Great Expectations Social Class Quotes

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 14. Pip goes through a dark period of depression while working with Joe as his apprentice. He is unhappy with blacksmithing and wants something more out of life. The simile of a thick curtain dropping down over his life describes how hopeless he feels. Pip’s dissatisfaction with the social class he feels trapped in, as well as his ambition to do better, are reflected here.

What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew? What I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 14. After starting work as Joe’s apprentice at the forge, Pip is haunted by images of Estella. He fears that she will catch sight of him at the forge and view him as common and dirty. Having been exposed to upper class life in Satis House and Estella’s mockery of his common ways, Pip is self-conscious and ashamed of his lower class status.

Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss Havisham’s would seem to show me Estella’s face in the fire, with her pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me – often at such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her just drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at last.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 14. Pip has an unsettled mind and is tormented by images of Estella, while working as an apprentice at the forge. His time at Satis House with Estella and Miss Havisham has fundamentally changed and damaged him. Now ashamed of his lower class ways, he senses Estella’s disapproving gaze as he carries out dirty, manual labor at the forge. While working there with Joe at night, he imagines that he can see Estella’s beautiful but scornful face in the fire. At this stage Pip is hopelessly in love with Estella.

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe…I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella’s reproach.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 15. As Pip continues to educate himself, we seem the beginnings of his transformation from a kind, caring, unpretentious country boy into a pompous and superior snob. Influenced by his visits to Satis House and the manipulative Miss Havisham, he is desperate to win the approval of Estella. He is ashamed of Joe’s lack of education and decides to educate him so that he won’t be an embarrassment in front of Estella. Pip begins giving Joe reading lessons on Sundays.

I had been looking round, – in fact, for Estella, – and I stammered that I hoped she was well. “Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you have lost her?” There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a loss what to say.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 15. When Pip visits Satis House after an extended absence and asks about Estella, Miss Havisham takes a twisted satisfaction in the answer she gives. She tells a confused Pip that Estella has gone abroad to be educated to be a lady. She says that she is far out of reach, has many admirers and asks Pip if he feels he has lost her. Miss Havisham plays the class card to add to Pip’s hurt. Having brought up Estella as a tool for revenge against men because her own heart was broken, Miss Havisham appears pleased her plan has worked.

“What would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had told me so!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 17. In his conversation with Biddy, Pip reveals the reason for his burning ambition to become a gentleman. It’s Estella and her criticisms of him for being coarse and common. Until he became besotted with the rude and insulting girl, he was happy to be a blacksmith’s apprentice. Now he wants to please her by becoming a gentleman and turning his back on his social class.

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?” Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause…”Because, if it is to spite her,” Biddy pursued, “I should think – but you know best – that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think – but you know best – she was not worth gaining over.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 17. Biddy sometimes appears to know Pip better than he knows himself. Here she questions his motives for wanting to be a gentleman. She wonders if it is to spite the girl who made fun of him for being common. But if it is to win Estella over, then she is not worth winning over, the very grounded Biddy advises.

And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect and happiness.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. In the novel Joe and Biddy represent the decent and honest working class, one in which Pip grew up in. As a boy he knows that he should be proud and not ashamed of his social class roots. However, his encounter with the proud and beautiful Estella has plunged him into conflict about where he wants to fit in socially in the world. The scale of his confusion is emphasized by the use of the hyperbolic description “fifty thousand-fold.”

At those times, I would decide conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company with Biddy, – when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again… perhaps after all Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. At times Pip appears to embrace the working class life with its promise of a partnership at Joe’s forge and close relationship with Biddy. But his head is quickly turned by the lure of the wealthy life he remembers from his visits to the upper class Havisham mansion. This memory, he says in a simile, hits him “like a destructive missile.” He goes on to fantasize that Miss Havisham will make his fortune for him, which there is no evidence of. This is an example of self-deception on the part of Pip and his overactive imagination.

“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman, – in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. In the modest candlelit parlor of the forge, Mr. Jaggers brings life changing news to Pip, which is one of the main plot points of the novel. Pip is to be the beneficiary of a fortune from a secret donor so that he can move to London and realize his dream of being a gentleman. His new life is about to begin.

“It is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance and necessity of at once entering on that advantage.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. The importance of education to achieving upward mobility is spelled out to Pip by his new guardian Mr. Jaggers. In order to successfully be part of the upper class, you must have a certain level of education, according to Jaggers. The London lawyer represents the anonymous donor funding Pip’s fortune and studies to be a gentleman.

“First,” said Mr. Jaggers, “you should have some new clothes to come in, and they should not be working-clothes. Say this day week. You’ll want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. Pip’s upwardly mobile journey to being a gentleman begins following the news that he is to benefit from a large amount of money from an anonymous benefactor. Lawyer Jaggers presents him with twenty guineas to divest himself of his working class clothes and change to more suitable apparel.

As Joe and Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. When Pip learns that a secret benefactor has provided him with a fortune, he is at first delighted. But as the initial excitement about the announcement calms down, he becomes strangely gloomy. Faced with the prospect of leaving his modest home in the country and moving up to a new social class in London, he confesses to being dissatisfied with himself. This reflects Pip’s internal struggle with questions about identity, self-worth, social class and where he fits in society. For Pip is driven by ambition to escape his working-class roots to become a gentleman. There is a subtle foreshadowing here of the psychological hardship that Pip’s obsession with climbing the social ladder will bring him.

As I passed the church, I felt…a sublime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension upon everybody in the village.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. The metaphor of “a gallon of condescension” sums up perfectly Pip’s new feelings of superiority after learning that he has come into a large fortune. The superficiality of the upper classes is mocked by Dickens, when Pip describes his fellow villagers as “poor creatures” and says how he will be “bestowing a dinner” on them. It doesn’t take long for money to turn Pip into a snob and have him use the language of the condescending. That said, it does show Pip still retains a generous side to his nature by wanting to share his largesse with those he grew up with. A tone of irony is created by having Pip express these pompous and patronizing thoughts while passing the church.

“O! there are many kinds of pride,” said Biddy, looking full at me and shaking her head; “Pride is not all of one kind…He may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. Biddy argues with Pip about the value of Joe’s role as a blacksmith and gives him a lesson in the meaning of pride. This is after Pip complains about Joe being backward in learning and manners, condescendingly offering to remove him into “a higher sphere” when he fully acquires his fortune. Biddy is defending Joe’s integrity and his steadfast pride in who he is and the career he has followed. By implication she is criticizing Pip for a different kind of pride in which he judges a person’s value by their wealth and social status.

“You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can’t help showing it.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. Following his newfound wealth that has set him on the road to becoming a gentleman, Pip displays his snobbery and sense of self-entitlement. In this outburst to Biddy, he is rude and harsh to the friend who cares for him, misinterpreting her words of advice on the many different kinds of pride there are. Foreshadowed here are the negative consequences of Pip’s blind pursuit of wealth and social status.

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to have had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. Pip leaves his small home town in Kent and humble beginnings to start a new life in London as a gentleman of wealth. Having asked Joe not to walk with him to the coach, Pip departs the house in the early hours and Joe and Biddy throw old shoes after him. He is relieved that the traditional send-off of hurling an old shoe after the coach has not been witnessed by villagers. Reflected here is Pip’s newly acquired snobbery and his ungrateful and cold nature towards the people he grew up with, Joe and Biddy. Also indicated is his embarrassment over their “common” ways and his own humble origins. His bursting into tears is a sign of the conflicting emotions and guilt he feels at abandoning those who love him.

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 20. London in Dickens’s time was a sprawling and bustling metropolis, a center for culture and superiority, capital of the powerful and wealthy British Empire. But the writer’s depiction of the great city doesn’t fit that image. When Pip arrives there so he can move up the social ladder to become a gentleman, the place doesn’t live up to expectations. A disappointed Pip finds that London is not a beautiful superior city, but a dirty, unpleasant and stifling place.

“Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew.” “Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I. “Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a gentleman.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Dickens highlights the absurdities of Victorian England’s social class system in this conversation with Herbert and Pip. It was acceptable for a gentleman to work, so long as it was not manual work like being a baker or selling beer in his own pub. Miss Havisham’s father was considered upper class because he owned a brewery where he had people at his command to make the beer and reap the profits for him. Dickens is satirizing ridiculous social conventions whereby brewing was respectable and genteel, but baking was not.

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket’s children were not growing up or being brought up, but were tumbling up.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Pip, on meeting Herbert’s family, comments on how wealthy middle class parents have little input into bringing up their children. Mrs. Pocket spends her time in a garden chair under a tree reading, while the children run around and play watched over by two nursemaids. The youngsters keep tripping over Mrs. Pocket’s footstool under her skirts and tumbling over her. Dickens is satirizing the bad parenting of well off couples like the Pockets.

Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody’s determined opposition arising out of entirely personal motives…He had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Dickens can be merciless when it comes to satirizing Victorian England’s class system and its pretentious and incompetent snobs. One humorous example of this is Mrs. Pocket, a ridiculous and silly woman who is obsessed with titles and social status. The daughter of a knight who has been brought up to “marry a title,” she doesn’t quite manage this, her husband being a Cambridge-educated scholar and tutor. The “useless” Mrs. Pocket has never been taught any practical domestic skills because her aristocratic father put no value on these. So when it comes to properly running her own household and manage her seven children, she is “perfectly helpless.”

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody else’s hands, that I wondered who really was in possession of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the servants.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Here Pip describes the household of Matthew and Mrs. Pocket, where ironically the servants are in charge and not the Pockets. Dickens uses the Pockets to satirize the pretensions and incompetence of the aristocracy. The title-obsessed Mrs. Pocket, whose father was a knight, neglects her children and leaves them to be cared for by the servants.

The servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company down stairs.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Pip describes the comedic power reversal in the dysfunctional Pocket household, where the hired help have the real authority. This is seen in the lavish lifestyle of the servants who live it up at the expense of the neglectful family. Mrs. Pocket has been brought up to believe she is practically a member of the nobility and so has no practical training in anything. So she allows house and children to be managed by the servants, who enjoy the best food and drink for themselves and have a lively social life. Dickens is being wickedly ironic and satirical as he pokes fun at the absurdities of the class system.

Before I had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen Millers slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn’t mind their own business.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Mrs. Pocket is not just a neglectful and incompetent mother, but she is harmful to her children. When her baby is physically abused by one of her servants, she is more concerned about what the neighbors say and her social image than the baby’s welfare. The pretentious Mrs. Pocket is one of Dickens’s great satirical characters, highlighting the dysfunctional nature of upper class Victorian parents.

I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Pip is at the home of the Pockets, where the woman of the house Mrs. Pocket is obsessed with social status and was reading a took about titles earlier. During dinner Pip is nervous that his working class manners might show through his clumsy use of the cutlery and glasses. So he makes a special effort when using these “instruments of self-destruction,” as he describes them in a clever metaphor.

They were brought in by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two non-commissioned officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had enlisted these, while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that ought to have been as if she rather thought she had had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn’t quite know what to make of them.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Using irony and satire, Dickens draws a humorous picture of the dysfunctional Pocket home where the servants are in control, and Mrs. Pocket is not mistress of her house. Deluded and detached, her world is a make-believe one, in which her children should have been members of the nobility. The military simile of the nursemaids as “non-commissioned officers” enlisting the youngsters adds to the image of family disconnect and servants running the show.
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