Great Expectations: Ambition, Shame and Loyalty
Trace how learned shame distorts Pip's ambition and how loyalty gives it a different direction. Test whether becoming a gentleman means gaining status or changing how he treats people.
When ambition learns shame
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 8
[1] “He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!” said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. “And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!”
[2] I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 14
[1] It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
[2] Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.
[3] How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
[4] Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s ’prentice, I should be distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
Study all 59 chapters of Great Expectations: Chapters 1–19 form Stage One, 20–39 Stage Two and 40–59 Stage Three. Whole-text responses draw on this complete development.
Here, gentility has competing meanings. It can refer to the wealth, education, manners and social polish associated with being a gentleman. It can also suggest the moral quality of being gentle: loyal, generous and considerate. Dickens makes Pip confuse these meanings before he learns to separate them.
Pip's ambition does not begin with Jaggers's announcement or with London. At Satis House in Chapter 8, Estella judges his "coarse hands" and "thick boots". These are ordinary signs of labour and limited money, but Pip repeats her vocabulary on the walk home. Her social judgement becomes his self-judgement.
By Chapter 14, Pip is "ashamed of home". Before meeting Estella, he could imagine the forge as a path to "manhood and independence"; afterwards, he sees it through the contempt he has learned. His ambition is therefore distorted at its source. He does not merely want education or opportunity: he begins to believe that becoming worthy requires him to reject the work, speech and people connected with his present self.
A precise reading follows the change in ownership of the description:
- Estella applies class labels to Pip.
- Pip adopts those labels as a truth about himself.
- Shame makes a different social identity seem like a cure.
This is self-invention, the attempt to construct a new identity. It is not automatically wrong. The problem is that Pip's imagined new self depends on treating his existing self as contemptible.
Chapter 14 is stronger evidence than Pip's first sight of dirty London for the claim that shame drives his ambition. London later intensifies the performance, but Chapter 14 proves the distortion is already present. Looking back in Chapter 29, the adult Pip calls these desires "hankerings after money and gentility" and "ill-regulated aspirations". The criticism falls on the direction and control of the ambition, not simply on wanting life to change.
The gentleman as a costly fiction
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 34
[1] We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
In Chapter 18, Jaggers announces that Pip has expectations and must retain his name, but he does not identify the patron or promise a marriage to Estella. Pip supplies the missing story himself:
| What Pip is told | What Pip adds |
|---|---|
| An unnamed benefactor will finance his new prospects. | Miss Havisham must be the benefactor. |
| He will be educated as a gentleman. | Estella must be the intended reward. |
| He must keep the name Pip. | His future must confirm the identity he desires. |
His expectations are distorted because desire controls how he reads incomplete evidence. The imagined plot gives his ambition the feeling of destiny, even though its central promises were never made.
London then turns self-invention into repeated social performance. In Chapter 34, Pip and Herbert examine their debts after they have "spent as much money as we could". The adult narrator describes their supposed enjoyment as a "gay fiction" and their misery as a "skeleton truth".
The smallest useful evidence is the contrast between fiction and truth. "Fiction" suggests an attractive story that the young men perform for themselves and others. "Skeleton" strips that story down to its bare, deathly structure: debt, waste and dissatisfaction. Dickens's antithesis does more than say that Pip spends too much. It exposes a self invented through appearances but unsupported by financial control, happiness or moral purpose.
This creates a complete evidence-to-interpretation chain:
- Pip believes social display will confirm that he has become a gentleman.
- The narrator presents that display as a fiction.
- The hidden truth is not fulfilment but debt and shared misery.
- Pip's expectations have changed his clothes and spending before they have improved his judgement.
An alternative remains possible: education, friendship with Herbert and later professional work show that self-improvement itself is not empty. The Chapter 34 contrast targets imitation and unregulated display, not every form of advancement.
Crime inside gentility
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 39
[1] I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating,—I stood so, looking wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me, bringing the face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near to mine.
[2] “Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!”
[3] The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.
[4] “Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son,—more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time,—and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens,—‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!”
[5] In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It was the one grain of relief I had.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 42
[1] “Well!” he said, “I was, and got convicted. As to took up on suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year that it lasted; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson was both committed for felony,—on a charge of putting stolen notes in circulation,—and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says to me, ‘Separate defences, no communication,’ and that was all. And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except what hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers.
[2] “When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman Compeyson looked, wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his white pocket-handkercher, and what a common sort of a wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence was put short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him. When the evidence was giv in the box, I noticed how it was always me that had come for’ard, and could be swore to, how it was always me that the money had been paid to, how it was always me that had seemed to work the thing and get the profit. But when the defence come on, then I see the plan plainer; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson, ‘My lord and gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, and only suspected; t’other, the elder, always seen in ’em and always wi’ his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and, if there is two in it, which is much the worst one?’ And such-like. And when it come to character, warn’t it Compeyson as had been to the school, and warn’t it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn’t it him as had been know’d by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his disadvantage? And warn’t it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know’d up hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups! And when it come to speech-making, warn’t it Compeyson as could speak to ’em wi’ his face dropping every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher,—ah! and wi’ verses in his speech, too,—and warn’t it me as could only say, ‘Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal’? And when the verdict come, warn’t it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn’t it me as got never a word but Guilty? And when I says to Compeyson, ‘Once out of this court, I’ll smash that face of yourn!’ ain’t it Compeyson as prays the Judge to be protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us? And when we’re sentenced, ain’t it him as gets seven year, and me fourteen, and ain’t it him as the Judge is sorry for, because he might a done so well, and ain’t it me as the Judge perceives to be a old offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?”
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
The Chapter 39 revelation does not merely replace one benefactor with another. It destroys Pip's belief that his gentlemanly identity has a respectable origin. Magwitch, a transported convict, announces that he has "made a gentleman" of Pip. His hard work and Australian earnings have paid for Pip's smooth life.
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