Mehar Hashmi
British Literature: Romanticism to Present
Professor Duncan Hasell
May 4, 2017
Great Expectations of Being Earnest In a class-based society, where your class will determine the rest of your life and who you will marry, what is better to improve in social class, hence improving all aspects of your life but at the price of sacrificing your moral code and ethics towards the people that are there for you and love you or to be honest, gentle, loyal, and respectfully to everyone around you even if you don’t get the thing you cherish and hold dearly? That’s the theme of the novel, Great Expectation by Charles Dickens, mocking the class-system that British empire utilized during the Victorian Era that he lived in. Stating that
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Even when was pursuing to become a “gentlemen” he showed this excellent quality of kindness, in the case as he used his own birthday allowance to help Hebert get a job.
However, Pip does change do he him falling in love with Estella. This is due to the fact, that both of them aren’t in the same social class and stature. So, Pip starts having “Great Expectations” for himself in the sense he wants to become a part of higher society so he can win Estella and end up with her in. Due to this, he becomes more resentful the life he has and in a sense, betrays the people that truly care for him in his pursuit of trying to become a gentleman. The first sign of this is seen when he was going to get the fortune to move to London. He started acting snobbish and got the mentality that he is good for the place is currently in and too good for those around him. This got further worse in the novel, where to the point where he starts seeing those he loved as lower and embarrassed by them being around him. For example, when Joe came over to check on him he felt that way to the person that is his father figure and idol. In the pursuit of the high life, he was becoming lower than the people he got embarrassed by. He when he goes back to visit Joe and his country friends he has that feeling of embarrassment as if he was better person since he
After gaining his wealth, Pip becomes snobby and lets everything go to his head. Now, after losing his wealth, we, as readers see a new change in Pip's personality. As for himself, Pip appears to feel ashamed of himself and his new class. In Great Expectations, explaining Pip's feelings, Pip thinks, "Next day, I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding promise to go down to Joe; but I was capable of almost any meanness towards Joe or his name." (Dickens, 391) Pips thoughts here, represent how he starts to realize how he has changed since moving to London. In his childhood, Pip was practically best friends with Joe, then becoming a gentleman, he has this sense that he is above Joe and essentially wanted nothing to do with
Pip’s primary goal in Great Expectations is to win the heart over of the wealthy and beautiful Estella, and to acquire something else to achieve this goal: wealth. Being of a lower class and the playmate of Miss Havisham, as far as Estella is concerned, Pip is nothing to her in the beginning. Not to say this isn’t the case of Pip’s feelings for Estella, as in the very beginning of their interaction everything he feels is purely lust: lust for the stunning Estella, hankering for the wealth he wishes to acquire to impress her. At this point, he doesn’t know much about Estella at all; her exterior is beautiful, not just her appearance but also the opulent life she lives, however her heart is ice cold, as Miss Havisham states when she says, “I
As mentioned before, Pip possess and inability to fully express his feeling about those around him. When he first encounters Estella, he knows that is a physical attraction but Estella’s cold and indifferent actions toward Pip leave him longing for someone he cannot create a true connection with. Furthermore, Estella has the one of the greatest influence on Pip’s identity in the novel once he obtains his expectations and attempts to alter his personality to mimic that of a genteel individual. Pip describes the anguish he feels about his background as “a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home” insinuating that the only way to win Estella over is to disregard his humble beginnings in Kent. Which leads to his desires to become a gentleman in London in hopes that he will be better suited for Estella.
Through the years, a number of individuals have argued that this is the best way for the novel to conclude. These people tend to believe that this ending is more true to the overall tone of the novel than the revised finale. Great Expectations never exists as a typically happy story. Its plot is marked by constant disappointment and suffering, which would therefore make the application of a happy, romantic ending seem rather unnatural. By the end of the story, Pip has learned a great deal about himself and reached a new level of maturity. He has come to recognize the mistakes that he had made as a young man and is able to appreciate the importance of family. No longer is he consumed by a selfish desire for wealth and social status. Pip’s primary motivation for attaining such a gentlemanly status had been his desire to marry Estella. By the end of the novel, however, Pip’s character has been redeemed. He has progressed beyond the point in his life that was represented by his love for Estella. This deliverance would then seem to make it impossible for Pip to continue loving Estella. She was a part of his youth; Pip, however, has become a man.
Throughout Great Expectations, the main character, Pip, undergoes immense changes in character as he matures and time passes. At the beginning of the story, Pip is just a simple boy who cares little for personal advancement and status, and is perfectly content with his simple life. However, a new trait of Pip arises when he meets Estella and Miss Havisham. They look down on him as common and criticize his low social class and lack of manners. This leads to Pip entirely rethinking what he finds important, and his desire for personal advancement quickly overshadows his kindness and generosity. He begins to look down on his closest friend, Joe, for being so common, and he abandons all of his older dreams for
Pip then goes on to address the reader directly and explains that “[t]hat was a memorable day to [him], for it made great changes in [him],” (Dickens 70). After meeting with Estella several times and becoming extremely fond of her, despite her bipolar attitudes towards him, Ms. Havisham suddenly decides to recompense Pip for his time and then tells him that he no longer has to come back to the Satis House. Everyday after this, Pip continuously thinks of Estella and of how he must become a gentleman in order to be at the same level as Estella and eventually marry her. Another character Biddy (whose relationship to Pip is somewhat complicated) begins acting as Pip’s teacher and Pip says “[w]hatever [he] acquired, [he] tried to impart to Joe,” because “[he] wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common.” Pip’s plans to become a well-mannered gentleman to be worthy of high-society and to be worthy of Estella’s affection are two goals or “great expectations” that Pip sets for himself that ultimately carry the plot of the novel along.
In the first stage of Great Expectations, Pip begins as a contented boy, happy with his own way of life, but soon becomes humiliated by the ones he loves, and starts
So from the start Pip is in awe of Estella because of her beauty. It
The consultation of Estella causes him to want to elevate from his social standing and turns him into a snob and a person who feels more superior than others. Nevertheless, towards the ending of the story, Pip
Near the beginning of the book, pip is a poor, abused, and neglected child that makes it fairly easy for many of the readers to feel sympathy for him. He just wants to have a better life, but being common served as a hurdle for him to be able have a better life. After he meets Estella, Dickens creates the expectation for him to want to be with Estella. After this desire, he undergoes a change in his character, which leads up to the middle of the book. He starts to transform from an innocent and common boy to a gentleman that’s arrogant, selfish, and full of self-pride.
Pip’s mindset regarding classes and success in life is drastically altered after his initial visit to the aristocratic Miss Havisham. “She said I was common” (69) spurs the realization in Pip that he is indeed innocent but unfortunately much oppressed. Pip is very distraught with his birth place into society, to the point that he “was discontented” (130) -- he increasingly desires to be a gentleman. He primarily desires this as a means of impressing Estella and winning her over. At this point in the novel, Pip is willing to give away what he loves (Joe – family setting) to obtain a superficial and insulting girl. One day Pip receives word that he now has the ability to grow up to be his ultimate dream, to be a gentleman. Pip awakens to a new world and those he once loved are no longer good enough for Pip. Moving to London, he becomes far more sophisticated, but at the same time loses his natural goodness. (Chesterton 142). Pip is leaving happiness and his real family to attain a life he thinks will make him more content. Before departing, he dreams of “Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing” (148). This relates the dream that Pip has just before he sets out to London for the first time, with all of his "great expectations" before him. Pip’s dream is permeated with the sadness and guilt caused by his imminent departure from Joe and Biddy and his aspirations for a new social station.
The expectations that cause Pip's character to become less likable are those that he develops after being introduced to Miss Havisham and Estella. During his first visit to the Satis House, Estella, who considers herself much too refined and well-bred to
There are salient junctures in Pip’s upbringing that make him who the person he was; this is a tale that in which Pip was soliciting for awareness of himself, as well he realized that his life had major elements of obscurity; due to the fact, he was presented clearly, two radical different lifestyle choices; one, involving a life as a blacksmith and the other; involving the path as life as am affluent prosperous gentleman. Dickens carefully wrote in the periods of Pip’s life and how those set of circumstances; affected by choice, as well affected Pip’s later choices he had made. The temptation of class and wealth perverted the actions of Pip and other people around him; Pip is therefore contemplating on how he was saved by reminiscence of the stages of his life. In the first stage; Pip encounters Magwitch; by accident, this affects the outcome of later events of his life; Pip is than introduced to Miss Havishism and Estella, he fell in love with Estella, and was dramatically persuaded by the promises he made to himself, from his encounters with Miss Havhishism and Estella. Dramatically; Pip than learned the truth about his wealth and that Magwitch was Estella 's father; this collapsed Pip’s vision of reality and forced him to alter his exceptions concerning the truth; Pip than had to save himself from his own selfishness, as well as his malice actions, to the ones who were faithful to him; finally, at the end Pip is a full grown adult and had gain
be seen when Joe covers for Pip when he is late home or when he says
Throughout the novel, Pip goes through a lot of events that transforms him as a person. At the start of the novel, Pip, an uneducated and naïve little boy, does not care about social class and is happy with what he has. But as he