Well, I'm posting the first blog post... which is exciting and mildly intimidating. But now I'll actually do what I'm supposed to do. We've been discussing Pip's narcissism, and that's something that really struck me about the book. At first, I liked Pip because he was the main character and because he was plucky. Now, though, as he's entering his teenage jackass years, it's far more apparent... I was really upset with his treatment of Biddy, because he was so quick to judge her and to insult her in a really passive-aggressive way (telling her that, oh, things would be so much better for him if he could just fall in love with her and then going on about how gorgeous Estella is) even while he moped about how Estella herself made him feel awful about himself by reminding him of his commonness... which is basically what he's doing to Biddy. Pip thinks a great deal about everything around him, but only in direct relation to him. When he was a little kid, it struck me as less... I don't know, less of a problem, because when you're a kid you don't need to be so conscious of other people. It's not expected. But as he gets older, and maintains the same personality, it's more jarring. Pip doesn't really get more mature. I mean, eventually he must, because he's telling the story from far in the future and he's obviously using sarcasm and is even self-deprecating half the time, but in the story so far we can't actually see any signs of his "growing up". Maybe that's what London is for.

Meanwhile, what is Estella up to? She's been studying in Europe for the past... five years? I want to know where she came from, what Miss Havisham really wants her to do with Pip. How does she feel about all this childhood emotional train crashing? We only get Pip's perspective, again, when considering her, and since he can't really read her, it's unclear what her actual motives (if any) are.