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Societal Gentlemen in Great Expectations

            Pip, by virtue of his inheritance, views himself more in the Sewellian mold-a gentleman via class status and wealth. His idea of being a gentleman has nothing to do with morality or integrity. In his desire to raise himself up in order to impress Estella, he becomes blinded by ambiƟon. He is a poor boy who scores easy riches and thinks more of his outer shell than his heart or head. Consequently, Pip dresses the part of the dandy and wastes his Ɵme and money with the like-minded and foolish Finches of the Grove. He disowns his humble origins and all but abandons those who love him most. Pip's journey reflects Dickens' own youth as a struggling clerk and reporter who hid his family's shameful history of bankruptcy under his dandy disguise and social ambiƟons. In Great ExpectaƟons, Dickens has Pip eventually reject the Victorian concept of a gentleman and embrace the example of Joe. Joe doesn't need the Ɵtle and Dickens never uses it in reference to him. He is a true gentle man by nature-kind, loyal and hardworking. He transcends the class system. In his own life, Dickens came to view the Ɵtle of gentleman as useless, destrucƟve and unnecessary. Neither Sewell nor Smile were right. Pip comes to much the same conclusion. He observes the brutality, snobbishness and stupidity of Bentley Drummle-who claims the Ɵtle of gentleman-and compares it to the honesty and dignity of Joe and Magwitch-who don't. He learns that there is dignity in honest toil. And that love trumps class.
             The plot of Great Expectations centres on how a boy of working-class origin becomes a "gentleman." The inclusion of the working-class protagonist in the category of gentleman, which represented "a cultural goal, a mirror of desirable moral and social values" (Gilmore 1) in Victorian England, indicates an ideological shift in the construction of an English identity in Dickens's novels. Early critics such as G.


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