Pip's Perspectives on Social Classes in Great Expectations

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a coming-of-age story written from December 1860 to 1861. Great Expectations follows the life of Phillip Pirrip, self-named Pip; as his “infant tongue could make of both name nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” (I, Page 3) The story begins with Pip as a young child, destined to be the apprentice of his blacksmith brother-in-law, Joe Gargery. After spending time with an upper-class elderly woman, Miss Havesham and her adopted daughter, Estella, Estella, with whom he has fallen in love, he realizes that she could never love a person as common as himself, and his view on the social classes change. Pip’s view of society grows and changes with him, from anticipating the apprenticeship of Joe, to the idealization of the gentle class, and eventually turning to the disrespect of the lower class of which he once belonged. Although Pip may grow and physically mature, he did not necessarily grow to be a better person. He loses his childhood innocence and compassion, in exchange for the ways of the gentlemen.

Pip was an innocent and somewhat gullible child. When Abel had told him that, “There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am an Angel,” (II, Page 6) as a threat to ensure that Pip would bring him the food without speaking a word of what he had seen, Pip not only believed the tale, but assumes another man in the marsh is the young man, on the way to bring Abel the food. “It's the young man!" I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had known where it was.” (III, Page 16) He also shows compassion to Abel, although frig...

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Pip may have learned and he may have grown, but he did not mature as an individual. For someone learning to be gentle, it is surprising how coarse of a person he may be. Compared to early in the story, with his coarse hands, now he has a coarse personality. He became rude to those who cared about him, speaking down to them as if he were much superior, and did not share the same upbringing they had. He had lost interest or care for his parentage, and for the skills and trade for which his brother-in-law works very hard to accomplish, and he had lost the childhood innocence, which made him a unique and pleasant individual. Both Joe and Biddy kept learning and growing throughout the book, similar to Pip, yet, when welcomed to power and status, Pip lost who he was, and became who he thought he was supposed to be.

Works Cited

Great Expectations