the next day after learning of his "great expectations,"
Pip in Chapter XIX attends church with Joe; later that day, he strolls around on the
marshes for a final look:
As I passed the church, I felt (as I had felt
during service in the morning) a sublime compassion for the poor creatures who were
destined to go there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely
at last among the low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do something for them
one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and
plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon everybody in the
village.
With his opportunity
to become a gentleman, Pip then begins to imagine the importance of Joe's being
educated, encouraging Biddy to do all that she can to elevate him because Pip may pull
Joe out of the marshes and bring him "to a higher sphere." Biddy asks Pip, "Have you
never considered that he may be proud?"
With "disdainful
emphasis," Pip repeats her word "Proud?" And, after Biddy explains, Pip arrogantly
says,
"I am
sorry to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied
on account of my rise in fortune, and you can't help showing
it.""If you have the heart to think so," returned Biddy,
"say so. Say so over and over again, if you have the heart to think
so."
With these indications
in his conversation with Biddy of Pip's growing arrogance and sense of superiority, it
seems doubtful that he will want to maintain a relationship with the community, or that
he will return to show his gratitude. With his awareness that he will soon have money
and be a gentleman, Pip now feels superior to those on the marshes; his statement that
he will return and feed "those poor creatures who were destined to go" to the
church rings of condescension--Pip himself says he will give the villagers "a gallon of
condescension." More than likely, it is an empty promise that Pip makes to
himself.
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