Pip's Great Expectations
The Anonymous Benefactor
In Chapter 18, the lawyer Jaggers arrives at the forge to announce that Pip has “great expectations”: an anonymous benefactor has provided a large fortune for Pip to move to London and be educated as a gentleman. Pip immediately assumes the benefactor is Miss Havisham and that she is grooming him to marry Estella. This assumption is wrong — the true benefactor is Magwitch, the convict — and Dickens uses Pip’s misunderstanding to drive the plot and explore the theme of false expectations.
Pip’s reaction to the news reveals how deeply Estella’s class mockery has infected him. He is not grateful for the opportunity — he is relieved to escape the forge. Even before the news, a visit to Satis House had left him “dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with everything.” Dickens shows the corruption beginning immediately: before Pip even leaves for London, he is already ashamed of the people who love him most.
Pip assumes Miss Havisham is his benefactor because the idea of a convict funding a gentleman is unthinkable in Victorian society. This false assumption drives Pip’s snobbery and his expectation of marrying Estella. When the truth is revealed in Chapter 39, it shatters Pip’s self-image — his “gentleman” status was built on a convict’s money, not gentry patronage. Dickens uses this irony to expose the hollowness of class distinctions.
London: The Hollow Life of a Gentleman
Pip’s London life is a masterclass in Dickens’s satire. Pip spends money he has not earned on clothes, furniture, and entertainment. He joins the “Finches of the Grove,” a gentlemen’s dining club whose sole purpose is conspicuous consumption. He accumulates debts, contributes nothing useful to society, and becomes increasingly detached from the values that once defined him. His friend Herbert Pocket is in the same position — an aspiring gentleman with no income and mounting debts.
Dickens uses Pip’s London life to critique the entire concept of the idle gentleman. In Victorian society, “gentlemanly” pursuits were by definition unproductive — a true gentleman did not work. Dickens finds this absurd and morally bankrupt. Pip produces nothing, helps no one, and becomes more selfish with each passing year. The contrast with Joe — who works hard, cares for others, and asks for nothing — grows sharper as the novel progresses.
Wemmick is one of Dickens’s most memorable minor characters. At Jaggers’s office, he is cold and businesslike, his mouth like a “post-office” slot. At home in Walworth, he is warm, playful, and devoted to his elderly father (the “Aged Parent”). He has built a miniature castle complete with a moat and a cannon. Wemmick’s double life is Dickens’s comment on Victorian society: the professional world demands that people suppress their humanity, so Wemmick creates a private world where genuine feeling can survive. His advice to Pip — “get hold of portable property” — is cynical at work but generous at home.
Pip’s Treatment of Joe
Pip’s growing snobbery is most painfully shown in his treatment of Joe. When Joe visits London (Chapter 27), Pip dreads his arrival: “If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money.” This sentence is devastating. Pip would rather pay to avoid the man who raised him than be seen with someone “common.” When Joe arrives, he is awkward and uncomfortable in Pip’s fine rooms. He calls Pip “Sir” instead of his name, recognising that the class gap between them has become unbridgeable.
Joe’s dignity during this scene is heartbreaking. Before leaving, he tells Pip: “You and me is not two figures to be together in London.” The grammatically incorrect “is” reflects Joe’s lack of education, but the emotional intelligence of the statement is profound. Joe understands exactly what has happened — Pip is ashamed of him — and he withdraws with grace rather than confrontation. Dickens uses this scene to make the reader feel Pip’s shame for him: we see Joe’s goodness and Pip’s failure simultaneously.
“If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money.” This is the most damning single sentence about Pip’s corruption. He reduces his relationship with Joe to a financial transaction — the very logic of the class system he has internalised. Joe, who would never think of relationships in monetary terms, represents everything Pip has lost. Dickens uses this contrast to show that becoming a “gentleman” has made Pip a worse person.
Estella and Pip’s Obsession
In London, Pip continues to pursue Estella despite her repeated warnings. She tells him plainly: “I have no heart.” She explains that Miss Havisham has raised her without the capacity for love. But Pip, blinded by his idealisation of Estella as the embodiment of the upper-class life he craves, refuses to listen. Dickens presents Pip’s obsession as another form of false expectation — he projects onto Estella a fantasy of fulfilment that she has explicitly told him she cannot provide.
Estella’s marriage to the brutal Bentley Drummle is a further shock to Pip. Drummle is wealthy but violent and stupid — everything Pip is not. Estella chooses him not out of love but because, as she tells Pip, she is incapable of feeling and Drummle’s stupidity means he will make fewer demands. Dickens uses this marriage to deliver a bitter lesson: the class system rewards the wrong people and punishes genuine feeling.
Herbert Pocket is Pip’s one genuine friendship in London. Herbert (whom Pip nicknames “the pale young gentleman” after their childhood fight at Satis House) is honest, cheerful, and unaffected by class pretension. He teaches Pip table manners gently, without condescension. Unlike the Finches of the Grove, Herbert represents genuine companionship. Significantly, Pip’s one truly selfless act in London is secretly funding Herbert’s business career through Wemmick — the only time he uses his money for someone else’s benefit.