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.