As the story unfolds, Pip continues to notice the social differences between himself and Estella and, when he returns from Miss Havisham’s, he finds a lawyer at his house called Mr Jaggers. This is the turning point in Pip’s life because he discovers that he has a mystery benefactor, whom he mistakenly thinks is Miss Havisham, who wants him to go to London to be transformed into a gentleman. Jaggers tries to pay Joe off with some money to compensate for loss of Pip’s services but Joe refuses as it is the loss of Pip’s friendship which matters to him and not the money. Pip is already showing signs of snobbery by rudely offending Biddy by saying ‘If I could only get myself to fall in love with you’ (P158). Pip also goes to the local tailor’s shop and meets Mr Trabb and his son, ‘Trabb’s boy’, whom he refers to as ‘the most audacious boy in all that country’. This is the language of a genteel person, rather than someone from a low class, which reminds us that this is a story being narrated by Pip many years later, when he has become a gentleman, and gives us a clue about the things to come.
The story then follows Pip to London where he meets Jaggers in his office to discuss financial matters, after which he goes to stay with a Mr Herbert Pocket, who becomes his friend. Herbert and Pip have a meal in his new lodging house and Pip has terrible table manners, so Herbert teaches him the table manners of a gentleman. By this time Pip is becoming extravagant with his new found wealth, wasting his money by spending twenty pounds on things which he does not need. Joe comes to visit Pip to tell him of the return of Estella, but Pip is not proud of Joe being there and comments ‘If I could have kept him away by paying money…’ (P240).
In other words, from the dictionary definition of a snob, it is clear that Pip has now become one because he wants to mix only with those of a ‘higher social status’ and is turning his back on his friends from his earlier life.
Pip later returns to his old home village and shows further signs of snobbery when he stays at the Blue Boar Inn instead of staying with Joe, and he sends food to Joe, rather than going to see him because he is ashamed of his lowly origins and wants to rise above his status by not being seen with a lower class man.. He also returns to Satis house to see Estella, who is back from Paris, and while he is walking down the street he is mocked by ‘Trabb’s boy’, standing behind him and saying ‘Don’t know yah, don’t know yah…’ (P267) because of his genteel clothes and upper class air.
By this time Pip is leading the idle and extravagant life of a typical rich gentleman of the period. He and Herbert join a club for young gentlemen, ‘The Finches of the Grove’ – a name chosen by Dickens because a Finch was a pseudonym for an upper class idiot who came from a privileged background and frittered his family’s money on lavish living. Like the other ‘Finches’, Pip is leading a pointless and extravagant life and his excesses are pushing him into debt. At the same time, he has recurring guilt about his attitude to Joe and Biddy, and it is at this point that he hears in a letter that his sister, who earlier in the book had been badly beaten, has died. He travels back for the funeral, but this time, because of his guilty conscience. he stays in his old house with Joe and Biddy, rather than at the Blue Boar Inn. It is noticeable that Joe and Biddy are also affected by Pip’s rise in status because they now refer to him as ‘Mr Pip’ (P302). While he is staying there Pip speaks to Joe and reveals his change of heart when he entreats Joe to: ‘For God’s sake, give me your blackened hand!’
He is clearly showing a little remorse about his previous snobbishness and showing them that, even though he has become a gentleman, he has not abandoned his roots and still values their friendship. It also indicates that for the first time Pip is beginning to see through outside or superficial appearances to the fine man beneath.
When Pip returns to London a man knocks at the door and reveals himself as Magwitch, the man who he met on the Marshes all those years ago. Magwitch reveals that he is Pip’s mystery benefactor and explains what led him to become a criminal. Pip is devastated to learn that it is Magwitch, and not Miss Havisham, who is his benefactor and realizes that he has been neglecting Joe in preference for ‘expectations’ which have been paid for by a convict. His snobbery is very obvious because, instead of gratitude, his attitude is one of total horror and disgust: ‘The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast’ (P337) – language again associated with a person from the higher classes. Despite his reformed attitude to Joe and Biddy, therefore, it is obvious that Pip is still very much a snob because he does not want his wealthy friends to learn of his low class benefactor. He tries to pay Magwitch off by giving him two clean pound notes, but straightaway Magwitch burns them because he is offended that Pip is trying to get rid of him in this way. Nevertheless, Pip feels he owes it to Magwitch, who would face death by hanging if he is caught, to help him hide. Pip even pretends that Magwitch is an uncle, rather than reveal that his benefactor is a lowly convict and at the same time put him at risk of capture. Pip decides to share his secret with Herbert and they plan to send Magwitch back to Australia on a steamship, but the police capture him and he is sent to prison, later to be hanged. While he is there, Pip (who has found out that Magwitch is Estella’s father), goes to visit him – a very selfless act in those times because prisons, which were in appalling condition and full of dreadful diseases, were never visited by persons of a higher social class. People in those times were as familiar with the ‘Bible’ as the public today are with television soap operas and Dickens’ readers would have seen a parallel between Pip’s behaviour and the Biblical story of the Pharisee and the publican.
In the meantime, Pip has been to see Miss Havisham to ask why she let him believe that she was his mystery benefactor and why she let him think that Estella was for him. She tells him that she wanted to get revenge on men and he forgives her but asks, by way of repayment, if she can give money to Herbert for the business he plans to set up in India. He then goes back to London and finds he is becoming ill. He falls down the stairs, where he is found by Herbert, who writes to Joe and Joe and Herbert between them nurse Pip back to health. Joe pays off all Pip’s debts, but Pip is unhappy with this because by this time he is feeling terrible remorse for the way he has behaved to his friend. He wants Joe to be angry with him, rather than help him, but Joe forgives him by saying: ‘God bless him, this gentle Christian man’ (P472). Through Joe Dickens’ is showing us his belief that there is a moral hierarchy superior to the English social hierarchy.
Pip learns of Miss Havisham’s death and finds that she has left four thousand pounds to Herbert. After this, Pip goes to see Biddy and Joe to say goodbye to them, and realizes what they have done for him by saying his thanks: ‘don’t think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I could repay it a thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a farthing of the debt I owe you, or that I would so if I could’ (P488). This signifies that Pip has finally learnt the lesson Magwitch had tried to teach him that goodness and generosity cannot be repaid in monetary terms. Pip then travels to India to work with Herbert, putting into practice Carlyle’s theories on the sacrosanct nature of work (see paragraph 2). Only after eleven years does he return to see Biddy and Joe because he thinks he has now paid off his moral debt to them for how he has treated them in the past.
As we follow the progress of Pip from blacksmith’s boy to ‘gentleman’, we see that Pip’s ambitions and aspirations are echoed by many of the other characters. Herbert Pocket, for instance, mirrors Pip’s aspirations to become a gentleman and Magwitch’s plans for the social elevation of Pip are similar to those of Miss Havisham, whose motivation is to take revenge on the ‘gentlemen’ who destroyed her dreams and expectations. A central feature throughout the novel is the acquisition of wealth and certainly Pip himself clearly associates this with the status of being a ‘gentleman’.
On a basic level, therefore, ‘Great Expectations’ is certainly a story about ‘A snob’s progress’, following Pip’s social advancement from lower class origins to becoming a London gentleman and the way in which this leads him to become a snob, ashamed of his roots and his friends from his former life. Redemption for Pip comes only when he has learned the true values of life, such as love and friendship and the fact that you cannot buy people or pay them off. Indeed, Dickens’ choice of surname for Pip – Pirrip – is a palindrome reflecting his progress through the class structure and his eventual return to the true values of his roots which he lost sight of on the way. However, as I mentioned at the beginning, books can be read in different ways and, at a deeper level, there are many other aspects to ‘Great Expectations’ than simply the story of Pip’s falling in love with Estella, his lapse into snobbishness and his final achievement of becoming a ‘gentleman’ in the true sense of the word. While we follow Pip’s progress, and his interaction with the other characters, from working class Joe to the idle Finches and the wealthy Miss Havisham, we are given a vivid picture of life in Victorian England with its huge gulf between rich and poor and the rigid class system which fostered tremendous social injustices and inequalities. We learn about the language the people used, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the way they were educated, the differences between the different classes and the attitudes and prejudices of society. ‘Great Expectations’ is a story with a moral and through the tale of Pip and his snobbery Dickens shows us his own views on human nature and the evils of the class system. It is a novel, therefore, not just about one particular man and what happens to him, but about London life, false values, ‘the dirt of the city’, money and morality, right and wrong, good and bad, love and loyalty, and what Dickens considers to be the truly important things in life.
