Mr. Jaggers' office is an exceedingly dismal and
uninviting place. The first thing that Pip notices about the room itself is the
skylight, which provides the only illumination. The skylight is "eccentrically patched
like a broken head," and through it, the scene is almost macabre, with "the distorted
adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted themselves to peep down...through
it."
In the room itself, there are not so many papers as
might be expected in a lawyer's abode. Instead, there are "odd objects about," which
include,
"an
old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and
two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the
nose."
Mr. Jaggers' own chair
conforms to the atmosphere of forbidding dreariness in the room, being "of deadly black
horse-hair, with rows of brass nails round it like a coffin." The room as a whole is
very small, and the walls are "greasy with shoulders," which hints that those who enter
there instinctively shrink from the lawyer's presence in the room, huddling against the
walls.
The impression of Mr. Jaggers that is created by all
this is of a disagreeable, forbidding personage. His tastes appear to be nonconventional
and eclectic, as the items that adorn the room are random, and not what would be
expected. There is no air of professionalism, but rather, the atmosphere is intimidating
and unpleasant. It would appear that Mr. Jaggers might be a character who would relate
to his clients through fear rather than through welcoming, reassuring counsel (Chapter
20).
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