This shows how young lower class Victorian children where treated and spoken to. Adults had no sympathy or respect towards children, infact if they shared there opinion they would get hit and treated like animals
Pip is treated awfully by his sister and sometimes even hit;
“…she had brought me up by hand.”
Pip was often hit and mistreated by his sister for things every child would enjoy today. He would get beaten up with a cane for simply asking his sister a question or even just not doing what he was what he is told.
His uncle, Mr Pumblechook, who is also a working class man, is bossy and harsh;
“Seven times nine, boy?”
Pip is ignored by his uncle and always insulated and embarrassed by questions that he gets asked.
Miss Havisham, who is an old weird, half decayed woman likes Pip in the inside but treats him in a harsh way;
“When shall I have you here again?”
Miss Havisham talks to Pip In good manner but treats him badly because of his social class. Because she is a higher class woman, she thinks that she is better than Pip.
Pip’s sister’s husband, Joe Gargery is a polite and respectful man;
“I wish there warn’t no tickler for you, old chap…”
Joe likes Pip and treats him fairly as if he was his little brother, unlike his wife. When Mrs Joe hits Pip, Joe would try and protect him because abuses them both.
In the novel, Pip is treated awfully even by other children at his own age;
“, he is a common labouring boy!”
Estella disrespects Pip and she has no manners towards him or to any other lower class person, even adults. This is because she is a high class girl and she thinks that she is better than other people.
Herbert Pocket who is a higher class child, and roughly the same age as Pip, doesn’t like Pip at the start but then they become friends.
“Here, he dodged backwards and forwards
and did all sorts of things while I looked helplessly at him.”
This shows how well-mannered lower class people were compared to higher class people. Herbert Pocket is trying to start a fight with Pip, but Pips manners tell him just to ignore Herbert.
Biddy likes pip and even teaches him to read and write. She is slightly older than Pip;
“…like me, too, had been brought up by hand.”
Pip and Biddy have both been abused by their guardians. When Pips sister died, Biddy looked after Pip like and treated him like if he was her son. She was also a lower class woman.
The sort of education that lower class children received was poor;
“…my education under that preposterous female terminated.”
Education for a lower class child like Pip was limited. They would get taught by their parents or friend, however higher class children like Estella would go to proper schools and get good education.
Lower class children like Pip had to work because they didn’t go to school or sometime just to help their poor parents;
“I was quite as dejected on the fist working-day of my apprenticeship…”
Pip was ashamed to work as a blacksmith but he had no choice, he wanted to be more high class so Estella would look at him and treat him well.
Overall, Dickens’ represents lower class Victorian children in the character Pip, he was poor, not well educated and generally polite and respectful, nevertheless, Estella had the complete opposite features. This made life hard for the lower class people because they would get abused by the higher class people. However all children were abused by adults.