The Empire Writes Back: Deconstructive Paradigms in Jack Maggs

In his ‘neo-Victorian novel' Jack Maggs, Peter Carey seeks to retell Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations from the postcolonial perspective. Jack Maggs, a stand-in for Dickens's Magwitch, is shaped into the protagonist in Carey's work, which telegraphs the author's close attention to marginalized groups in British society. By endowing the silent ‘other' with the opportunity to speak, Carey attempts to deconstruct the hegemony of the Anglo-centric narrative and reshape the unique cultural identity of Australians, which simultaneously embodies the self-reflexivity of his literary practice.