After spending some time with Estella in the beginning of
Chapter 33, Pip is, once again, tortured with love for Estella (who has, despite knowing
him for many years, called him by name for the first time during a conversation about
Miss Havisham's plans for Estella).
When Pip returns to the
Pocket household, he briefly considers confiding in Mr. Pocket regarding his heartache,
as Mr. Pocket is "justly celebrated for giving most excellent practical advice."
However, Pip changes his mind:
readability="9">
Happening to look up at Mrs. Pocket as she sat
reading her book of dignities after prescribing bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I
though--Well, no, I
wouldn't.
Essentially, Pip is
aware of the dysfunction that exists within the Pocket household. In previous chapters,
readers discover Mrs. Pocket to be a woman whose obsession with social class (more
specifically, her obsession with the idea of "titles" and her own family's almost-royal
lineage) prevents her from even taking care of her own children. In Chapter 23, Pip
describes Mrs. Pocket has "highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless,"
and further describes the Pocket household as
follows:
Both
Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody else's hands that I
wondered who really was in possession of the house and let them live there, until I
found this unknown power to be the
servants.
To return to your
question, Pip's knowledge of the Pockets' dysfunction prevents him from confiding in Mr.
Pocket. As is consistent with his behavior in the rest of the novel, Pip expresses his
fear, although indirectly this time, that he will not be understood. Incidentally, this
episode serves to reinforce Dickens's idea that social class is not as important as many
people, and many characters in the novel, make it out to be.
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