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.”