Why does Pip look up to people who put him down?

Pip wants to be a gentleman, and his definition of a gentleman at the beginning of Great Expectations is someone who has education, wealth, and the right social connections.  It is only logical that he would look up to other members of the upperclass, like Miss Havisham and Estella. When Miss Havisham invites Pip as a young boy to "play" with her adopted daughter, he believes he has an opportunity to share in their wealth and high living.  Though they are unkind to him and humiliate him for his lowly status and unlearned manners, Pip still longs to be their equal.  He feels the injustice of his own circumstances in that he had no choice in who brought him up or how.  After Estella has made him cry, Pip explains that “in the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice,” and he is willing to put up with just about anything in order to escape his old life.  After a year of being in their world, he finds a disdain for his home and his future as a blacksmith.  He calls his home “coarse and common” and would not want Estella or Miss Havisham to ever see it.  It is clear that he wants more from life and has raised his own expectations.