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Stereotypes In Charles Dickens Great Expectations

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Children are told from a young age to "never judge a book by its cover." Sound advice; an ugly cover says nothing of the written marvels that may be hiding within and it is impossible to know without reading. It is interesting though, that the concept is never used in reverse. People fear judging too harshly, but never that they might not be judging harsh enough. It is this falsely positive depiction of people that Charles Dickens aims to counter with his revolutionary novel, Great Expectations. The story follows the life of Phillip Pirrup, or Pip, as he grows from a young blacksmith apprentice into a gentleman living in London. As Pip's circumstances change, he encounters various perceptions of gentlemen and it is through this, that Dickens …show more content…

After a single day in the presence of the rich Miss Havisham and the proud Estella, Pip realizes that he "was a common-labouring boy; that [his] hands were coarse; … that [he] had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves jacks; that [he] was much more ignorant than [he] had considered [himself] last night; and generally that [he] was in a low-lived bad way" (67). Pip sees the way the upper class scorn the lower and absorbs the same mindset, he has created a spectrum and placed himself on one end and the gentry on the other. It is not so much that Pip admires gentlemen and the rich for their goodness but that he sees how far he is from being like them and is ashamed of the distance. He wishes that his uncle and father figure, Joe, "had been more genteelly brought up, then [he] should have been so, too" (64). The root of the problem is Estella, she is beautiful and Pip claims to love her, but she is clearly repulsed by his commonness and he therefore understands that he is unworthy of her. Pip believes that if he had been raised as a gentleman then he would be more deserving of Estella. And while

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