Pip returns to the house 6 days later, as instructed by Miss Havisham, and is treated similarly to how he was before. Estella still acts unpleasantly towards him: “... she slapped my face with such force as she had, when I answered it.” She again, down grades him by calling him a ‘coarse monster’ and a ‘little wretch’. When a gentleman walks past asking who Pip is, she replies that he is only, ‘a boy’. She is indeed breaking Pip’s heart, exactly how Miss Havisham intends. Estella’s mood entirely changes at the end of their second meeting, however. She almost entices him by saying, “...come here! You may kiss me, if you like.” This is another step towards breaking Pip’s heart as she is teasing him with what he knows he can’t have.
Later on, Pip realises, “Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared to have something to do with everything that was picturesque.” This is something Pip would have to have if he were to be able to be with Estella – to become a gentleman – a man regarded as having qualities of refinement associated with a good family. A man who is cultured, courteous and well educated. Something that Pip, at this time in the novel, was most certainly not.
Parts of Great Expectations can be compared to Charles Dickens’ life. In this novel, Pip’s character and what happens to him is similar to what happened to Dickens.
In 1822 Dickens family moved to London because they were very short of money. Charles had been taken from school and his father was arrested for debt and taken to the Marshalsea debtor's prison. Later he was joined there by the rest of his family, except Dickens: to help his family's finances, he had been sent to work in Warren's Blacking Factory. There he had to wrap and label bottles of blacking (a kind of shoe polish) for a wage of six shillings a week. He was forced to work twelve hours a day in unpleasant surroundings, earning only just enough to buy food and wander alone around London.
Charles was deeply affected by these events: especially his family's fall from fortune and his loneliness in the factory changed him as a person and shaped his outlook as a writer and social critic. Later he remarked of this part of his life:
"How much I suffered, it is ... utterly beyond my power to tell ... No words can express the secret agony of my soul."
He could never forget this period of lonely hopelessness and almost never mentioned it even to his closest friends. Lost, lonely, orphaned, or badly treated children, like Pip, very often appear in Dickens novels. Dickens sympathy and compassion reflect in his novels, deriving partly from memories of his own unhappiness when he was young.
At the age of eighteen Dickens fell passionately in love with Maria Beadnell, a pretty and careless girl. She was the daughter of a bank manager who did not like Dickens's poverty. She herself also seems to have treated him rather coldly. The affair lasted for several years and ended in 1833. It was a most unhappy one for Dickens.
There are similarities between Charles Dickens life and Pip’s life. Firstly, Dickens had quite a bad childhood in that his family was quite poor, much like Pip and his family. The fact that his father was sent to a prison, I think, coincides with Magwitch being in a prison in the novel. Charles Dickens hard working life is much the same as Pip’s life as well. Both their families had difficult times: Dickens family being sent to prison and Pip’s parents dying when he was a young boy and his being brought up by hand by his sister which was an unpleasant time for him. Pip falling in love with Estella is much the same as what happened to Dickens. He also fell in love with someone who was more upper class than him-self, and his relationship with her was frowned upon. It was an unhappy time for Dickens as she treated him rather coldly, much like Pip, as he was made to feel ashamed of himself and was also treated coldly by Estella. Dickens is drawing story lines from his own life into this novel. He is writing from experience.
Overall, the exterior vision of a gentleman becomes very important to Pip in the earlier stages of the novel - the clothes and general appearance of his surroundings obsess him to such a point that he appoints the "Avenger" to serve on him. The Avenger, though expensively dressed, seems to be absolutely ridiculous - dressed in a canary yellow waistcoat. To him, gentlemen deserve respect, and once Pip "becomes" a gentleman, this appears to happen - he is treated respectfully by Trabb when he goes to buy his clothes, when previously he wasn't given a second glance.
Before he was offered the chance to become one, Pip wanted to be a gentleman for only one reason: to impress Estella, to be an equal, instead of a “common labouring boy”. In this way he thought he could have a chance with being with her.