Great Expectations Social Class Quotes

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket’s falling into a discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and, forgetting all about the baby on her lap, who did most appalling things with the nut-crackers. At length little Jane, perceiving its young brains to be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane, – “You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 23. Dickens comically satirizes upper class parents who neglect responsibility for the care of their children. The dysfunctional dynamics of the Pockets and their bad parentings of seven children, including a baby, are highlighted here. Mrs. Pocket gets engrossed in a conversation about titles, forgetting that she has a baby on her lap playing with a dangerous nutcracker. And when young daughter Jane rescues the baby from possible injury, Mrs. Pocket accuses her of being disrespectful. The daughter turns out to be a better parent than her mother and gets reprimanded for it. Mrs. Pocket is not just a negligent and inattentive mother obsessed with her own importance, but she is also harmful to her children.

Heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension, – in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in the large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he himself lolled about in a room, – he was idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 25. This unflattering description is of Bentley Drummle, one of Pip’s fellow students studying with Matthew Pocket. Drummle comes from wealthy people, is not very intelligent and has little or no redeeming features about him.

Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my lips.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 26. At a dinner party in Mr. Jaggers’s house, Pip’s guardian manipulates the conversation to bring out the worst qualities in the guests. In Pip’s case these weaknesses are his lavish spending, treating his friend Herbert as an inferior, and boasting of how wealthy he will be.

Let me confess exactly with what feelings I looked forward to Joe’s coming. Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. Pip’s feelings when he is told of Joe’s planned visit to London to see him highlights the theme of class and social mobility. Pip acknowledges the ties he has to Joe, who raised him as a boy following the death of his parents. But social class has become more important to Pip than family since he began living his high society life in the capital. So mortified is he of working class Joe staining his carefully cultivated upper class image, he confesses he would pay his former best friend not to come.

I had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. Pip says that the bad actions we commit towards those we love are often to impress or avoid the disapproval of those we most hate. Highlighted here is how people can be hypocrites and compromise integrity for the sake of social appearances. Just like Pip on this occasion. For he is desperate to avoid being embarrassed by Joe, who is coming to London to visit him. But he is greatly relieved that the one person who won’t see and make fun of Joe is Bentley Drummle, a fellow-student Pip despises. There is a certain irony to Pip’s contradictory feelings.

“You and me is not two figures to be together in London…It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. Completely out of his element and uncomfortable in his fancy “holiday clothes,” Joe recognizes that he doesn’t fit into Pip’s London society during a visit there. With a strong sense of identity as a blacksmith, he knows that he is at his most competent and comfortable at home in his country forge.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 27. After their awkward reunion in London, Pip’s brother-in-law Joe says these farewell words to Pip. Pip was embarrassed at how common Joe was, while Joe was a fish out of water in Pip’s lavish apartment. As he takes his leave, Joe uses the metaphor of metalworking to explain how people are separated into different natural divisions, social classes and occupations. Some are blacksmiths, like Joe, and some are goldsmiths, like Pip who is becoming a gentleman. In Joe’s wise words about England’s class system, he recognizes the distance that has grown between Pip and himself. But it is something natural that must be accepted, he tells Pip.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretense of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 28. The novel takes Pip on a long journey of self-deception and eventual self-discovery. Narrator of the story is the older Pip who is able to look back on his younger self and critically analyze his behavior and decisions. In this instance the social climbing Pip decides to return to his home town when he learns that Estella is looking for him. He debates whether to stay at his old home, but life in London has given him notions about himself. After making up excuses to justify staying at the Blue Boar instead of Joe’s forge, he realizes that he is a “self-swindler.” Pip is learning that he has been living a lie. He uses the powerful metaphor of forged coins and swindlers to emphasize how self-deception is the worst deception of all. Foreshadowed here is Pip’s future disenchantment with his “great expectations.”

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all things winning admiration, had made such wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. Pip sees Estella for the first time after she has spent years abroad training to be a lady. Still obsessed with her, he observes that she has matured into an accomplished and beautiful woman. Shocked by her transformation, he almost doesn’t recognize her. Pip, who has himself advanced in that time with the goal of being good enough to win Estella, still feels unequal beside her. He sees himself as out of her class and slips back to being a “coarse and common boy again.”

“Is he changed?” Miss Havisham asked her. “Very much,” said Estella, looking at me. “Less coarse and common?” said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella’s hair.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. This is the scene where Pip and Estella first meet as adults. The exchange between Miss Havisham and Estella highlights Pip’s journey to escape his working class roots to become more refined. It also points to Miss Havisham’s role as the manipulating puppet master in the lives of Estella and Pip.

Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, “Love her, love her, love her!” sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, “I love her, I love her, I love her!” hundreds of times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be destined for me, once the blacksmith’s boy.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. This passage shows how Miss Havisham’s manipulation of Pip has worked. Suffering from love sickness, he has fallen hopelessly and obsessively in love with Estella. The theme of social class is illustrated, as he expresses gratitude that a girl from a high-class family should be destined for someone who was once a blacksmith’s boy.

But I never thought there was anything low and small in my keeping away from Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. It was but a day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God forgive me! soon dried.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. Pip didn’t realize how wrong he was in his neglect and abandonment of Joe. Explaining his failure to visit him, he hides behind the excuse that Estella would look down on his working class friend. This shows Pip’s lack of loyalty to Joe and the shame he feels at being seen with him.

How strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it; that it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 32. After Pip visits Newgate Prison with Wemmick while waiting to meet up with Estella, he reveals feelings of inferiority and shame. He speaks of how his life has been tainted by criminals and prisons. He uses the simile to compare his past life to a “stain.” He imagines the sophisticated and beautiful Estella coming towards him, and contrasts her refined beauty with his tainted life. Foreshadowed here is the complex relationship he will have with Estella and his unrequited love as he attempts to climb the social ladder to win her.

Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all there was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 34. As gentleman Pip and roommate Herbert experience debt and financial woes, Pip looks into the fire of his London lodgings with feelings of regret and nostalgia. Contemplating what could have been, he wishes he was back around the simple home fires of the village forge he grew up in. Pip’s new high society city lifestyle has not delivered the contentment he had hoped for. He is starting to learn the true meaning of the old saying, “there’s no place like home.”

Supposing Herbert’s debts to be one hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would say, “Leave a margin, and put them down at two hundred.” Or, supposing my own to be four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put them down at seven hundred. I had the highest opinion of the wisdom of this same Margin, but I am bound to acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have been an expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt immediately, to the full extent of the margin.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 34. Social climbing proves to be an expensive business for Pip. Wanting to live up to the image of a gentleman, Pip has been spending money extravagantly and leading Herbert to do the same. Pip incurs expenses way beyond his means and runs up considerable debts, as does Herbert.

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. There is heavy irony in the fact that the person responsible for transforming Pip into a gentleman is the lowly convict Magwitch. Here Magwitch tells how every guinea he earned from sheep farming and stock breeding in Australia he kept for Pip. Magwitch’s generosity and loyalty in wanting to repay the little boy who helped him when he was on the run from the law many years before are shown here.

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Pip doesn’t at all appreciate Magwitch for being his secret benefactor and turning him into a gentleman. Instead he is ashamed and revolted by the fact that a criminal is the source of his recently acquired wealth and great expectations. He had thought Miss Havisham was his unknown benefactress who wanted to shape him into a gentleman so that he could marry Estella. It is ironic that Magwitch should show such affection for Pip, while Pip expresses his loathing for Magwitch using dehumanizing bestial imagery in a simile. Pip classes himself above someone like Magwitch, whom he sees as sub-human.

“Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son, – more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time, – and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens, – ‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings o’yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Magwitch dramatically declares to Pip that he is his secret patron and source of his entire fortune. Although a hardened criminal, Magwitch shows that he has a noble side to his character, as we see in his powerful loyalty and generosity to Pip. He has never forgotten the kindness Pip showed to him as a little boy on the misty marches. It is clear too that he feels a fatherly affection for Pip. In this touching scene, he tenderly refers to him as his son. Clearly proud of turning the boy who helped him into a gentleman, there is much irony in the fact that this was done by a low-class criminal.

“It was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I say? I says to myself, ‘I’m making a better gentleman nor ever you’ll be!’ When one of ’em says to another, ‘He was a convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for all he’s lucky,’ what do I say? I says to myself, ‘If I ain’t a gentleman, nor yet ain’t got no learning, I’m the owner of such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentleman?'”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. One of the great examples of situational ironies in the novel is the true identity of Pip’s secret patron. When Pip first encounters Magwitch as a child he is a frightening and menacing criminal. But he later turns out to be the generous benefactor who devotes his riches from farming in Australia into making Pip a gentleman. Magwitch admits that he could never have aspired to be a gentleman, because he wasn’t educated. But he was able to create one in Pip, so he could say to those who looked down on him: “which of you owns a brought-up London gentleman?”

“I mustn’t see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of the streets; there mustn’t be no mud on his boots. My gentleman must have horses, Pip! Horses to ride, and horses to drive, and horses for his servant to ride and drive as well. Shall colonists have their horses (and blood ‘uns, if you please, good Lord!) and not my London gentleman? No, no.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. The theme of social class is shown by this speech by Magwitch to Pip. Magwitch is advising that a gentleman like Pip shouldn’t walk through the muddy streets of London, but ride a horse. Horses are a symbol of wealth and status. The advice is ironic since it comes from a convict like Magwitch, who is far from being a gentleman.

To my thinking, there was something in him that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner growing more familiar to me; but 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.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. All Pip can see when he looks at Magwitch is the convict. No amount of clothes that he has ordered for him to wear can disguise that. Pip believes it is not possible to make a gentleman out of him. That is emphasized by Pip’s use of a simile comparing Magwitch dragging one of his legs to someone wearing a leg-iron. The quote highlights the theme of deception and people trying to hide who they are. It also illustrates the theme of justice and the law.

“I’ve no more notion where I was born, than you have – if so much. I first become aware of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me – a man – a tinker – and he’d took the fire with him, and left me wery cold.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 42. Magwitch’s biography, as explained to Pip, is that he was born a poor orphan and had to resort to crime in order to survive. He stole turnips so that he could eat and stay alive.

“He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 42. Beware of first impressions, because appearances sometimes lie. Magwitch recounts to Pip how he met Compeyson at Epsom Races and was taken in by his outward appearance as an educated and smooth-talking gentleman. A skilled forger and schemer, Compeyson exploited Magwitch’s lack of education and social position and made him his partner in time. He eventually betrays him and turns him in.

“When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman Compeyson looked, wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his white pocket-handkercher, and what a common sort of a wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence was put short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him…But when the defence come on, then I see the plan plainer; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson, ‘My lord and gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up; one, the elder, ill brought up…Can you doubt, if there’s but one in it, which is the one, and, if there’s two in it, which is much the worst one?'”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 43. The inequality and unfairness of Victorian justice is put on trial in Magwitch’s account of his own court appearance for fraud and other money crimes. In the dock with him is his crime partner Compeyson, who in contrast to Magwitch’s wretched appearance puts on a show of a well-dressed gentleman. Compeyson’s lawyer contrasts his gentility and good upbringing with Magwitch’s lower class background. Guess which one receives the lesser sentence from a biased justice system? – Compeyson!

“And when the verdict come, warn’t it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn’t it me as got never a word but Guilty?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 43. Magwitch tells how his partner in crime Compeyson used his social status and also betrayed him to get a lesser sentence. Although their criminal partnership was a joint enterprise the court favored Compeyson because he was seen to have a higher social standing.
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