Biddy is introduced at the beginning of Great Expectations and is mentioned regularly throughout, although she is not one of the main characters. However, it serves as a constant reminder to Pip of what he is leaving behind and, because he is more of an equal to Pips due to his intellect and age, it offers Pip the opportunity to articulate his thoughts more truthfully and complete to Pip. key points of the story. Dickens uses Biddy as a vehicle for many points made in the book and largely represents the opposite of Estella and Pip in different ways. Biddy has a very knowing tone when speaking to Pip as if she understands and accepts all that will be and emerges (depending on which point in the novel is examined) with an air of fatalism. Biddy is the sensitive contrast to Pip's immature idealism brought on by his infatuation with Estella and the upper class in general. Pip represents a very romantic point of view throughout much of the novel (up until his final Victorian realizations) and Biddy represents pragmatic Victorianism. Ultimately, Dickens would not have been able to make such a poignant point at the end of the novel if he had not slipped a character like Biddy through Pip's fingers, one whom Pip recognized as intelligent, pretty, moral, and loving. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Pip's realization that being part of the upper class had no intrinsic value finally came after many years of neglecting the people who cared for him. Although Pip was a naturally kind-hearted individual, he was driven by an intense infatuation that began at an early age and was fueled by false presumptions and convenient, misleading circumstances throughout the novel. There is no shortage of evidence of Pip's good nature, he helps Herbert Pocket by secretly buying him into a business, ends up seeing the good in Magwitch and tries to help him as much as he can, and seems to love everyone who loves him, but his romantic ideals make him they prevent him from being good to the people who love him and cause him to fall into a lifestyle in which he is unproductive and enjoys unbridled excess. It is strange to see him change so from his modest and moral beginnings and Biddy is a constant symbol of what Pip might have become if he had not been influenced by Miss Havisham and Estella at such a young age. Pip's kind-hearted nature would never have been distorted by foolish dreams and fruitless infatuations if he had never left the forge to play at the Satis House. He would have been happy to grow up among Joe and Biddy as a blacksmith, but in his first meeting with Estella he was asked to judge himself by his comparison with her. John Stuart Mill could have written this allegorical scene where Pip for the first time in his life begins to question his own worth and the worth of his class because for the first time he has been presented with something different. As Biddy and Pip get to know each other more as they get older, Biddy is obviously the antithesis of Pip in many ways. She remains humble because she was never ushered into the upper class and never set “high expectations.” She appears to have been in love with Pip before he left for London, although she accepts the fact that Pip does not love her with a stoic calm. On a more reasonable level, Pip's infatuation will allow him to fully realize that he knows he loves Biddy in a very sincere and rational way. He recognizes her worth and virtues and compares them to Estella's meanness and coldness. He knows that Biddy is the better choice of the two, but it is also a choice he cannot afford to make. Pip thinks this very thing to himself as he talks to Biddy in the marshes as he watches.