Great Expectations - throughout this novel the characters are divided into upper class and lower class people. Unlike most young men in the 19th century, Pip was not either of these, but both.

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Throughout this novel of Great Expectations characters are divided into upper class and lower class people. Unlike most young men in the 19th century, Pip was not either of these, but both.Pip grew up with his sister Mrs Joe Gargery and her husband, Mr Joe who had grown up with no education, but taught himself to become a blacksmith. Joe wanted to pass on his talent to pip and treated him with great respect and almost as his own son. Pip was very close to him, and because Joe grew up running away with his mother from his father, he had had no reading or writing education. Joe decided and made sure that this would never happen to Pip and he would be happy how he lived his life.Pip was taught at his local school, this education was not to the highest standard and was paid for by the Gargery’s. In this novel Pip was read to by an older man and taught the alphabet. This type of education was not necessarily rigorous and as he writes a letter on a slate to Mr Joe you can notice a number of things that are wrong that he hasn’t been taught. His spelling is not correct, he writes in mixed capitals and lowercase, and not in Standard English.Chapter 7, Page 44 line 16: “MI deEr JO i opE U R KRWITE WELL i OPE I SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE U JO
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AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN I M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX AN BLEVE ME INF XN PIP” When Pip went to give Joe the slate he was slightly disappointed that he could not read it but gave him another chance of how to express his learning by helping him read the odd word he recognised. This sort of education would have been very common when Charles Dickens was growing up, but mostly for the poorer people. Charles Dickens introduces parts of his life, thoughts and feelings into his books, and Great Expectations especially brings ...

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