# Chapter XXIII explained — Great Expectations

> Chapter companion for Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

## What happens

Pip is introduced to the Pocket household, observing the chaotic domestic life dominated by servants and Mrs. Pocket's aristocratic pretensions. He meets Mr. Pocket, Drummle, and Startop, and learns of Mr. Pocket's background as a tutor. The chapter satirizes Mrs. Pocket's helplessness and the family's dysfunctional dynamics.

## Themes in this chapter

### Social Class and Ambition

Mrs. Pocket's obsession with titles and aristocratic lineage, contrasted with the family's actual dependence on tutoring and servants, satirizes class pretensions.

### Deception and Appearance vs. Reality

The Pocket household appears genteel but is chaotic and mismanaged; Mrs. Pocket's aristocratic airs mask her incompetence.

## Character check-ins

### Pip

Narrator and observer, newly installed in the Pocket household, reflecting on the family's peculiarities.

### Herbert Pocket

Son of Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, provides Pip with background information on his father's history.

### Mr. Matthew Pocket

Educated at Harrow and Cambridge, now a tutor; shows a comic habit of trying to lift himself by his hair when distressed.

### Mrs. Pocket

Helpless and obsessed with titles, raised to marry a nobleman; neglects her children and household duties.

### Drummle

A sulky young man, next heir but one to a baronetcy, engaged in conversation with Mrs. Pocket about titles.

### Startop

A younger, studious boarder in the Pocket household, reading and holding his head as if overcharged with knowledge.

## Key lines

> By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had distinguished himself; but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the calling of a grinder.

Pip gradually learned from Herbert that Mr. Pocket had a strong education but married young, which hurt his career and led him to become a tutor.

_Explains Mr. Pocket's background and the sacrifice of his ambitions._

> So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless.

Mrs. Pocket's father raised her to be decorative but completely incapable of practical tasks.

_Critique of Mrs. Pocket's upbringing and its consequences._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/great_expectations_se/chapters/xxiii
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/great_expectations_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/great_expectations_se/chapters