Abstract
Pip is a hero-narrator of Great Expectations (1860-61). He is orphaned at a very early stage, and brought up “by hand” by his dreadful sister, the wife of the village blacksmith, Joe Gargery, to whom he is bound apprentice. Consequently he belongs to the working class, which is first evoked by Estella, a haughty young lady at Satis House, with whom he falls in love, and he is suddenly promised “great expectations” from a mysterious benefactor, so he decides to go up to London and turn himself into a gentleman. Pip with gentlemanly status in the metropolis considers Joe no longer to be his equal and becomes ashamed of Joe's lack of cultivation and his vulgar verbal behaviour. After the death of Magwitch, his real benefactor, he is once again poor and becomes ill and is devotedly nursed back to health by Joe, which makes Pip realize his true worth again. Our chief concern in this paper is to consider how Charles Dickens makes a stylistic choice to describe Pip's inner change in class-consciousness.
