From Pip to Sylvia: Reflection of Bildungsroman through Class, Education, and Moral Growth in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson”

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of the Bildungsroman—the coming-of-age narrative—as reflected in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861) and Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” (1972). Both texts portray young protagonists, Pip and Sylvia, who experience moral and psychological growth within oppressive social systems marked by class inequality. Though situated in vastly different cultural contexts—Victorian England and twentieth-century Harlem—their journeys reveal how class, education, and moral realization shape personal identity. The study adopts a comparative and sociocultural framework, employing Marxist and moral-psychological approaches to analyze how both authors critique social stratification through the education of the self. The paper argues that Dickens and Bambara reinterpret the Bildungsroman not merely as a story of individual growth, but as a moral awakening toward collective social consciousness.