Also at the age of 18 just like Pip except with Estella, Dickens fell deeply in love with a girl called Maria Beadnell. She like Estella treated him coldly and with no respect because of his financial situation and his poverty. She blanked him for the whole of his life and he was treated as an inconvenience. By this I mean that for example when he asked to kiss her she only let him kiss her on the cheek and immediately turned herself away. Also just ignorance would be an example of how she blanked him in their earlier meetings. This can be linked to the writing in the book. Estella who has been brought up to “destroy and break men’s hearts” treats Pip with disrespect and coldly. Never-the-less he is persistent in trying to win the heart of Estella just as Dickens was with Maria. Another link between the two is that they both fall in love with people with money and of a much higher social class and realistically Pip never stood a chance of having a love relationship with Maria. But Pip turns out differently as he ends up being with Estella as a couple which I believe is Dickens writing from the heart as if it was how he wanted his life to turn out. He is writing from a very personal view and is expressing how he wanted his life to turn out the way he wanted it to turn out.
At the beginning of the book Pip is living with a poor family with his sister, Mrs Gargery, and her husband, Joe. As he gradually becomes older he believes he has what It takes to become a gentleman in the city. This is because of two reasons. Firstly to actually make something of his life and secondly to win the heart of an apprentice of Miss Havisham, Estella. During his meetings with Miss Havisham at Satis house (the place of her residence) he becomes increasingly fond of this Estella in a way in which can be related to dickens because he didn’t stand a chance of love with the love of his life.
The first time that Pip ever sets eyes on Estella is when he goes to Miss Havisham’s by her request with the help of Pumblechook as the person who escorts him there. When Pumblechook leaves them to walk alone to visit Miss Havisham, they begin to talk about the various names in which the run down house possesses. This is where Pips begins to realise how much he likes Estella even though she is treating him as quite literally a “boy”: “though she called me boy often and with the carelessness that was far from complimentary, she was about my own age. She seemed beautiful and self possessed: and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one and twenty, and a queen” This is exactly what I mean about how he was treated so badly by the love of his life, as Dickens was by his love of Maria whom he grew fond of as a boy and throughout his life. She also happened to appear to be upper class because of the way she spoke and where she lived and how she looked down on Pip, but really she was picked up by Miss Havisham as an orphan so it theoretically she isn’t an upper class lady as Estella appeared to be. She kept looking down on Pip as if he was nothing compared to her, resulting in Pip think of her as being a queen.
When they meet Estella appears to look down on Pip. This is most probably because he is of a much lower and working class whereas she has been brought up properly as a lady equivalent of the definition of a gentleman. Also very clearly Estella makes him know what she thinks he is and that is nothing more than a ‘common labouring boy’ and she mocks him when they are playing cards as he has been brought up to say ‘jacks’ instead of ‘knaves’. This is because saying jacks is considered being a lower class way of saying knaves, which was the upper class way of saying it. Although she has treated Pip badly, he can’t help wanting to see Estella again as he begins to believe that he is falling in love with this girl who treats him so badly. After being literally thrown out of house he begins to feel” humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry and sorry” by his visit and in particular the remarks made and the way he was treated by Estella.
Because of his visits to Miss Havisham’s he becomes increasingly interested in becoming a gentleman and a man of class as he realised that is what Estella would seek in a man she would ever seek man to spend her life with. If you look at the definition of a gentleman, this is what Pip believes to be what she wants and is a concrete reason as to why he desires the love of Estella by means of becoming a gentleman.
In conclusion to this essay I believe that there is only one reason as to why Pips desire to be a gentleman is bound up with winning the love of Estella. This is that Pip believes that there is only one possibility in which he is to obtain the love of Estella and that is to become exactly what he would not expect to be and completely change his current lifestyle, and become a gentleman. He uses his visits to Miss Havisham’s as a chance to see Estella for as long as a can and also to try and get the financial support of Miss Havisham to help him on his way into the city to become a gentleman and therefore become what Estella wants in her life, a gentleman, and ultimately in Pips ideal life, win her love and affection and her feeling the same way back.
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