Newman describes how as true gentlemen we should1 ‘conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.’ Joe does this when they catch the convict; instead of being annoyed that the convict stole the pie, he doesn’t mind. He just says: “God knows you’re welcome to it - so far as it was ever mine,”
… “We don’t know
what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for
it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. - Would us, Pip?”. Joe sees the convict as a human being and a fellow creature… unlike the guards on the prison ship who treated the convicts like dogs. This makes the convict feel love, probably something he hasn’t had much of before, and he develops a click in his throat and has to hide his face, as he tries not to cry. Herbert is also kind and very gentle to others, but mainly his friends, Pip describes him as ‘the kindest of nurses’.
If you are a true gentleman you do not inflict pain on others. As Newman says2 ‘a gentleman….is one who never inflicts pain.’ Dickens shows this in a humorous way when Herbert has a fight with Pip. Herbert fought like he had been taught how to fight, by doing pathetic little punches and he couldn’t hurt Pip. Although Pip just knocked Herbert, ‘the pale young gentleman’, over with blow after blow.
Dickens’ good people are genuine. Matthew Pocket revealed that ‘no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.’ Matthew tells the reader that we can’t disguise ourselves, if you aren’t a gentleman, but dress up as one, no matter to what degree; your true personality still shines through. Herbert realises this too. ‘It was evident that he had nothing around
him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked
upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from the
coffee-house or somewhere else.’ Another character who displays this quality is Magwitch: even though he is a convict, he is a good man. ‘I believe too that he dragged one
of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that
from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man…but Magwitch …is still a good man’. This is a direct contrast with Mrs Joe for whom even her funeral was sham and pompous. ‘I was much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, who, being behind me, persisted all the way as a delicate attention in arranging my streaming hatband, and smoothing my cloak.’
Newman describes how a true gentleman’s concern is to make 2 ‘everyone at their ease and at home’, and Herbert’s behavior is an example of this. When he sees Joe as he visits Pip in London, Joe is feeling uncomfortable and out of place and Herbert tries to correct that by asking polite, easy to understand questions, and, when it was still awkward, he left, to allow Pip and Joe to talk alone. He also comforts Pip when he first comes to London by giving him some fruit, which he thinks he will be used to because he is from the country. Wemmick exhibits this trait too. He ensures that his father is always kept ‘clean, cheerful, comfortable and well cared for’. He also has his house with a moat surrounding it because it makes his father feel secure when he leaves him for work. However, at work Wemmick acts very differently, he leaves his gentlemanly side behind and puts his business-like, ‘postbox’ mouth on, as he remarked ‘Walworth is one place, and the office is another’. At one point when Pip is asking his advice Wemmick even says that if Pip had asked him the same question at home he would have answered completely differently. Whereas Jaggers is always the same official, business-like person at home and at work, he is always the lawyer and is very intimidating.
True gentlemen will only see and bring out the good in other people, Joe sees the good; for example when he tells Pip about his father. Although Joe’s father often got drunk and beat Joe’s mother and Joe himself, Joe didn’t complain or try to make Pip feel sorry for him, he just said “he were that good in his hart”. Jaggers does not bring out the good in others. When Pip went for tea at Jaggers’s house, the worst was brought out in him, and his companions, which led them to a sizeable argument: ‘Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and would have flung it at his adversary’s head…’.
Although Pip doesn’t exhibit many of the other traits of a gentleman, he is self-aware throughout the narrative. When Pip realizes that he loves Estella he can still admit to himself that she makes him miserable because she torments him and says to himself, ‘Pip, what a fool you are!’ Estella is also self-aware, she understands that Miss Havisham has made her into a heartless monster, and she explains this to Pip. ‘You had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenseless…imposter of a woman’.
Dickens’ true gentlemen help people out and are modest about the favours they have done. As Newman says of a true gentleman2 ‘He makes light favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring.’ Pip illustrates this trait well. He arranges a place for business for Herbert. This is Pip’s first real act of generosity, though it’s ironic because it is made with the money from his own benefactor. However, whenever Pumblechook does favours, he does them because he hopes for something in return. When he arranged for Pip to play at Miss Havisham’s, he is trying to ingratiate himself with Mrs Joe, and Pip, so when Pip gets money from Miss Havisham, Pip will feel obliged to give him a share - as without Pumblechook it would never have happened. When Pip first moves to London to be a gentleman, everyone in his village thinks that Pumblechook is Pip’s ‘patron, companion and friend’. This, of course, is not true; as Pip would have rather Pumblechook had never tried to get him a job at Miss Havisham’s.
Being sensitive must be an important factor of being a good person. Biddy displays this characteristic, as she relises how Pip has hurt Joe. However, she also tells us that Joe never complained of Pip, hurting him. Estella is very insensitive, although this isn’t entirely her own fault. She says of Pip at the beginning of the novel, ‘coarse hands and thick boots’, which really offended, and affected Pip for the rest of his life. Although, she has got a spark of humanity in her as she keeps warning Pip not to fall in love with her. Like the star she is named after she always keeps cold and distant from Pip.
Dickens’ gives Orlick as an example of a completely evil character. Orlick murdered Mrs Joe, and tried to murder Pip. He killed Mrs Joe when Pip was old enough to ‘kill off’ his parents and gain his independence. Dickens doesn’t want us to understand Orlick, or feel a drop of sympathy for him. He is Pip’s alter ego, he does the things Pip would never dare do, or unconsciously thought.
Dickens is showing us that if you have money, this does not necessarily make you a gentleman. Drummle is an obvious example that money and class alone do not make a gentleman. On the other hand, Joe and Herbert, who are poor, are the main examples of true gentlemen in the text; they show the true qualities that compose a good person. Pip is a developing character, and therefore changes from a small innocent little boy, into a snob, and then a much more mature, wiser and sadder Pip develops at the end of the narrative. I feel that Pip is a gentleman though at the end, throughout he is self aware, and he has done favours to Herbert. With Magwitch there for Pip to care for and love, he managed to mature and grow out of the sham and elitist younger Pip.
I think that all these qualities that make up a good person are definitely still relevant today. Just as the factors that constitute a good person are the same for the poor, as for the rich in Dickens’s time, they are just as important to people now as they were then. If Joe or Herbert came into this century we would admire the gentlemanly characteristics in them, just as Pip saw the good in them in the nineteenth century.
Bibliography
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Newman, Newman on the Gentleman (1852)
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Mahoney. J, Great Expectations for GCSE, Ashford Colour Press, Hampshire (1994).
