Great Expectations · Concept
False gentility
Pip’s “great expectations” teach him to be ashamed of Joe — and then to discover that gentility without gratitude is just another form of snobbery.
Great Expectations is a novel about class education that keeps correcting what looks like success. Pip leaves the forge believing London manners will make him worthy of Estella. What he mostly learns is how to look down on the people who loved him. The comedy of Pumblechook and the Pocket household is not decoration; it shows how easily “gentleman” becomes a costume.
The moral turn is not that money is evil in the abstract. It is that Pip’s benefactor turns out to be Magwitch, the convict from the marsh, and that Pip’s shame of Joe was always a betrayal of the only loyalty that did not treat him as an investment. Satis House trains him in contempt; Jaggers’s London trains him in transactions. Herbert’s friendship and Joe’s care survive those lessons. Use this concept when readers ask why Pip feels so wretched after he becomes rich — the chapters of expectation and the Magwitch revelation belong together.