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PIP'S EXPECTATIONS
Pip's development or education, which has been called a
snob's progress, makes this novel a bildungsroman; a novel of
education, the bildungsroman
typically follows the hero's process from childhood innocence to
experience. One of the great ironies of this novel is that Pip's
financial and social rise, which results from his having
"expectations," is accompanied by an emotional and moral decline or
deterioration. Does any good beside his buying a partnership for
Herbert come out of his expectations?
PIP AND JOE
 Though
Pip's dream of transformation alienates him from Joe, Joe continues to
have a positive influence on Pip. Pip acknowledges that he fulfilled
his obligations as an apprentice blacksmith because of Joe's integrity
and commitment, just as later he takes his studies seriously because of
Matthew Pocket's integrity and commitment as a teacher.
Why, when his dream of being transformed into a gentleman is about to
come true, does Pip pass the loneliest night of his life? When Pip
leaves for London, he cries as he looks at the signpost, which is an
obvious symbol for Pip's future and which is used repeatedly. It is
easy to dismiss the passage which follows as only sentimental, but is
it? For Dickens and his age, tears had a moral value; crying could
arouse feelings of love and the sense of connection to and
responsibility for others. How do you think this passage should be
read?
Heaven knows we
need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding
dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had
cried than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more
gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe with me then (page
160).
After the London breakfast, Pip reflects that his tears at his
treatment of Joe "had soon dried–God forgive me!–soon dried" (page
244); this response prepares for his ignoring Joe when he visits Miss
Havisham. Pip says of his attempts to rationalize not seeing Joe, "All
other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with
such pretences did I cheat myself" (page 225). This statement implies
that his behavior is worse than that of Pumblechook, whom he earlier
identified as a swindler, and that Pip's own behavior is criminal. Why
does he say this? In what way(s) is his behavior worse than
Pumblechook's and so criminal?
In rejecting Joe, Pip of course is rejecting
unconditional love, as well as selflessness, honesty, faithfulness, and
compassion. As a gentleman with expectations, Pip does not entirely
lose these qualities, however; they are expressed mainly in his
relationship with Herbert. In embracing his great expectations, he
replaces Joe as a guardian with Mr. Jaggers. Joe, the man of love, sees
under the surface to the nature of people and things (he cuts short
Pip's dilemma with the moral truth that "lies is lies"); Jaggers, the
man of facts, looks at the surface and is guided by the evidence, not
feelings (during the conversation in which Jaggers confirms that
Magwitch is Pip's benefactor, Jaggers insists for the record that
Magwitch is in New South Wales, though he knows Magwitch is in London
). Why is Joe unable to communicate with Jaggers when Jaggers reveals
Pip's great expectations? And why is Joe unable to speak directly to
Miss Havisham.when she ends Pip's employment?
THE GENTLEMAN
Like Thackeray, Dickens contrasts the traditional concept of a
gentleman as a man of wealth, status, and leisure with the gentleman as
a man of moral integrity. Herbert Pocket describes Compeyson, the
pseudo-gentleman, by quoting his father: "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"
(page 179). Herbert and Matthew Pocket are gentlemen because of their
behavior and moral integrity, not their birth.
By this criterion, is Joe a gentleman? And was Pip more
of a gentleman as a child, before he encountered Miss Havisham and
became discontented with his life? As child, he felt compassion for the
convict; he saw the humanity in the convict; as a gentleman with
expectations, he is a snob and continually judges by the external
criteria of status and wealth. In London, where Pip lives out
society's–and his own–concept of a gentleman, he leads a directionless,
futile life; he has no intellectual, cultural, or spiritual values and
no meaningful purpose. Pip's being a gentleman seems to consist
of having good table manners, acquiring an upper class accent, wearing
the right clothes, and going into debt. He joins the Finches of the
Grove, a group of empty "gentlemen" whose only activity and purpose
seems to be to spend money foolishly. Drummle, who is a gentleman
because of his family and wealth, is not only a member of the Finches
but is accepted in fashionable society, despite his stupidity,
ignorance, and brutality. Perhaps the ultimate example of the
meaninglessness of Pip's life as a man of expectations is his hiring
The Avenging Phantom, shortened to the Avenger. What or who is being
avenged?
Dickens uses the portrayal of the gentleman to show one
more of society's faulty and destructive values. The destructive
potential of wealth in Pip's society is shown by his emotional and
moral deterioration in becoming a gentleman.
Though Magwitch has disappeared for over
two hundred pages, his revelation is subtly prepared for by Pip's
continuing connection with crime and criminals: the leg iron used to
assault his sister, the man with the file and the two pounds, the two
convicts on the stagecoach with Pip, Jaggers's criminal practice, and
his visiting Newgate with Wemmick. At a thematic level, Magwitch as the
source of Pip's great expectations connects criminality, wealth, and
status; Magwitch's appearance affirms another theme--the inescapable
effect of the past on the present. The determining nature of the past
on the present is most obvious in Miss Havisham and her broken heart.
Magwitch's determination to make Pip
a gentleman is mixed; he is genuinely touched by the defencelessness
and vulnerability of Pip as a child and by his kindness, but at the
same time he wants revenge against society by creating and owning a
gentleman. Magwitch has been persecuted and imprisoned since childhood.
Like Pip, Estella, Biddy, and Joe, he was an abused child. His first
memory of his identity is being abandoned and stealing turnips to
survive; his experience and language resemble Pip's when Magwitch holds
him upside down: "I first become aware of myself..." (page 344).
Magwitch's mistreatment is institutionalized; he is not given food or
the opportunity for an education but is treated like a criminal and
locked up. Does society have any responsibility for raising him to be a
"varmint"? Does the story of his hardships and his making no excuses
for his crimes create sympathy for Magwitch?
Pip is initially horrified at
Magwitch's revelation, which spells the end of his dreams of being
awarded Estella, and by Magwitch's coarseness. Touched by Magwitch's
genuine joy and tears at seeing him, Pip sees his humanity and offers
him hospitality. Magwitch, who created Pip's life as a gentleman with
his money, rightly identifies himself as Pip's second father.
Magwitch's generous feelings for Pip are contaminated by his view of
Pip as an object which he has bought: "If I ain't a gentleman, nor yet
ain't got no learning, I'm the owner of such" (page 322). Holding
society's view of the all-importance of money, he even offers to buy
the woman Pip loves, threby reducing her to an object. However, hasn't
Pip been willing to sell himself to Miss Havisham in order to receive
Estella? And doesn't his willingness to accept Estella from Miss
Havisham reduce Estella to an object too? Why is Pip's participation in
these transactions with Miss Havisham acceptable and Magwitch's offer
to buy Pip's beloved unacceptable? Do they really differ morally?
Pip is horrified that he abandoned
Joe for Magwitch; does this response to Magwitch imply that abandoning
Joe for Miss Havisham was a lesser offense or even an acceptable
action? Why does Pip feel he cannot turn to Joe in this crisis? He
explains his rejection of Joe, as well as Biddy, in these terms:
I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone
back to Biddy now, for any condition–simply, I suppose, because my
sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every
consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort that
I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but I could
never, never, never undo what I had done (page 324).
Is he driven by a sense of unworthiness
or is he rationalizing a decision based on baser motives? Are false
pride and perhaps snobbery why he turns away from the unqualified love
Joe and Biddy have for him?
He also rejects Magwitch's money, a
decision which Herbert agrees with. Why? Magwitch earned his money with
hard work and determined effort; it has no criminal taint. Neither Pip
nor Herbert has any objections to his living on the unearned money of
vengeful, crazy Miss Havisham. Why is living off Miss Havisham
acceptable and living off Magwitch unacceptable? Is snobbery the
answer? If Miss Havisham's being a lady and Magwitch's being an
ex-convict make the difference, then both Herbert and Pip share the
same social values, i.e., like the rest of society, they are judging
Magwitch and Miss Havisham by social status.
Pip's response to Magwitch's generosity
brings up another issue; to what extent does Pip accept responsibility
for his choices and behavior? What does his acceptance or
non-acceptance indicate about Pip's growth?
When he learns that Magwitch is
risking hanging, he complains, "Nothing was needed but this; the
wretched man, after loading me with his wretched gold and silver chains
for years, had risked his life to come to me" (page 323). Didn't Pip
eagerly accept those chains when told of his great expectations and
unhesitatingly agree to ask no questions?
Pip, speaking as the adult narrator
looking back, seems reluctant to accept full responsibility for some of
his behavior. In reflecting on how his experiences at Satis House
affected him, he asks,
What could I become with these surroundings? How could my
character fail to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my
thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural
sunlight from the misty yellow rooms?
(page 94).
His reluctance takes the form of
dismissing the issue of responsibility as unimportant:
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own
fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, is now of no
moment to me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was
done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done (page
106).
When he accuses Miss Havisham of
unkindness in allowing him to believe that she was his benefactress,
isn't he shifting responsibility/blame onto her? She rejects the notion
and shifts responsibility/blame back on him, "You made your own snares.
I never made them" (page 361). Pip makes no response
to her rejoinder, either at the time of their conversation or as the
narrator looking back at events.
The definitive rejection of all
responsibility is the Eastern tale of the slab of marble, in which he
is a victim of an inevitable train of events or fate (see pages 312-3).
May 7, 2002
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