After Pip becomes old enough in Great
Expectations, he is to be apprenticed to Joe. In the meantime, he is given
various and sundry little tasks around his home and that of the neighbors. In the
evening, Pip attends an evening school, in the village; this school is purportedly run
by the great-aunt of Mr. Wopsle, the church clerk. Dickens satirically describes
her,
She was a
ridiculous old woman who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening in the
society of youth who paid twopence per week each for the improving opportunity of seeing
her do it.
However, it is
really the granddaughter of Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, an orphan, who teaches Pip. For,
the "educational scheme" of Biddy's grandmother has these
flaws:
- The students eat apples and put straws
down each other's backs until the old woman tries to strike them with a birch
stick. - There is only one book from which the children can
learn, and they must pass it back and forth. - While the
book is passed, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt falls asleep, so no learning takes
place. - Then, the students return to teasing each other by
stepping on one another's toes. - After this occurs, Biddy
rushes at the students and distributed three "defaced Bibles" which are so moulded and
rusted that little can be gleaned from
them.
Some of the students rush at Biddy and
she has to combat them. Undaunted, little Biddy reads aloud and has the other recite,
but they know little of what they have read. So, later, Pip asks Biddy to tutor him
because he really wants to better himself in hopes of being worthy of Estella by
becoming "uncommon." Every evening Pip and Biddy meet to discuss prices, read, and copy
letters.
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