Social Class

Quote

Character

Chapter

“A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled.”

Pip

1

“In his working clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he

was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and everything that he wore then grazed him.”

Pip

4

“I had heard of Miss Havisham up town – everybody for miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town – as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion.”

Pip

7

“I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too.”

Pip

8

“I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.”

Pip

8

“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.”

Pip

8

“I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard, to look at my coarse hands and my common boots.”

Pip

8

“I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting in a kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common doings.”

Pip

9

“Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so well, that I can’t in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella’s reproach.”

Pip

15

“‘Biddy,’ said I, after binding her to secrecy, ‘I want to be a gentleman.’”

Pip

17

“And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was born, had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect and happiness.”

Pip

17

“It is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance and necessity of at once entering on that advantage.”

Mr Jaggers

18

“Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you can’t possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You see it every day.”

Herbert Pocket

22