Pip's Snobby Attitude

Pip’s Snobby Attitude

~ Blog Post #2 ~

Topic B

April 24, 2015

By Anna Hoffman

In chapters twelve through twenty-four, we see a side of Pip that is different from the first few chapters. Pip continues to go to Miss Havisham’s home and begins to suspect that she is trying to help him become of a higher class. Eventually Pip finds out that that is not her intention and he becomes Joe’s apprentice. Because of this Pip is very upset and he doesn’t like the life his is living. He is constantly complaining to Biddy about how he wants more and it is easy to understand that Biddy is tired of hearing it.

Unexpectedly, Pip learns that he is to receive a large fortune from an unknown benefactor. Pip adopts a snobby attitude and thinks he is too good for the people he loves and his home. He even is cold to Biddy. When she asks him what was going on, Pip answered with, “I had come into great expectations from a mysterious patron” (Dickens138). Now because of these “great expectations” Pip is losing his good natured side and becoming an entirely new person. I believe that it is important to explore this because it is the first major change in Pip. I think Pip is acting snobby and selfish because he does not think he is good enough. Pip questions this himself, he knows that he is not disappointed in his fortune, rather he is, “dissatisfied with myself” (139). In order to make himself feel as though he belongs in the upper class, Pip tries to change his attitude to something more like Estella’s. Estella, other than Miss Havisham, is a woman of high class, and the only example Pip has seen, so it is not surprising to see Pip act like her.

This change in Pip’s attitude is a major event. Proceeding into the next chapters, it can be assumed that Pip’s new attitude will get him into trouble, and the Pip will eventually want to go back to his home in the marsh.