Victorian class structure without connecting that context back to the specific literary argument at hand. Feedback that asks the student to explain what a particular historical detail reveals about a specific character or scene, rather than presenting the history in isolation, keeps the essay anchored in literary analysis rather than social studies.

A small amount of historical context genuinely strengthens these essays, but only when it is deployed in service of a textual claim rather than substituted for one.

Making the Revision Process Efficient

Because this topic is broad, it is worth limiting written feedback to two or three of the most impactful comments per essay rather than attempting to address every possible gap in the margins. Overloading a paper with comments on a topic this expansive tends to overwhelm students rather than guide them toward the most productive revision.

Choosing the single gap most likely to raise the essay's overall quality, and focusing feedback there, tends to produce better revisions than a comprehensive but scattered set of comments across the entire draft.