Finding himself confronted by the curiously vague and
bizarre behaviour of Belinda Pocket, Pip finds out in this chapter the reason why she is
so detached from the real world and not at all linked in any meaningful way to reality,
as is shown by her tendency to throw out comments that are compltely unrelated to
anything else, "in general conversational
condescension."
He discovers that Belinda Pocket was the
only child of a "accidental deceased Knight" who had managed to convince himself that he
should have been made a Baronet were it not for the opposition of some important figure
out of personal motives. As a result of this fervent belief, he had instructed that his
daughter be brought up as one who should have enjoyed this rank that he feels should
have been his:
Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to
be brought up from her cradle as one who in the natur eof things must marry a title, and
who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebian domestic
knowledge.
So successful was
he in this effort that Mrs. Pocket grew up to be "highly ornamental, but perfectly
helpless and useless." This of course explains her erratic and bizarre behaviour and the
way that she is so detached from the common sphere of reality in the
novel.
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