As I have said in previous paragraphs Pip has had a hard life, Pip’s house is a small “wooden house” with a “ditch clock” which is a cheap clock. Pip is also mistreated as he “served as a connubial missile” and that he gets regular beatings from “tickler”. Pip is not the only one beaten “Knowing her (Mrs. Joe) to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me”. Mrs. Joe is important because she represents the raising of the children in Victorian society, she helps us to lets us see how truly far Pips has come from being forced to intimidate higher class to actually being it. Joe is a “fellow-sufferer” of Mrs. Joe and he and Pip both treat each other like equals and share secrets more of having an older brother than him actually raising him as a father figure. It is important to see Pip at his home as we can feel sympathy for him and empathize what he “is” going through. Dickens wants us to fell sympathy for him so we can realize what his life was like and how he has changed since his childhood. The robbery of the pie shows us how Pip’s fear for both Mrs. Joe and the convict and that his conscience about stealing from his sister, the one who brought him up “by hand” and fear from being caught or, if not doing it out of this fear, being killed by the convicts “friend”.
In chapter 7 we learn a lot about Pips education. Everything he has learnt was form Mr. Wopsles great aunt's school, but not from Mrs. Wopsle, from Biddy, her daughter. In Mrs. Wopsles School their only source of education was a single book that was passed around the class showing that Pip hasn’t had a very good education like many of the working class children in Victorian society. Pips education shows that he is slowly advancing in society and is trying to achieve his goals. However Pip thinks of himself as stupid when really he only thinks like this as he is not learning fast enough for him to like it and his surroundings make him believe it. Joe in comparison to Pip has had not much of an education, he cant even read where as Pip has become superior to him in his education and because of this we fell sorry for Joe because of the story of his childhood he tells us afterwards.
Pip is invited to play at Miss Haversham’s house, this is important as it shows a crucial part of the bildungsroman genre, the “shunning out” of the society that he wants to be accepted by, when Pip is playing at Satis house he is mixing with the higher class which represents a small leap to achieving his goals, while also giving him something else to aim at, Estella. Pip is treated badly by Estella because of his class making him feel poor and “common”, insulting the language he uses “he calls the knaves, jacks!” showing the difference in class which makes him upset and cry but the fact that she gets to him means that he likes her, urging him to change class “the hands that have never bothered me before, look coarse and common now”. Joe responds to Pip with helpful advice, saying that if he wants to be “uncommon” he must do it the honest way because if he can’t he’ll never do it and we expect Pip to go and strike his goals.
Satis house represents a slow change in Pip’s status. He’s mixing with higher class people and becoming more familiar with Miss Haversham and Estella’s frequent mood change, that he is becoming to feel more comfortable there than he would be at home and the talks about him being paid for his services. He also trys and subtley suggest that he wants to become a gentleman and he asks miss Haversham for some help 'to that desirable end' in a round about way but she never caught on. Pip is becoming to fell that hew is superior to others, take my Pumblechook for example, 3 chapters ago he would still be respecting him but now he thinks of him as an 'ass' and begins to think of himself superior to some. Pip feels very guilty over the pale young gentleman, this shows that he respects the upper class but at the same time doesnt want to dash every chance he has of elevating to that status, and when Joe comes back with Pip to visit Miss Haversham Joe speaks through Pip and this shows a widing gap as Joe, an acompplished Blacksmith has to speak through Pip, a mere child, this shows some change in status and an other opening of the gap between Pip and Joe. However, in the next chapter we see thing in a different light, Pip's arrogance begins to shine through becuase of the 'eve' that is Estella who has poisened his mind making fell all 'coarse and common', however much Dickens prepares us for this admittance we still feel like he has been a tragic victom of the leech that is love. He prepares us by giveing us sutble hints that Pip is becoming too cosy with the higher class and that Estella is one of the main reasons that he wants to join them but it is important at this point in the novel as he is bound to his trade already so he is now trapped, However we do feel sympathy for Pip even though we feel really nausiated by his arrogance because he had 'liked Joe's trade once, but once was not now.'
Pip says a lot of things in chapter 15 but the worst thing he syas was 'I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common (which means that he thinks that of his former 'equal'), that he might be worthier of my society (he thinks just because hes hob nobbed with Mrs. Haversham and Estalla that he's king of the world) and less open to Estals reproach'. Trying to say that Joe is not equal to Pip, and what started out sounding like something helpful to Joe is just for Pip's own selfish reasons. He becomes condesending calling Joe 'Mr dear Joe' and treating him like a child and Pip acting like an adult. Pip loses patience with Joe's bad grammer ' if you was'. Dickens uses this language difference to convey how Pip has changed and how he and Joe both see each other now. Later on in this chapter Mrs. Joe (Pip's sister) is attacked by the file Pip gave to the convict however Pip doesnt make a huge deal about this, he made much more fuss over when he beat up the pale young gentleman than over his very own sister, lettin Estella come first in his minds, leting his judgements over the "lower classes" interfere with his family. However, the mood changes in chapter 17 with hiom saying if nobody told me that i was common and lower class then it would have never bothered me, PIp shows another side to him, the side that aknoledges that Estella and Miss Haversham have poisend his mind and Pip's abilty to be intrrospective. Dickes does this as we need some sympathy for pip so we dont think of him as a complete blockhead when he totally screws up himself.
In chapter 18 Pip is told by Mr Jaggers that he has 'great expectations' and will be 'brought up as a gentleman', Pip reacts really positivley, he hears 'singing in my ears' and Joe is really happy for him which shows that Joe has a large regard for Pip an treats him as an equal even thuogh Pip doesnt feel the same. It only really hits him that to become a gentleman he has to leave everything he has, his family, his friends and his desire to be a social climber made him lose focus on what really mattered to him and who he really cared about. In chapter 19 when he meets Mr. Pumblechook they are on friendly terms even though Pip called him an ass before, Pip is now higher class and now they can mix so Pip needs some higher class friends as he cant be around his old 'common' friends. Pips tone soon begins to change, and by pg 149 he is unpleasent, condesending, thinks of himself as superior to his family and friends. Pip even begins to say that he wishes he was able to remove Joe to 'a higher sphere', in this qoute he calls Joe common, he critises him for not having chances and is now distancing himself from his family as he cant be seen with his normal, common, poor family so he can't mix with Joe anymore. Pip is now acting in a vain and superior way to everyone. In the end of the chapter Pip says his goodbyes and leaves for London the only things he has left to do is to stabilise himself and to achieve his one and only great expectation to win over the love of Estella.
Over the course of volume 1 Pip has changed from a young innocent boy to a completly arrogant 'higher' class person. 'Great expectations' fufills the biuldingroman genre as Pip finally becomes part of the social order but now he speaks like he was always high class. The aspects that have been the most useful in charting Pip's change are social conditions and desire. Great expectations is not a normal Bildungsroman because Pip narratates his own story and he streches beyond growing up, the novel meeets the typical bildungroman structure and develops it turning it into a mistrey, love story and a novel which comments on Victorian social order.
