'portable property'

[pink_rosette]

Hello! I need some help on an essay. I have to choose an event in which Mrs Joe is involved in, that is of great significance. Does anyone have any ideas? :)

[pink_rosette]

I'm feeling a little confused about the meaning of 'portable property'. It just doesn't make much sense to me. Can anyone kindly explain? :)

[manolia]

Portable property: the belongings you can take with you and leave when things get rough and you have to go away on a hurry ;)

[pink_rosette]

Thanks! =) I've seen it being mentioned a couple of times in the book, but is 'portable property' really of significance to the story?

[kari]

I think portable property is significant. I read this book a while back, and am desiring to read it a second time lately. But if I remember correctly, a lot of the book, overall had to do with...I guess how your life can turn out, as a "rich man" of portable properties...or a "rich man" of something more to the heart. I took portable property to mean any materialistic thing. And to some people, the more you can get your hands on...the better off you are. But the book makes you question if that is really so, and at what cost.

[yb2008]

you can write about the one she gets beaten up by a convict

[glen922]

I'm don't believe that "portable property," per se, a subject attributable primarily to the quirky but very likable Mr. Wemmick, is directly contrasted to wealth in matters of the heart, though the corruption and inhumanity associated with great wealth and position in general certainly are.

[kev67]

I thought the liking of portable property was mostly a characteristic of Mr Wemmick designed to be memorable to readers. A lot of people have a personal theory about something, and Mr Wemmick's was portable property. It may also have been disguising his kindness. He usually inherited his portable property from executed clients that his firm of solicitors had not been able to save from the gallows. The convicts seemed happy leave him things as something to remember themselves by, as he tends to wear them. It seems he only made relatively modest requests, such as a pair of tumbler pigeons from a condemned counterfeiter. However, there was another point to it later in the story when Pip refuses to touch the pocket book full of money that Magwitch gives him. This becomes forfeit to the state, leaving Pip unable to pay some serious debts.

[kev67]

BTW, portable property means property you can carry. So if you're house burns down, your ship sinks, the companies you have shares in go bust, or there is a run on your bank, you still have something.

[Aquillion]

I think it was partially intended to illustrate Mr. Wemmick's callous nature (at least, as seen by Pip -- I don't think he's actually callous, but it's meant to come off that way at first). But it also illustrated his realism as opposed to Pip's dreaminess. Pip (and many other characters) view good fortune as something that either simply happens or something that you're entitled to automatically, and view nobility as an almost magical thing; Mr. Wemmick understands that the vaunted upper-class status other characters care so much about is ultimately just about having money and other forms of 'portable property'.

It's also worth pointing out that Mr. Wemmick, unlike Pip, actually had to work for his position in society. His fixation on portable property (and Pip's unease with it) has a lot to do with that.