Pip as an Outsider

I will say this for Pip – he certainly tries hard to fit in. Ultimately though, I think he is unsuccessful. When he comes into money, he seems to think that the way to be a “gentleman” – the way to fit in with the London crowd – is to turn his back on everything that he once knew. Joe and Biddy get pushed to the side to make way for new, higher class acquaintances. However, none of these “higher class” people seem to think of him as a gentleman. To them, Pip is simply a common boy who somehow came into a bit of money. First impressions are hard to shake, and especially in the cases of Miss Havisham and Estella, I think that they believe “once a common boy, always a common boy”. It doesn’t matter how he dresses or how quickly he learns social niceties, because they will always see him as poor, orphaned Pip. Because he tries so hard to fit in with the high class crowd and turns his back on the people he grew up with, Pip seems to alienate himself even further, because now, he doesn’t even really fit in with Biddy and Joe, nor does he want to fit in with them (which is something Biddy implies when she tells Pip at Mrs. Joe’s funeral that she does not believe he will come back to visit Joe as he says he will). Some of the London people he is surrounded by seem to accept him, but they are the ones who seem to lack the power that the others have (Wemmick is not as good at his job as Jaggers is, and Herbert has to be helped by Pip to secure a job). The ones who seem to have power, or control over others (Miss Havisham, Estella, Jaggers), seem to regard him in the same condescending way that Pip has come to regard Joe and Biddy. Perhaps if Pip seemed to expect something different of his time in London, he might be considered to “fit in” – after all, he does make good friends in Wemmick and Herbert. However, Pip’s own definition of fitting in and being a “gentleman” seems to involve impressing people who remain mightily unimpressed by him, and so unless he changes his own definition of what it is to be a gentleman and live up to his great expectations, he will continue to be an outsider.