What it Means to be a Gentleman in Dickens' Great Expectations

What it Means to be a Gentleman in Dickens' Great Expectations

Throughout the novel of Great Expectations, Dickens is interested in

what it means to be a gentleman. He tries to show us by telling us a

story about a young boy Pip in which he grows up trying to become a

gentleman, through Joe who is Pip’s brother in law who is a poor but a

decent, hardworking man and also Magwitch the convict, who changes

through the story but Pip especially changes.

Great Expectations was narrated by Pip which he talks about his

childhood and he growing up. This is called Bildungstoman.

There was only really one reason why Pip wanted to become a gentleman,

and that was to impress Estella, the girl he loved ever since he first

gazed into her beautiful eyes. I thought that this was a bad choice to

do because he tried to become something which he really that he wasn’t

was by changing class systems. “Biddy” […], “I want to be a

gentleman”. Even Biddy thought that this was not a good idea and tried

to warn him not to. “Oh, I wouldn’t if I was you”, [...] “I don’t

think it would answer”. He thinks that by being a gentleman, he can

win over Estella’s heart, but he thinks that by becoming a gentleman,

he and Estella would be equal. I think this because back in the

Victorian Times, class was very important of a person’s status and

place in society and still is nowadays but some people now don’t like

to think about it and think of each other as equals.

Dickens tells us this by when Pip says that he wants to become a

gentleman. It’s not really him wanting to become a gentleman; I think

Dickens replaces “need” with “want”. I say this because Pip needs to

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...d a novel of what

happened in those days. This was when the economy gave rise to a

wealthy middle class which again may have been a reason why class

systems occurred. Crimes and disease also occurred. Only men with

power and property could vote excluding out poor men, poor women and

even powerful women.

I think that Dickens’s view and the rest of society’s view were not

the same. I think that Dickens’s view was to show that what social

class systems can affect society but I reckon for the rest of society,

it didn’t make a difference

I think that Great Expectations was a novel of a kind which I have

never read before. It has everything a novel should need and I do

think at the end, Dickens still is not sure by what a gentleman is as

he does not really give us what it means but maybe it was a question

for us.