How Does Dickens Present Pips Childhood?

How does Dickens present Pip’s Childhood?

In this essay I am going to focus on Pip meeting the convict in the graveyard in Chapter 1. Pip’s home life with Joe and Mrs Joe. Pip meeting Estella and Miss Haversham at Satis house in Chapter 8. Pip fights the pale young gentleman (Herbert Pocket) at Satis House in Chapter 11.

In Chapter 1 one of the first things we learn about Pip is that his mother, father and five brothers are dead, “Phillip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried”. Straight away, the way Dickens presents the opening scene makes you feel sorry for Pip. Dickens describes Pip as small and weak: “a small bundle of shivers” and “I was at that time undersized, for my years, and not strong”. This makes the scene where he meets the convict more frightening because the convict is strong and powerful. Pip is described as very vulnerable and “a small bundle of shivers”. The effect that Dickens achieves is the use of a good metaphor and it lets the reader get a better picture of what Pip may look like. Dickens tries to make the reader feel sorry for Pip when he is in the graveyard as he often describes the convict as “fearful man” with a “terrible voice”. Dickens also creates the impression that Pip is very gullible in this chapter as the convict says “what fat cheeks you ha got” and then Pip believes he then has fat cheeks. The convict also frightens Pip by telling him that he is with another man who will get Pip if he tells anyone about the convict or if he doesn’t do what the convict asks. He threatens Pip saying that his heart and liver will be “tore out, roasted and ate.” and that even if Pip “may be warm in bed” and “may think himself comfortable and safe” the young man will find him “and tear him open”. Dickens uses the image of being safe and warm in bed to make the threat of what would happen to him even more frightening. Pip is also shown as being gullible because he tells the convict all about himself straight away that his mother and father are dead, that he lives with his sister and the blacksmith and he agrees to fetch food and a file for the convict. Dickens shows that Pip has good manners and respect for adults because after being terrified by the convict he stills says “Goo-good night, sir.

In Chapter 2 Dickens makes it clear that Pip is regularly hit by his sister “knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me”. Dickens then makes this obvious by describing that Mrs Joe, Pip’s sister, regularly beats him with a stick called a “Tickler”: “Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane”. This again is to try and make the reader feel sorry for Pip especially as we already know that he is a small and timid boy. Calling the stick “Tickler” is a contradiction because the stick is used to beat him with, not tickle him with. Dickens also makes the reader dislike Mrs Joe because even though she has looked after Pip she makes it obvious that she doesn’t want to “It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery) without being your mother”. This is also trying to make Pip feel guilty because she has had to bring him up. Mrs Joe is also violent in other ways towards Pip, when she thinks he has been bolting his food she pulled him up by his hair “My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair” and when she was giving Pip the tar water Dickens says “Mrs Joe held my head under her arm as a boot would be held in a boot-jack”. Because we already know that Pip is small and has been frightened by the convict we feel sorry for him again because of the way Mrs Joe treats him.

In Chapter 8 Estella’s behavior towards Pip makes us feel sorry for him when she is patronizing and humiliating towards him when she laughs at his “coarse hands” because he works in a blacksmiths and his thick boots. Estella also treats him like an animal by making him eat his food off the floor and making him cry. When Pip first meets Estella she frequently calls him a “boy”. However Pip is polite back calling her “Miss” and when Miss Havisham asks Pip what he thinks of Estella he says “I don’t like to say”. Pip is upset by the way Estella treats him and the things she says but he starts to put himself down as well: “I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong” and he starts to wish he had been brought up better: “I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too”. Estella is so horrible to Pip that she makes him cry “I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry – I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart – god knows what its name was – that tears started to my eyes”. We sympathise with Pip here because Estella is bullying him.

In Chapter 11 when Pip meets the pale young gentleman they have a fight straight away. This is surprising because Dickens has made us think of Pip as being weak and timid and not a fighter. Pip also surprises himself because he hits the pale young gentleman: “I have never been so surprised in my life as I was when I let out the first blow”. Also Pip hits him quite hard: “He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him”. I think this is an interesting character development because Pip seems to be standing up for himself.

I think Dickens tries to show us that Pip doesn’t have a happy childhood. His mother, father and brothers are dead and he doesn’t remember them. His sister constantly beats him and doesn’t seem to like him at all. I think he must be quite lonely as well because in Chapter 1 he is on his own in a graveyard. Because of his background Estella is nasty to him and makes him ashamed of his upbringing. It seems like the only person who cares about him is Joe. I think up until the fight Dickens portrays Pip as a vulnerable child who is constantly being picked on, the fight is the first time we see Pip stand up for himself, and I think this is where he starts to grow up a bit more and think more for himself. I think Dickens shows Pip to be at everyone else’s mercy, Pips sister seems to rule his life; the convict frightened him into stealing food and a file; he has to go and visit Miss Havisham who seems to encourage Estella to be nasty and he didn’t even start the fight. Overall Dickens wants you to feel sympathy for Pip as he is the main character in the book and Dickens wants us to be on Pips side for the remainder of the book. Dickens does this by writing the story in the first person which is like Pip is talking to you so you feel closer to Pip and therefore feel more sorry for him.