PIP
In Stage One of
Great Expectations, Pip attends evening school in the village where
Biddy teaches him to write his letters. Upon returning home, Pip writes upon his slate,
handing it to Joe, who compliments Pip as "a scholar." Joe confesses to Pip that he has
never learned to read as he was forced to work to support his father and him. He tells
Pip the history of his having met Mrs. Joe, speaking kindly of her, and his having said
to include "the poor little child" in their family, Pip feels "a new admiration" for
Joe:
I had a
new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my
heart.
This admiration for
Joe wans after Pip has gone to Satis House to play with Estella, who ridicules him for
being "coarse and common":
readability="11">
They [his hands and his boots] had never
troubled me before, but they troubled me now. I determined to ask Joe why he had taught
me to call those picture card jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had
been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so,
too.
After he returns home
and goes to his little room, Pip reflects,
readability="13">
That was a memorable day to me, for made great
changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out
of it, and think how different its course would have been....think for a moment of the
long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but
for the formation of the first link on one memorable
day.
Then, on the day that he
is apprenticed to Joe, Pip remarks,
readability="10">
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of
hom....I had beleived in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had
believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single
year all this was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had
Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any
account.
While he is in
London, Joe visits, but Pip is ashamed of him and embarrassed before Herbert. So, Joe
departs; Pip recovers from his haughty behavior and hurries to ask forgiveness, but Joe
is gone, and Pip realizes,
readability="5">
I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there
was a simple dignity in
him.
Finally, Pip changes in
his attitude toward Magwitch from having been repulsed by him, to loving him. As
Magwitch/Provis lies dying, Pip thinks,
readability="6">
It was a good thing that he had touched this
point....he need never know how his hopes of enriching me had
perished.
And, he returns to
his loving attitude toward Joe, who nurses him after he is burned. Pip returns to the
forge and begs forgiveness:
readability="9">
"Oh, Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me,
Joe...Tell me of my ingratitude. Don't be so good to
me!"
Pip also realizes that
he owes much to Herbert's "cheerful industry and
reddiness:
readability="9">
...I often wondered how I had conceived that old
idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection that perhaps
the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in
me.
MISS
HAVISHAM
Miss Havisham, who seeks revenge
upon the male gender for her personal rejection, finally begs Pip to forgive her for the
cruel treatment dealt him by her protege Estella. She tells
Pip,
"If you
can ever write....'I forgie her,'....I want forgiveness....What have I
done!....
Pip observes,
"There was an earnest womanly compassion for me in her new
affection."
ESTELLA
In
their final meeting, Estella asks Pip,
readability="13">
"...If you could say that [God bless you] to me
then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now--now, when suffering has been stronger
than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I
have been bent and broken, but-I hope-into a better shape. Be as considerate and good
to me as you were, and tell me we are
friends."
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