Great Expectations

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Great Expectations

A recent edition of Great Expectations
Author	Charles Dickens
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Hall
Released	1860 – 1861 (in serial form) & 1861 (in 3 volumes)
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	432 pp
ISBN	NA

For other uses, see Great Expectations (disambiguation).

Great Expectations is a Bildungsroman (a novel tracing the life of the protagonist) by Charles Dickens and first serialized in All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861. The action of the story takes place from Christmas Eve, 1812, when the protagonist is about seven years old, to the winter of 1840.^[1]

Great Expectations is the story of the orphan Pip told by the protagonist in semi-autobiographical style as a remembrance of his life from the early days of his childhood until years after the main conflicts of the story have been resolved in adulthood. The story is also semi-autobiographical to the author Dickens, as are some other of his stories, drawing on his experiences of life and people.

Contents 1 Plot introduction & overview 2 Plot summary 2.1 The first stage of Pip's expectations: A simple but honest life 2.1.1 Pip's family and prospects 2.1.2 Pip's kindness to a convict 2.1.3 Pip's simple life is challenged by a different vision 2.1.4 Pip's companions 2.1.5 Pip parts from the Havishams 2.1.6 Pip learns of his "great expectations" to be made a gentleman 2.1.7 Pip leaves his home, family, and Miss Havisham 2.2 The second stage of Pip's expectations: To be a gentleman 2.2.1 Pip arrives in London 2.2.2 Pip learns details of the Havishams 2.2.3 Herbert's prospects and his family 2.2.4 Pip's fellow students and Mr. Wemmick's private life 2.2.5 Joe comes to London with a message 2.2.6 Pip visits Miss Havisham and receives surprises 2.2.7 Pip returns to town and then to London 2.2.8 Estella comes to London 2.2.9 The end of Mrs. Joe 2.2.10 Pip comes of age and plans to help Herbert 2.2.11 Estella 2.2.11.1 Estella and Pip at Richmond 2.2.11.2 Estella and Pip go to see Miss Havisham 2.2.11.3 Estella, Pip and Bentley Drummle 2.2.11.4 "The Eastern Story" 2.2.12 Pip's benefactor 2.2.12.1 A strange visitor 2.2.12.2 Pip's convict 2.2.12.3 The convict's role in Pip's life 2.2.12.4 Pip's horror at the convict's disclosure 2.2.12.5 The convict's mortal secret 2.2.12.6 Pip's realisations 2.3 The third stage of Pip’s expectations: Dealing with reality and its consequences 2.3.1 Pip’s benefactor's identity and the dangers confirmed 2.3.1.1 The convict's life and plans 2.3.1.2 Jaggers confirms Magwitch's story 2.3.1.3 'Provis' settles in and meets Herbert 2.3.2 Pip and Herbert consider "what is to be done" 2.3.3 The convict's story 2.3.3.1 Compeyson 2.3.3.2 Arthur 2.3.3.3 Compeyson's betrayal of Magwitch 2.3.4 Pip seeks Estella and returns again to Satis House 2.3.4.1 Encounter with Drummle 2.3.4.2 Confronting Miss Havisham 2.3.4.3 Pip proclaims his love to Estella 2.3.4.4 Estella's plans, and Pip's response 2.3.4.5 Pip returns to London and receives a warning 2.3.5 The convict endangered 2.3.6 The convict’s new hiding place 2.3.7 An unwelcome discovery 2.3.8 Estella’s mother 2.3.8.1 A note from Miss Havisham 2.3.8.2 Pip is distracted by Jaggers's servant Molly 2.3.8.3 Molly's story 2.3.9 Miss Havisham's generosity, and her remorse 3 Significant characters in "Great Expectations" 3.1 Pip, the protagonist, and his family 3.2 Miss Havisham and her family 3.3 Characters from Pip's youth 3.4 The attorney and his circle 3.5 Pip's antagonists 4 Significant places in "Great Expectations" 4.1 The physical setting 4.2 Real places referred to 4.3 Fictional places in Kent 4.4 Fictional places in London 5 Comparison to Dickens' other works 6 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations 7 Reference 8 See also 9 External links

Plot introduction & overview

The story is divided into three phases of Pip's life expectations. The first "expectation" is allotted 19 chapters, and the other two 20 chapters each in the 59 chapter work. In some editions, the chapter numbering reverts to Chapter One in each expectation, but the original publication and most modern editions number the chapters consecutively from one to 59. At the end of chapters 19 and 39 readers are formally notified that they have reached the conclusion of a phase of Pip's expectations.

In the first expectation, Pip lives a humble existence with his ill-tempered older sister and her strong but gentle husband, Joe. Pip is satisfied with this life and warm friends until he is hired by an embittered wealthy woman, Miss Havisham, as a sometime companion to her and her beautiful but haughty adopted daughter, Estella. From that time, Pip aspires to leave behind his simple life and be a gentleman. After years as companion to Miss Havisham and Estella, he spends more years as apprentice to Joe, so that he may grow up to have a livelihood working as a blacksmith. This life is suddenly turned upside down when he is visited by a London attorney, Mr. Jaggers, who informs Pip that he is to come into the "Great Expectation" of a handsome property and is to be trained to be a gentleman at the behest of an anonymous benefactor.

The second stage of Pip's expectations sees Pip in London, learning the details of being a gentlemen, having tutors, fine clothing, and joining fine society. Whereas he always engaged in honest labour for what he had when he was younger, he now is supported by a generous allowance, which he frequently lives beyond. He learns to fit in this new milieu, and experiences not only friendship but rivalry as he finds himself in the same circles as Estella, who is also pursued by many other men, especially one Bentley Drummle, whom she favours. As he adopts the physical and cultural norms of his new status, he also adopts the class attitudes that go with it, and when Joe comes to visit Pip and his friend and roommate Herbert to deliver an important message, Pip is embarrassed to the point of hostility by Joe's unlearned ways, despite Pip's protestations of love and friendship for Joe. At the end of this stage, Pip is introduced to his benefactor, again changing his world.

The third and last stage of Pip's expectations changes Pip's life from the artificially supported world of his upper class strivings and introduces him to realities that he realises he must deal with, facing moral, physical and financial challenges. He learns startling truths that cast into doubt the values that he once embraced so eagerly, and finds that he cannot regain many of the important things that he had cast aside so carelessly. The current ending of the story is different from Dickens's original intent, in which the ending matched the gloomy reverses to Pip's fortunes that typify the last expectation. Dickens was prevailed upon to change the ending to one more acceptable to his readers' tastes in that era, and this "new" ending was the published one and currently accepted as definitive.

Dickens has Pip as the writer and first person narrator of this account of his life's experiences, and the entire story is understood to have been written as a retrospective, rather than as a present tense narrative or a diary or journal. Still, though Pip "knows" how all the events in the story will turn out, he uses only very subtle foreshadowing so that we learn of events only when and as Pip did. Pip does, however, use the perspective of the bitter lessons he's learned to comment acidly on various of his actions and attitudes in his earlier life.

Plot summary

This account traces the characters, events and plot line in Dickens' original novel. Many of the details may be different from one or another of the filmed versions, including the ending. Some of these characters are omitted or their roles altered or diminished even in the "better" screen efforts, due to the constraints of time or the director's vision.

The first stage of Pip's expectations: A simple but honest life

Pip's family and prospects

Pip is a young orphan who is being brought up by his adult sister, a sharp and self-pitying woman who is married to the kind and simple village blacksmith, Joe Gargery, who will make Pip his apprentice when he is of age. She often complains that the compliant Pip is an ungrateful burden to her, who she is bringing up "by hand" out of her own labours and the goodness of her heart, but Pip senses the ironic meaning of "by hand" and imagines that she "brings up" her husband Joe by the same hand.^[2] Joe feels special empathy with Pip since, while Joe loves his wife, always referred to as "Mrs. Joe", very much, he and Pip share their fear of her temper and her scolding.

Pip's kindness to a convict

While out on the marshes on Christmas Eve, visiting the graves of his parents and siblings in the churchyard, Pip is accosted by a frightening looking convict, who has escaped from a prison ship lying off shore. The convict demands Pip's help, wanting food and a file to remove his shackles, threatening Pip with terrible tortures to be administered by a mythical boy if Pip doesn't do his bidding. Pip returns home and, in the morning, brings the convict more than he asks, including liquor and a pork pie that Mrs. Joe was saving for company. The convict eats greedily and responds with a bit of surprise and gratitude when Pip tells him that he hopes he enjoys his food. Pip reveals that he has seen someone who he took to be the "boy" the convict mentioned. The convict realizes that this person is another convict, who has also escaped, and is the first convict's enemy.

Pip and Joe return home on Christmas to find Mrs. Joe preparing Christmas dinner for the company that Mrs. Joe is trying to impress. Mrs. Joe sends Pip for the pork pie that Pip has given to the convict. Mrs. Joe's anger at the pie being missing is cut off when soldiers from the prison ship enter, asking for the blacksmith to repair shackles for them. The men at the table, including Joe and Pip, follow the soldiers to the marshes, where they all find the convict in a bruising fight with the second convict, with the latter yelling that he is being murdered. Both convicts are captured and, as they are being put in a dinghy to return to the prison ships, Pip signals to the convict he helped that he didn't betray him. The convict then addresses Joe to tell him that he had stolen Joe's pork pie, removing suspicion from Pip. Joe responds with his characteristic kindness, saying that the convict was welcome to it, so far as it ever was Joe's. The convicts are taken away.

Pip's simple life is challenged by a different vision

Some time later, the Gargery family is informed that Miss Havisham, an eccentric and rich spinster, wishes Pip to visit her at her ruined estate, Satis House, where Pip meets her beautiful but haughty and rather cruel adopted daughter, Estella. Miss Havisham explains to Pip that she sometimes has the "sick fancy" to see children play, and directs Pip to "play." Pip is taken aback at the unusual request and dark, gloomy setting, so Miss Havisham tells Estella to play cards with him. Estella is offended and complains that Pip is "a common, labouring boy." From that moment, Pip is no longer happy with the simple life and warm but common friends he has known and desires Estella and the wealthy, refined life she represents.

Pip's companions

Pip spends years as Miss Havisham's companion and his attraction to Estella becomes unrequited love. Estella warms to Pip, but only as a friend, not a future lover. Despite this, Miss Havisham encourages Pip in his belief that she has selected him to be Estella's life companion and Estella Pip's.

Pip parts from the Havishams

When Pip is of age to begin his apprenticeship as a blacksmith, Miss Havisham tells him to bring Joe to see her. Apprentices were expected to pay for their apprenticeships in addition to providing their labour, in exchange for which the master provided room and board as well as teaching a valuable trade. Miss Havisham pays for Pip's indenture, indicating that this is her payment for Pip's years of service. Pip begins his trade education but cannot forget Estella. At the year's anniversary of his schooling, he goes to visit Miss Havisham on the pretext of thanking her for paying his bond. After he greets Miss Havisham, she sees that Pip is evidently looking for Estella, informs Pip that she is "abroad, educating for a lady." Pip is taken aback by the "malignant enjoyment" Miss Havisham takes in asking Pip "Do you feel that you have lost her?"

Pip learns of his "great expectations" to be made a gentleman

In the fourth year of his apprenticeship, Pip and Joe are gathered with others of the village at the local pub when they encounter Mr. Jaggers, a well-known London attorney. an impressive figure, who Pip recognizes from having seen him at Miss Havisham's house; Jaggers is Miss Havisham's attorney.

Jaggers tells Pip and Joe that he wishes to have a private conference with them, and accompanies them to their home where Jaggers informs them that Pip is to be the beneficiary of the "Great Expectation" of an upbringing as a gentleman in anticipation of coming into a fortune when he reaches adulthood. No sooner had Pip heard this then he was impressed that his "wild fancy" was to be "surpassed by sober reality"; that Miss Havisham was going to make his fortune "on a grand scale"; but Pip is not informed, nor may he be informed, nor may he even inquire, who his benefactor is until an unspecified future time of the benefactor's choosing, when the benefactor's identity will be revealed to Pip in person, by that person.

Mr. Jaggers also informs Pip that, as a condition of his great expectations that "it is the request of the person from whom I take my instructions that you always bear the name of Pip."

Since Pip is indentured to Joe Gargery, Jaggers informs Joe, who is Pip's master in his apprenticeship, that he is prepared to offer him money to buy out his rights to Pip's service. Joe is angered almost to the point of violence that Mr. Jaggers should assume he would accept money not to stand in the way of Pip's prospects for a better life.

Pip leaves his home, family, and Miss Havisham

The next morning Pip begins to adjust to the prospects of his new-found fortune, and quickly begins to consider himself superior to his surroundings and everyone in it. Musing about this in retrospect, Pip recalls how he promised himself that he would one day bestow "a dinner of roast-beef and plumpudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon everybody in the village."

After purchasing new clothes and other appointments and observing how all the tradesmen fawn on him at his display of wealth, he makes his way, in his new appearance of prosperity, to Satis House. Suspecting that Miss Havisham is his benefactor, but knowing he must not reveal this, he tells her only that he is leaving for London and that he was taking leave of her. Miss Havisham had been earlier visited by Mr. Jaggers and remarks on this to Pip, and without ever saying whether or not she is the source of Pip's good fortune, by question and answer encourages Pip in his belief that she is.

On the morning of Pip's leaving he kisses his sister and Biddy and throws his arms around Joe's neck. As he walks away, Pip sees Joe "crying huskily 'Hooroar'" and see Biddy put her apron to her face.

Pip changes coaches several times as he makes his way toward London as he parts from his old home, and his old life: "And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me."

"THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS."

The second stage of Pip's expectations: To be a gentleman

Pip arrives in London

Before Pip left his old home he bade farewell to the marshes and countryside that he had known all his life: "farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, henceforth I was for London and greatness"; but when he arrives in London he finds it "rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty." Not finding Mr. Jaggers in his office, he speaks to his clerk, Wemmick, and then sets off to see some of his new home. When he finds Jaggers, he is impressed that he is curt, businesslike, and apparently heartless, but a highly respected lawyer on whose skills many people's property, life and liberty depended. Mr. Jaggers takes Pip in his office, informs him of his living place, tells him that he will be watching over his money and sends him out with Wemmick to Barnard's Inn, the apartment block where Pip will live with Herbert Pocket, whose father Matthew Pocket will be Pip's tutor.

Pip learns details of the Havishams

Herbert is a member of Miss Havisham's extended family, who Pip met at Satis House when both were children. Miss Havisham detests the Pockets as she believes that they only pay tribute to her because they expect to get her money when she dies, though Herbert's father is not one of those who will flatter her in the hope of inheritance. Herbert teaches Pip the ways of polite company, such as dining etiquette. Pip tells Herbert of his love for Estella and Herbert tells him of Miss Havisham's history: how she had been engaged to marry; how her betrothed had abandoned her on their wedding day; how she stopped all the clocks at Satis House at the time of her betrayal and "laid waste" to the once fine mansion. Herbert warns Pip that Miss Havisham adopted and raised Estella to "wreak revenge on all the male sex"; but Pip does not heed this warning, and Herbert cannot tell Pip anything more about where Estella came from and how she came to be adopted by Miss Havisham: "There has always been an Estella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more."

Herbert's prospects and his family

Pip wonders what Herbert does for a living and hears his grandiose schemes for engaging in the details of world trade and thinks Herbert's "expectations" greater than his own; but soon realizes that Herbert goes to the trading places each day "looking about", i.e., learning about his desired business and hoping opportunities will come along that will make his fortune. In essence, both he and Pip are unemployed, but Pip has a generous allowance that they both become dependent on.

When Pip goes to meet Matthew Pocket, Herbert's father and Pip's tutor, he meets Herbert's disorganized and rather amusing family, and gets yet another view of relationships of money and class. Matthew Pocket is cheerful, hard-working and principled. He had advised against Miss Havisham's doomed romance with Compeyson and was since cut off from her favour and hope of share in her fortune. His wife was raised to be "ornamental" and lives out that role, disappointed that she did not manage to marry someone with a title or wealth. Matthew squeezes out a living teaching others the ways of upper class society, and his wife is ineffectual and self-pitying while nurses attend to her and bring up their children.

Pip's fellow students and Mr. Wemmick's private life

Pip has his own room at Matthew Pocket's house, as do Pocket's other students, who are being tutored in the arts of being gentlemen. He is introduced to the occupants of the other rooms, a delicate young man named Startop who had missed most of his education while being spoilt by his mother, and Bentley Drummle, a contrastingly thuggish person, born of a rich family that sent him off for refined tutoring after realizing that he was "a blockhead."

Pip meets Mr. Wemmick, Jaggers' chief clerk in London, for a walk and to visit Wemmick's home, where Pip realizes that ordinary people in business may have much different personal lives. Wemmick's home is "a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden" with many novel and whimsical features. Wemmick's deaf and elderly father, referred to as the "Aged Parent", "Aged P", or simply "the Aged", lives with him there and is cared for by a young nurse. The Aged P's pleasures consist of being nodded to and daily firing a small cannon in the yard, one of the few noises he can still hear. Pip sees the pleasure this seemingly colourless man of business takes in his own corner of the world, and the kindness to one that others might consider a burden.

Pip next has dinner at Mr. Jaggers home, along with fellow gentlemen-in-training, Startop and Drummle. In contrast to Wemmick, Jaggers at home is like Jaggers in the office. Jaggers issues Pip the invitation that Wemmick had told him to expect and tells him: "No ceremony, and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow." At dinner, Jaggers takes a particular interest in Drummle, dubbing him "the Spider", approving of him in a clinically negative fashion. Jaggers's discussion appears designed to bring out the worst in Drummle, and succeeds. Drummle brags, grows hostile, and berates his companions, while Pip takes comfort in the fact the Spider is to spend just one more month with Mr. Pocket's tutoring, and then go home to "the family hole."

Joe comes to London with a message

Upon returning to his apartment at Barnard's Inn on Monday, Pip finds a letter from Joe written for him by Biddy, a fellow orphan who had been Pip's first teacher and has been household help to Joe and nurse to Mrs. Joe since she had been seriously injured by an unknown assailant. The letter, affectionately written, tells Pip that Joe wishes to visit him in London on Tuesday (the next day). In a postscript Biddy twice tells Pip that Joe wanted her to write "what larks," a reference to the good times he and Joe had together. Biddy hopes that though Pip is now a gentlemen, he will find the plain Joe an agreeable visitor, as Pip has "a good heart and [Joe] is a worthy worthy man."

Pip responds to the news of Joe's coming not with pleasure, but with dread: "If I could have kept him away with money, I certainly would have paid money." His only reassurance is that Joe will visit him at his apartment, and so will be seen only by Herbert, who Pip holds in high esteem, but not be seen by Drummle. Pip is ashamed at the prospect that Drummle, who Pip holds "in contempt", might meet the simple blacksmith who so contrasts with Pip's newly culivated persona: "So, throughout life", Pip says in retrospect, "our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise."

When Joe arrives, Pip meets him formally and Joe is uncomfortable, sometimes addressing him as "Pip" but more often as "Sir." Eventually Joe delivers his news, that Miss Havisham asked him to tell Pip "that which Estella has come home and would be glad to see him." Having said that, Joe reveals that Biddy had encouraged him to go see Pip in person as she knew he wanted much to see Pip. With that, Joe rose to leave and Pip asked whether he was coming back to dinner. "No I am not", said Joe, and he continued "You and me is not two figures to be together in London [...] I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off the marshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand [...]"

The next day Pip begins his journey back to his town. His first instinct in his realization that he had humiliated Joe is that he must stay at Joe's home, but as he goes he makes excuses to himself why he must stay at the Blue Boar instead.

Pip visits Miss Havisham and receives surprises

Back in his home town, Pip lingers about Miss Havisham's side of town "which was not Joe's side", fantasizing how his "patroness" had fine plans for him and Estella. Arriving at Satis House, Pip is shocked to find himself being admitted by Orlick, Joe's former journeyman, who is now Miss Havisham's porter. Orlick reveals that Miss Havisham had become uncomfortable that her home was unprotected and wanted to hire "a man who could give another man as good as he brought." Pip ends the conversation and seeks out Miss Havisham and finds her in her old manner as well as "an elegant lady whom I had never seen." Pip soon realizes that this is Estella, whose grown-up beauty and self-possession he finds so intimidating "that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again."

Miss Havisham bids that Pip and Estella go walking together and Pip is impressed that for all his gentlemanly training he was still a boy in Estella's womanly presence. Pip speaks of details of their young life together, including that Estella had made him cry, but she shows memory of almost none of it. "You must know", said Estella, "that I have no heart — if that has anything to do with my memory." When Pip doubts this, Estella continues: "Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in [...] But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no — sympathy — sentiment — nonsense." Pip wishes not to believe this and Estella warns him that he ignores what she has said at his peril.

Once alone with Miss Havisham, she asks Pip whether he finds Estella "beautiful, graceful, well-grown. Do you admire her?" After Pip remarks that all who see her must admire her, Miss Havisham draws Pip's head close to hers with her arm as she admonishes with "passionate eagerness": "Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces — and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper — love her, love her, love her!" In the passion of this outburst, Miss Havisham declares she raised Estella to be loved, and reiterates in such vehement fashion that Pip must love her that Pip observes that if words of hatred had been substituted for "love" it could not have sounded more like a curse. At this moment Pip realizes that Mr. Jaggers has arrived, as he is to have dinner at Satis House, and has entered the room, breaking Miss Havisham's rant. Pip speaks briefly with Jaggers and satisfies himself on a point of curiosity as to Estella's last name. "Is it Havisham, or —" "It is Havisham" affirms Jaggers.

Pip returns to town and then to London

Pip returns to the Blue Boar for a night's sleep before returning to London, as does Jaggers. The next morning he resolves to tell Jaggers that he doubts Orlick is "the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham's." As this assertion does not much impress Jaggers, Pip, who has suspected that Orlick had been his sister's attacker, tells him of his knowledge of Orlick. Jaggers resolves immediately to sack Orlick, which alarms Pip, who doesn't want Orlick's firing to be associated with him, and suggests that Orlick "might be difficult to deal with." Jaggers brushes aside this objection.

Back in London, Pip again professes in confidence to Herbert his love for Estella. Herbert again tries to dissuade Pip with reasoned discussion how perilous an attachment to such as Estella can be. "Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham. Think of what she is herself[...]. This may lead to miserable things." Pip affirms that he cannot be dissuaded, and Herbert drops the subject. Pip and Herbert go to see a production of Hamlet starring "Mr. Waldengarver" who they recognize to be Mr. Wopsle, now the former clerk of the church in Pip's old town, who has come to London to pursue his ambition as an actor. His performance is the subject of general ridicule but he recognizes Pip in the audience and greets them warmly backstage.

Estella comes to London

Sometime later Pip receives a note via post from Estella bearing the news that she will arrive in two days by the mid-day coach, and that she believes that it has been settled that Pip would meet her. On the appointed day Pip meets Estella's coach and finds her even more delicately beautiful than ever. She tells Pip that she is to go to Richmond Surrey, that she is to have a carriage, that Pip is to take her and pay for all out of her purse. She insists that Pip take the purse saying "We have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are not free to follow our own devices, you and I." On hearing this, Pip hopes that there was an inner meaning to those words.

Estella is to live with a lady at Richmond, who is to introduce her to society. She speaks of Miss Havisham's relatives, the Pockets, and her amusement that they have been stoked into hatred of Pip, whom they see as their rival. She assures Pip that no harm can come to him from this animosity but that she is delighted that such mean people are made unhappy and that she is beholden to Pip that he should be the instrument of their displeasure and offers Pip her hand upon it. When Pip takes her hand and puts it to his lips, Estella challenges this romantic gesture: "You ridiculous boy, will you never take warning?" then asks if he meant it only in a friendly way, as she had when she once let him kiss her cheek as a child. Pip asks if he might kiss her cheek again if he said "yes." Estella agrees, but glides away as soon as Pip has touched her cheek.

Pip escorts Estella to Richmond where, she tells him, he may come to see her. Pip leaves her at the house of her mentor with "heart-ache" as he thinks of how happy he would be living there with her but "knowing that [he] never was happy with her, but always miserable."

The end of Mrs. Joe

While ruminating over the irresponsible way he has handled his finances in anticipation of his "expectations", Pip unexpectedly receives the news that his sister has died. This news draws him to realization that he had not thought much of her lately. He cannot recall Mrs. Joe "with much tenderness", but nevertheless expresses a "shock of regret" that encouarges him to "violent indignation" against Orlick, who he suspects was the cause of his sister's suffering and now death.

Pip returns home for the funeral and to comfort Joe. He finds that the undertaker has arranged grotesque formal rites of mourning which offend him but play well to the community. He has a walk with Biddy in which he promises to visit Joe more often: a promise Biddy quietly doubts. Pip self-righteously tells Biddy that he is shocked that Biddy should doubt his good intent. For the rest of the day and at supper he distances himself from Biddy and leaves the next morning, knowing that she is right that he will not return "soon and often" as he promises.

Pip comes of age and plans to help Herbert

Having reached the age of 21 and therefore his majority, Pip goes to see Mr. Jaggers in anticipation of receiving information of his expected fortune and, perhaps, the identity of his benefactor. Jaggers asks him if he knows how much he is spending, and when Pip admits he doesn't know, Jaggers says "I thought so!" with satisfaction. In response to Pip's questions, Jaggers informs him that he is not to learn who his benefactor is at this time, and has Wemmick hand him a banknote for 500 pounds, a "handsome" sum of money. Jaggers tells Pip that this will be his annual allowance until such time as his benefactor is made known to him. Jaggers still refuses to tell Pip whether his benefactor will be revealed soon, or in many years.

Jaggers does give Pip some unexpected information: that when his benefactor discloses "you and that person will settle your own affairs. When that person discloses, my part in this business will cease [...] it will not be necessary for me to know anything about it. And that's all I have got to say."

With his newly received money in his pocket, he decides to do something generous for Herbert, who has earlier come into his own majority with nothing to show for it and still does not see where his future lies. Pip discusses this with Wemmick and Wemmick arranges for Pip to pay moneys to secure a partnership in a firm for Herbert, and that Herbert must never know the source of this good fortune. This is done and, as Herbert learns of the interest of this firm in him, his mood changes to happiness at his own prospects for success, and Pip is moved to tears of happiness that his expectations had done some good for someone.

Estella

Pip discloses to the reader that he will soon narrate the event that is to change his life but, before he does, he must give one chapter to Estella. "It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart."

Estella and Pip at Richmond

Recalling the time that Estella was at Richmond, the time that he spent there near her, and "the many, many nights and days through which the unquiet spirit within me haunted the house when Estella lived there" Pip imagines that, were he dead, his ghost would haunt the house still. Pip visits often, as Estella said he could, and he finds himself "on terms of familiarity without placing me on terms of favour" with Estella. Estella uses Pip's presence to tease her admirers to jealousy and their attentions in turn inspire Pip to jealousy and constant misery. Pip "never had one hour's happiness in her society" and yet his mind harped on the happiness of having her unto death twenty-four hours of every day. When Estella again tries to introduce Pip to the reality of their situation — "Pip, Pip, will you never take warning" "Of what?" "Of me" — Pip still persists in believing in his own mind that Estella is distancing herself in rebellion against the fact that Miss Havisham has chosen Pip for her, and that she must obey, and that this has wounded her pride.

Estella and Pip go to see Miss Havisham

Estella next informs Pip that the time has come again when she must spend some time with Miss Havisham at Satis House and that she wishes Pip to escort her there. Upon arriving at Miss Havisham's home, Pip finds it exactly as before and Miss Havisham in her usual place. Miss Havisham fawns on Estella elaborately. She probes Pip for information of how Estella "uses" him, and she pumps Estella for details of the men whom Estella fascinates. Though it makes him miserable, Pip nevertheless believes that this is Miss Havisham's pleasure in wreaking revenge on men in setting Estella into their midst while planning to give her to Pip in the end.

Later in the same visit, Pip witnesses the first time that he has ever seen Estella in opposition to Miss Havisham. Estella is sitting beside her and Miss Havisham is clutching her hand. Estella gradually disengages herself from Miss Havisham's clutch, and moves to look at the fire. Miss Havisham reacts by snapping at her: "What! are you tired of me?" Estella's mild response only enrages Miss Havisham more: "Speak the truth, you ingrate! you are tired of me." Estella only looks at Miss Havisham with calm composure. "You stock and stone!" exclaims Miss Havisham. "You cold, cold heart!" Estella tells Miss Havisham that she is only what Miss Havisham made her: "But what would you have?" "Love", replies Miss Havisham. "You have it." "I have not." Estella remains composed in contrast to Miss Havisham's rising anger, addressing her as "mother by adoption." After Estella tells her that she would be bound to return whatever she had been given, if Miss Havisham commanded it, but that she cannot return what she has never gotten, Miss Havisham turns to Pip and asks: "Did I never give her love?"

When Miss Havisham has calmed some, Pip takes the opportunity to leave the painful scene. When he returns after an hour or more, he finds Estella sitting at Miss Havisham's knee, as usual, doing some sewing. Later, he and Estella play some cards, and when the evening passes, Pip goes to bed. This is his first time ever sleeping at Satis House, and sleep does not come. He is "haunted" by "a thousand Miss Havishams." As two o'clock approaches, he feels he can no longer lie in bed sleepless, so he gets up, puts on his clothes, and resolves to walk in the outer courtyard to ease his mind. As soon as he enters the passageway, he extinguishes his candle, as he sees Miss Havisham pacing slowly through the house, carrying a candle and uttering a low cry. She does this endlessly, until the morning light.

Before leaving the next day there is no revival of the difference between Miss Havisham and Estella, nor is the argument ever revived during the four similar visits Pip and Estella make to Satis House afterward.

Estella, Pip and Bentley Drummle

At this point, Pip tells us that "[i]t is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without putting Bentley Drummle's name upon it; or I would, very gladly".

Pip and Herbert, at the suggestion of Pip's fellow student Startop, had joined a snooty social society of young men called "The Finches of the Grove", an organization whose object Pip has never divined, except that "the members should dine expensively once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs".

On "a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force", the presiding "Finch" called the "Grove" to order as, according to the Finch's rules, it was Drummle's turn to toast a lady that day. To Pip's "indignant surprise" Drummle proposes a toast to "Estella!" "Estella who?" Pip asks, but Drummle won't say. "Estella of where" Pip then asks, and Drummle responds: "Of Richmond, gentlemen, and a peerless beauty".

Both Herbert and Pip assert, after the toast, that they, too, "know that lady." Drummle's retort, the only one "that the heavy creature was capable of making" is simply: "Do you. Oh Lord!" This weak response nevertheless so incenses Pip that he rises and accuses Drummle of proposing a toast to a lady of whom he knows nothing. Drummle demands Pip's meaning and Pip replies that Drummle "knows where Pip is to be found".

The Finches debate how this challenge to Drummle's honour is to be resolved, and they agree that if Drummle can bring a certificate from the lady in question, saying that Drummle has had the honour of her acquaintance then Pip must make the obtuse apology of expressing his regret for "having been betrayed into a warmth which"; that is, expressing regret for letting his anger move him to make a false accusation. The next day Drummle shows up with a brief letter, in Estella's hand, that she has had the honour of dancing with him several times. This leaves Pip with no choice but to issue the prescribed apology. Drummle and Pip then sit "snorting at one another for an hour" and the Grove feels that good feeling has been restored.

Pip is pained that Estella should have shown any favour to "a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby." He acknowledges that he would have been miserable "whomsoever she favoured" but that "a worthier object would have me a different kind and degree of stress." Pip learns that Drummle has been doggedly pursing Estella in "a dull persistent way" and that this persistence when other suitors fell by the wayside was serving Drummle well. When Pip brings this up to Estella and upbraids her for giving attention to such a "deficient, ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow", but Estella's response to each of Pip's points is to simply ask: "Well?" When Estella makes it plain that she can bear the attentions of a Drummle, Pip expresses his pain that she can "give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give—me".

"Do you want me then", said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, "to deceive and entrap you?"

"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?"

"Yes, and many others - all of them but you."

"The Eastern Story"

Having devoted his chapter to Estella, Pip now turns to the event that was to come even before he "knew the world held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands".

Pip mentions "the Eastern Story", referring to a then well-known fantasy in the tradition of the Arabian Nights stories, in which a great pavillion has been raised and has been taken over by usurpers. The occupiers are unaware that a heavy rock slab was raised into the ceiling of the structure when it was built and a secret rope rigged deep into the earth, holding the slab up. In the dead of night, the rope is severed with an axe, and the pavillion's occupants crushed. Pip compares the blow he is about to receive to this story, where all of his fortunes, and all of his work had been accomplished, and now "in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me".

Pip's benefactor

Pip is now a week past his 23rd birthday, and he has heard no more news of his expectations and his benefactor. He and Herbert had moved out of Barnard's Inn a year before to the top floor of a house in an area known as The Temple and Herbert is away on business for his company and "everything was with me as I have brought it down to the close of the last chapter". Pip was alone, "dispirited and anxious". The weather has been "stormy and wet, stormy and wet", and the rain and wind beat so harshly against the house where Pip and Herbert are living "that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse." Looking outside his rooms, Pip sees that the lamps on the staircase have been blown out, the lamps in the courtyard had been blown out, and "the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering".

A strange visitor

As Pip hears the church bells chiming 11, the hour that he intends to go to bed, Pip hears, amidst the chimes and the wind, a footstep on the stairs. Since the staircase lights had been blown out, Pip steps out with a light and challenges the climber: "What floor do you want?" "The top. Mr, Pip" As the man ascends the stairs, Pip sees "a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me." The man is "substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea". He is about 60 years old, with long iron-grey hair, muscular and with skin "browned and hardened by exposure to weather." Pip sees, "with a stupid kind of amazement", that the visitor was holding out both his hands to him.

"Pray what is your business?" I asked him.

"My business?" he repeated, pausing. "Ah! Yes. I will explain my business, by your leave."

"Do you wish to come in?"

"Yes", he replied; "I wish to come in, Master."

Pip asked the question inhospitably, as he resented the visitor's air of familiarity, and asked him to explain himself. The stranger looked about "with the strangest air—an air of wondering pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired". Instead of answering Pip, the stranger once more held out both hands to him: "what do you mean?" exclaims Pip, and the visitor stopped and slowly rubbed his right hand over his bald head. "'It's disapinting to a man', he said, in a coarse broken voice, 'arter having looked for'ard so distant and come so fur' [...]"

Pip's convict

The visitor asks if anyone else is about and Pip asks him why he, a stranger, would be asking that. "You're a game one", the visitor replies, "I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one! But don't catch hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards to have done it". In that instant Pip realises who his visitor is: the convict that he had helped on the marshes as a young boy. Pip's visitor comes back to him and again holds out both hands. Pip offers his own hands reluctantly and the visitor grabs them heartily, "raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them. 'You acted noble, my boy,' said he. 'Noble, Pip! And I have never forgot it!'"

Fearing that the convict is about to embrace him, Pip holds a hand against his breast and says "Stay! Keep off!" Pip says that if the convict is grateful to him he hopes that he has mended his way of life. Pip softens a bit, notes that his visitor is wet and weary and offers him a drink before he goes. The convict accepts this and watches him keenly as Pip pours his drink. Pip reproaches himself for being so harsh and says "I wish you well, and happy!"

As he drinks, the convict tells Pip that he has become a sheep-farmer and stock-breeder in the new world [Australia] and has done "wonderful well". "I'm famous for it." It occurs to Pip that it was the convict who had, long ago, sent Pip two one-pound notes as a gift. Pip relates that he received the notes which, "to a poor boy they were a little fortune". Pip tells the convict that he must return the money so they might be put to the use of another poor boy. He takes out two new one-pound notes and hands them to the convict, who puts them together, gives them a twist, and sets fire to them from the lamp.

The convict's role in Pip's life

With a puzzling half-smile, half-frown, the convict asks Pip how he has "done so well?" "How?" "Ah!" With the convict watching him with a steady gaze, Pip begins to tremble, and forces out the explanation that he has been chosen to receive some property.

"Might a mere warmint ask what property?" said he.

I faltered, "I don't know."

"Might a mere warmint ask whose property?" said he.

I faltered again, "I don't know."

By turns the convict lets Pip know that he knows how much his income is, who his guardian is, and that he found Pip's address by asking Wemmick. As Pip stands unsteadily and feels as though he might faint, the convict sits Pip on the sofa and declares: "Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work." "Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son - more to me nor any son."

Pip's horror at the convict's disclosure

The full realisation that this man was his true benefactor raises not gratitude in Pip, but disgust: "The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast."

As the convict pours out more of his dreams of enriching Pip, Pip's blood runs cold. The convict asks if Pip never thought that he might have been his benefactor: "O no, no, no, Never, never!" The convict asserts that it was just he and Mr. Jaggers that arranged Pip's good fortune and when Pip asks if there was someone else, the convict is surprised: "who else should there be?"

As the reality of the situation sinks in, Pip wishes that "he had left me at the forge - far from contented, yet, by comparison happy!" The convict goes on to tell Pip that even as he was humbled by the colonists in Australia, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he was bringing up and "owned" "a brought-up London Gentleman". When the convict lays his hand on Pip's shoulder, he "shuddered at the thought that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood".

The convict's mortal secret

Even as Pip is stunned and tries to collect his thoughts, the convict asks: "Where will you put me? I must be put somewheres, dear boy." "To sleep?" "Yes. "'And to sleep long and sound', he answered; 'for I've been sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months.'" Pip says he will put the convict in Herbert's room. The convict reveals that "caution is necessary" because "By G––, it's Death!" The convict was transported to Australia for life and, if caught in England, would be hanged. Pip thinks that his position could not be worse: "the wretched man, after loading wretched me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked his life to come to me", and now the convict's life, a person who he views with "the strongest repugnance" is in Pip's hands. Pip puts the convict up for the night.

Pip's realisations

"Afraid to go to bed", Pip sits before the fire "too stunned to think"; but when he does begin to think, the enormity of wrecked fantasies come home to him: His thinking Miss Havisham was his benefactor and sponsor "a mere dream"; Estella "not designed" for him; his visits to Satis House a "sting" to make Miss Havisham's relatives suffer, and convenient practice for Estella's cruel education; but the "sharpest and deepest pain", Pip thinks, is that he had deserted Joe "for the convict". With these thoughts and his imaginings of the dangers from the sleeping convict who had given him all he had, Pip finally falls asleep on the floor, only awakening as the church clocks struck five to find that "the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick black darkness".

"THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS."

The third stage of Pip’s expectations: Dealing with reality and its consequences

Pip’s benefactor's identity and the dangers confirmed

Having absorbed the first shock of the convict's coming, Pip considers what he must do to deal with the convict's presence, considering the dangers they both are facing. He and Herbert no longer have a servant, but they have a nosy cleaning lady and her niece, so Pip resolves to tell whoever visits that his "uncle" had arrived unexpectedly from the country.

All was still dark and, since the storm blew out all the lights, Pip feels his way down the stairs to find the night watchman and have him come back with a lantern; in doing so he stumbles over someone crouching in a corner, who silently steals away. Pip runs for the watchman but they find no-one there on their return. Pip asks the watchman who had come through the gate during the night, and the watchman mentions the visitor who asked for Pip; i.e., the convict, who Pip acknowledges as his uncle. Then the watchman asks whether Pip also saw "the person with him". This was someone who stayed close by the convict, stopping when he did, and following when he moved on. The watchman makes light of this person, but Pip fears who he may be.

The convict's life and plans

Back in his apartment, Pip learns details of the convict’s life. He lets the convict know that he is to be described as Pip's "uncle". "That's it, dear boy!: Call me uncle." The convict tells Pip that he has assumed the name of Provis, and will use it in London, as it is unsafe to go by his real name, which is Abel Magwitch. "What were you brought up to be?" asks Pip. "A warmint, dear boy." Magwitch tells Pip that he was tried in London and it was Jaggers who was his attorney.

Magwitch is not much afraid of discovery; he doesn't intend "to advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A. M. come back from Botany Bay" and years have gone by. "If the danger had been fifty times as great, I should ha' come to see you, mind you, just the same." Magwitch also tells Pip that he has come back for good. Magwitch imagines that he can disguise himself and though he affirms that "it is Death" if he were to be discovered, he has faced and escaped many traps before, and will only concern himself when and if he faces immediate danger.

Jaggers confirms Magwitch's story

Seeking to confirm all he has learned, Pip finds Mr. Jaggers as cautious and indirect as ever. Before Pip can say a word, Jaggers says "Now Pip, be careful." "Don't commit yourself, and don't commit any one. You understand—any one. Don't tell me anything: I don't want to know anything; I am not curious."

Jaggers confirms that Magwitch is Pip's true benefactor, and no other. He disabuses Pip of his supposition that Miss Havisham had been the source of his fortune.

By continually driving home the point that "Magwitch" is "in New South Wales" Jaggers lets Pip know that he must betray no other understanding as to Magwitch's location. He further confirms the danger Magwitch is in, and Pip realises he must always refer to Magwitch by his new identity of "Provis".

'Provis' settles in and meets Herbert

Pip despairs of making Provis look like anything but the convict he had been; that in his sitting, standing, eating, drinking, "in these ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be". Pip does not warm to this man who helped him and so admires him, but thinks that "[t]he imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me".

After five days of this situation, which Pip realises he has written of "as if it had lasted a year", Herbert returns. "Herbert, my dear friend", says Pip, "something very strange has happened. This is—a visitor of mine".

"It's all right, dear boy!" said Provis coming forward, with his little clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Herbert. "Take it in your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the spot, if ever you split in any way sumever! Kiss it!"

Pip tells Herbert to do as Provis says, Herbert does and Provis immediately shakes hands with him: "Now you're on your oath, you know. And never believe me on mine, if Pip shan't make a gentleman on you!"

Pip and Herbert consider "what is to be done"

As the three sit by the fire, Pip sees Herbert's "astonishment and disquiet" at meeting Provis, and as Pip recounts the entire story to Herbert, he feels that he shares his "repugnance" for their visitor, but Provis, for his part, can find nothing but pleasure in enjoying their company and boasting of the gentleman he has made. The only check in Provis' unabashed pleasure is his acknowledgment that he had briefly been "low" in his initial contact with Pip and Herbert but that, in the future "you two may count upon me always having a gen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minute when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at the present time, muzzled I ever will be".

Provis stays up late and when Pip and Herbert are finally alone they wordlessly communicate their fear and disquiet at their visitor and try to determine between them "what is to be done". Pip allows that he feels he can accept none of the further riches — "horses, and carriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds" —that Provis wishes to bestow upon him, and that he must break from the convict as soon as possible. Pip now feels he has no expectations at all but much debt, and that he is only fit to enlist as a soldier. Herbert says this is nonsense; that at least Pip could be a clerk in the house where, unknown to Herbert, Pip bought a position for him. Herbert brings up a serious problem: Pip wants to turn his back on the convict's generosity, but Herbert warns that Provis "is an ignorant determined man, who has long had one fixed idea" and seems to be "a man of a desperate and fierce character".

"See, then", said Herbert; "think of this! He comes here at the peril of his life, for the realisation of his fixed idea. In the moment of realisation, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do, under the disappointment?"

Pip can see no good outcome, fearing the convict's remaining near him but also fearing his own guilt if the convict should be captured, after all that he had done for him. Herbert asserts that the only outcome is to get the convict out of England and that the only way to accomplish this is for Pip to leave with him. Only after this is accomplished can Pip make his break from his benefactor.

Pip decides that he must know more of the life history of his benefactor and resolves that the best way to find out is to ask him "point-blank". When Provis comes down the next morning, and after he has finished his breakfast, Pip asks him if he recalls that night on the marshes, and says that he and Herbert want to know about the other convict and about himself as well. After reminding Herbert that he is on his oath not to repeat any of it, Provis sits down to tell his story.

The convict's story

The convict begins the story of his life and the events before and after Pip’s encounter with him on the marshes in straightforward fashion:

"Dear boy and Pip's comrade [Herbert]. I am not a-going fur to tell you my life, like a song or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend."

The convict tells how just about everything possible has been done to him, except to be hanged. He’d been locked up, pushed about, put in stocks, and whipped. He has no idea where he was born, and his first recollections are of stealing turnips for a living, and being abandoned by a tinker, who "took the fire with him, and left me wery cold".

He knows that his name is Abel Magwitch, but can't recall how he knows, any more than he recalls how he learned the names of birds. He also can't recall anyone in his youth who wasn't frightened of him, and either drove him off or fought him. In and out of prison, he was pronounced as a hardened young criminal: "May be said to live in jails, this boy." He begged and stole and sometimes worked, when someone would give him some work.

Compeyson

The convict relates that, more than 20 years earlier, he fell in with a con man named Compeyson. A man "whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the claw of a lobster". Compeyson was "the other convict" with whom Magwitch was fighting on the marshes in Pip’s childhood.

"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too."

A mutual friend at a racetrack introduced Magwitch to Compeyson as "a man that might suit you"—a criminal accomplice. "'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck,' says Compeyson to me." "'Luck changes,' says Compeyson; 'perhaps yours is going to change'."

Compeyson engages Magwitch to be "his man and pardner" in his "business", which is "swindling, handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like".

Arthur

At the time that Magwitch met Compeyson, Compeyson had another confederate, named Arthur, who was in a "decline", being deathly ill. Arthur and Compeyson "had been in a bad thing with a rich lady some years afore, and they'd made a pot of money by it". Now Arthur was dying poor "and with the horrors on him". Only Compeyson’s wife took pity on Arthur "and Compeyson was a-having pity on nothing and nobody".

Compeyson kept a tally of Arthur's room and board, in case Arthur should ever recover, but he didn't. One night, Magwitch says, Arthur came tearing downstairs and says to Compeyson's wife: "'Sally, she really is up-stairs alonger me now, and I can't get rid of her. She's all in white', he says, 'wi' white flowers in her hair, and she's awful mad, and she's got a shroud hanging over her arm, and she says she'll put it on me at five in the morning'."

Compeyson ridicules Arthur: "Why, you fool, don't you know she's got a living body? And how should she be up there, without coming through the door, or in at the window, and up the stairs?"

"'I don't know how she's there,' says Arthur, shivering dreadful with the horrors, 'but she's standing in the corner at the foot of the bed, awful mad. And over where her heart's broke—you broke it!—there's drops of blood'."

Magwitch tells how he and Sally took Arthur back upstairs and Sally gave him some liquor to calm him; but a few minutes before five in the morning, Arthur awoke and screamed that "She's got the shroud again. She's unfolding it. She's coming out of the corner. She's coming to the bed." Arthur imagines that the shroud has been put over his shoulders: "Then he lifted himself up hard, and was dead."

Compeyson's betrayal of Magwitch

Magwitch realises that he should have taken warning from the experience with Arthur of Compeyson's perfidy, but did not to the convict's misfortune. Magwitch and Compeyson had several misdemeanour brushes with the law, but after about four or five years as Compeyson's confederate, the pair were brought up on a felony charge of passing stolen notes. Compeyson set up Magwitch by telling him that they would put up separate defences and would not communicate with each other. At trial Compeyson looked like a gentleman, while Magwitch had to sell "all the clothes I had, escept what hung on my back", to pay for Jaggers to defend him. The evidence presented made it appear that Magwitch was the author of the criminal scheme and Compeyson's lawyer played on the contrast between Compeyson and Magwitch to place the burden on Magwitch:

 'My lord and gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, and only suspected; t'other, the elder, always seen in 'em and always wi'his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and, if there is two in it, which is much the worst one?' 

Compeyson's defence at Magwitch's expense had the desired effect and Magwitch received a fourteen-year sentence while Compeyson was given half that time "and ain't it him as the Judge is sorry for, because he might a done so well, and ain't it me as the Judge perceives to be a old offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?"

Compeyson and Magwitch were put in the same prison-ship, but Magwitch could not get at him, though he tried. At one point Magwitch did get ahold of Compeyson, but was immediately seen and seized and placed in the "black-hole" of the ship, from which Magwitch promptly escaped and made his way to shore, which is where he was hiding among the graves when he encountered the then-seven-year-old Pip. Young Pip's mention to Magwitch of the other person he encountered on the marshes that time made Magwitch realize that Compeyson was there, too, apparently driven to escape by his terror of Magwitch. Magwitch attacked and beat Compeyson until he was stopped by the arrival of the soldiers. Compeyson was again given a light punishment for his escape, but Magwitch was retried and sent for life imprisonment, though he later was released on condition of never returning to England.

After a pause, Pip asks if Compeyson is dead. "He hopes I am, if he's alive, you may be sure", with a fierce look. "I never heerd no more of him."

When Magwitch's story is finished, Herbert, who has been writing in the cover of a book, softly pushes the book over to Pip, who reads Herbert's words: "Young Havisham’s name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man who professed to be Miss Havisham's lover".

Pip seeks Estella and returns again to Satis House

Pip dwells on the convict’s story and situation. He fears also that Compeyson might still be alive and that, as he is a man “in mortal fear” of Provis, Compeyson would not hesitate to “release himself for good from a dreaded enemy” by informing on him.

Pip’s mind also turns to Estella. He would never “breathe—or so I resolved—a word of Estella to Provis” but he resolves that he must see both Estella and Miss Havisham before going abroad with Provis. He resolves to go to Richmond to see Estella the next day, and does so, but upon reaching there learns that Estella has already gone to Satis House. This discomfits him, as Estella has never returned to Satis House without Pip as her companion. His further questions receive reserved answers, disturbing him still further. Not wanting to mention Estella to Provis, he makes the excuse that he is bound to visit Joe, so that he may go immediately to Miss Havisham and Estella.

Encounter with Drummle

Returning to his home town, Pip is surprised to encounter Bentley Drummle at The Blue Boar. The pair pretend not to recognize each other, but soon engage in pointed conversation in which Drummle makes a point of criticizing the area he knows is Pip’s home. Drummle refers to their late dispute at the Finches and says that Pip shouldn’t have lost his temper then and, when Pip tells him that this conversation is disagreeable, Drummle suggests that Pip not lose his temper now: "Haven’t you lost enough without that?" Drummle will not explain this comment, but makes it clear that he is referring to Estella; he departs, leaving Pip angry and disturbed.

Confronting Miss Havisham

Arriving at Satis House, Pip finds Miss Havisham with Estella, who is quietly knitting beside her. The women exchange a glance that suggests that they see a change in Pip’s demeanour. Miss Havisham asks Pip “what wind blows you here?” and Pip responds that, since some wind had blown Estella there, he followed, and Pip adds:

"What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before you, presently—in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it will not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant me to be."

Pip tells Miss Havisham that he has found out who his patron is, but says he can say no more about that, since it is not his secret, but another’s. Pip says that he now understands that he was brought to Satis House as a child on Miss Havisham’s whim, as no more than a kind of paid servant. Miss Havisham nods assent; then Pip brings up Mr. Jaggers, the convict’s and Miss Havisham’s mutual attorney, but Miss Havisham cuts him off, saying that the fact of that coincidence has no greater meaning.

Miss Havisham also agrees that she took advantage of the fact that her "self-seeking relations", the Pocket family, thought Pip was their rival for Miss Havisham’s money, and that she took pleasure in letting them think so. Pip hastens to let Miss Havisham know that he had become close to one part of the Pocket family, Herbert and his father Matthew, and that she has wronged them, as they are "generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing or mean." Pip contrasts them with the other Pockets, a point that Miss Havisham seems to appreciate.

Referring to Matthew and Herbert’s branch of the family, Miss Havisham bluntly asks Pip: “What do you want for them?” "Only", responds Pip, "that you would not confound them with the others. They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the same nature."

Again Miss Havisham asks: "What do you want for them?" At that Pip reveals that he would like Miss Havisham to finish what he had started in aiding Herbert, but doesn’t want this revealed to him, and that it is part of the secret of "another person" that Pip had earlier alluded to, meaning the convict.

Pip proclaims his love to Estella

Miss Havisham is silent for a time, then asks "What else?" and Pip addresses himself to Estella:

"Estella", said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly." […] "I know. I have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house."

Estella shakes her head during this revelation, and at this point shakes it again, then Pip continues:

"It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella."

Miss Havisham reacts to this by placing her hand to her heart, and looking back and forth between Pip and Estella, but Estella is unmoved. "When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don't care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?" Miserably, Pip responds "Yes."

Estella's plans, and Pip's response

Pip explains that he pursued Estella against her warnings because he thought that it was not "in Nature" that someone "so young, untried, and beautiful" could really have meant her expressions of coldness. The conversation then turns to Bentley Drummle, and Estella acknowledges that he is to dine with her that day. "You cannot love him, Estella!" Pip says; "You would never marry him, Estella?" After a brief consideration, Estella says: "Why not tell you the truth?" "I am going to be married to him." Pip drops his face into his hands in the "agony it gave to me hear those words." When he looks up again, "there was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham's [face], that it impressed me, even in my passionate hurry and grief."

Pip entreats Estella not to fall victim to what he believes are Miss Havisham's manipulations, begging her to "put me aside for ever—you have done so, I well know, but bestow yourself on some worthier person than Drummle." These pleas raise not compassion in Estella, but wonder at his earnestness:

"I am going", she said again, in a gentler voice, "to be married to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my mother by adoption? It is my own act."

"Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!" Pip urges in despair.

"Don't be afraid of my being a blessing to him", Estella retorts, "I shall not be that.: She offers her hand in friendship to Pip, but Pip’s tears flow freely. "O Estella!" Pip answers, " how could I see you Drummle's wife?"

"Nonsense", Estella returns, "You will get me out of your thoughts in a week."

"Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then." Pip declares his undying bond with Estella and that "to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!"

To these declarations Estella looks at Pip "with incredulous wonder", but "the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse."

Pip returns to London and receives a warning

In his despair and defeat, Pip decides that he cannot go back to the inn as he “may see Drummle there; that I could not bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to; that I could do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out.” Pip sets out to walk the entire distance to return to London.

It is past midnight when Pip crosses London Bridge. “Muddy and weary,” he is not angered by the guard at The Temple examining him carefully. Pip mention his name to identify himself. The guard then says: "I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, sir. The messenger that brought it, said would you be so good as read it by my lantern?"

"Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed to Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were the words, 'PLEASE READ THIS, HERE.' I opened it, the watchman holding up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing:

" 'DON'T GO HOME.' "

The convict endangered

Turning immediately from the gate of the Temple as soon as he had read Wemmick’s message, Pip makes his way to Covent Garden, where rooms can be had even late at night. Pip spends a miserable night in a sooty and dusty room where, despite being “footsore, weary, and wretched,” Pip cannot sleep, as his thoughts always return to Wemmick’s note: “DON’T GO HOME.”

Early the next morning, Pip travels to the Castle, Wemmick’s home, arriving at eight o’clock, finding Wemmick in a cheerful mood. Wemmick reminds Pip that he is talking to Pip in an “extra official” capacity; i.e., confidentially and separately from his duties as Jaggers’ clerk. Wemmick, by hints, turns, and indirection, informs Pip that he has overheard talk that suggests that conjectures are being made of the Convict’s whereabouts and that Pip and his quarters are being watched, though Wemmick refuses to say by whom, as it might conflict with his “official responsibilities.”

Following this thread, Pip enquires as to whether Wemmick has heard "of a man of bad character, whose true name is Compeyson?" Wemmick nods, and Pip’s further enquiries whether Compeyson is living, and in London receives nods as well.

Wemmick tells Pip that he sought out and found Herbert Pocket, and informed him that "if he was aware of anybody" around his chambers, that "anybody" should be gotten out of the way, though not too far away as yet, meaning that the Convict must be moved, but it was yet not safe to try to effect his removal from England.

After being "all of a heap for half an hour", Herbert decides to move the Convict to the home of a young lady he has been courting, where she lives with her bedridden father.

The convict’s new hiding place

Pip spends the remainder of the day with Wemmick’s aged father, in order to rest and collect himself, and goes next morning to an area of the Thames where ships are built, repaired and broken up, where he is to seek the home of Herbert’s fiancée, Clara Barley.

Pip finds the area he is seeking, called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin, at the house of Mrs. Whimple. The elderly lady answering the door is immediately replaced by Herbert who leads him inside:

"All is well, Handel", said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and then we'll go up-stairs.—That's her father."

Clara’s father, referred to simply as “Old Barley,” is a former seaman who is continually drunk on rum, and though he is unseen in his rooms, his growlings, yelling, and cursing are a constant presence:

"Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back, like a drifting old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you."

This is Pip’s transcription of Barley’s carryings on, though he notes that the continual use of "bless" is actually a stronger oath that Pip will not write, meaning "damn." Pip finds the convict, Magwitch, who Pip still refers to as Provis, but is now known and referred to in his new lodging as "Mr. Campbell":

In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened—indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never afterwards recall how when I tried; but certainly.

Pip asks Provis whether he trusts Jaggers’s judgment, and he assents that he does. Pip tells him all that he knows about the convict’s being in danger. Pip tells him that he will be held closely in this house for a time, until he can be safely moved out and removed by boat from England, a task that is to be accomplished by having Pip and Herbert practice rowing so as to remove Provis to a spot where he and Pip can meet and board an ocean-going steamer.

I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never recognize us if we came below Bridge and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But, we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was right.

Taking his leave, Pip returns to the Temple, where in the ensuing days and weeks he obtains a boat to practice rowing on the Thames in preparation for removing the convict by this means when the time is right. Pip practices hard and often, sometimes alone and sometimes with Herbert. He becomes a familiar presence rowing on the Thames, which is his intention, so that his comings and goings on the boat will not arouse particular note and suspicion.

Though weeks pass with all being well, and no hint of trouble, Pip lives in constant fear that the convict’s pursuers may appear at any time.

An unwelcome discovery

Nothing is heard from Wemmick for some time. Pip’s financial affairs are deteriorating and he feels he cannot take any more of the convict’s money, returning the cash filled pocketbook the convict had given him for safekeeping. Another of Pip’s fears is that Estella has already married and he avoids newspapers lest he read something to confirm that fear.

One cold February evening, after a day of rowing, Pip decides to stop at a chophouse for dinner. There he unexpectedly encounters Mr. Wopsle, who Pip had understood to have given up his attempts at legitimate theatre, playing a comic pantomime. To Pip’s surprise he sees Mr. Wopsle glaring in his direction with a look as though he were turning many things over in his mind amidst a growing confusion. As Pip leaves the performance, he finds Mr. Wopsle waiting for him. Mr. Wopsle tells Pip that he saw him, but also someone else: "It is the strangest thing […] and yet I could swear to him." Becoming alarmed, Pip pressed Mr. Wopsle to explain his meaning, to which he responds that he saw a figure sitting behind Pip "like a ghost", and that he was certain it was someone he had seen on Christmas Day long ago, when Pip was a child. Mr. Wopsle asks Pip to recall the two fighting prisoners on the marshes and says that the person behind Pip was one of those prisoners. Pip wants to know which of the two Mr. Wopsle believed he saw: "The one who had been mauled." Pip realizes with terror that the person who had been behind him was Magwitch's enemy Compeyson.

Estella’s mother

About a week after Pip’s encounter with Mr. Wopsle, Pip again finds himself looking for a place to dine after a day’s rowing. Strolling into Cheapside he is suddenly overtaken by Mr. Jaggers who, determining that Pip has not yet decided on a place to eat, invites Pip to dine with him.

A note from Miss Havisham

The pair stop at Jaggers’s office, where they meet Wemmick who is also to dine with them, and take a hackney-coach to Jaggers’s residence, where dinner is served immediately upon their arrival. Jaggers has Wemmick give Pip a note received from Miss Havisham that says that she wishes to see Pip on a matter of business, meaning the gift for Herbert. Beyond that, Pip observes that Wemmick is uncharacteristically cool to him, looking up only at Jaggers and not addressing Pip directly, "and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks and this was the wrong one."

Pip is distracted by Jaggers's servant Molly

Jaggers comments that "our friend the Spider", meaning Drummle, "has played his cards. He has won the pool." In this fashion Pip has certainty stamped on the truth he had been avoiding, that Estella was now Drummle’s wife. As Jaggers holds forth with some additional comments on the matter, Pip is distracted by Molly, Jaggers's maidservant, who, in drawing back from the table after serving Jaggers made "a certain action of her fingers as she spoke that arrested my attention."

"The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. [...] Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion very lately! [...] I looked at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair; and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of, and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and a stormy life. [...] And I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella’s mother."

Pip and Wemmick leave Mr. Jaggers’s dinner early, and as they walked together the “right” Wemmick reemerged:

"Well!" said Wemmick, "that's over! He's a wonderful man, without his living likeness; but I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine with him—and I dine more comfortably unscrewed."

Seeing that Wemmick is open to talk, Pip wants to know if Wemmick has ever seen Estella. "No." Then Pip asks what is most immediately on his mind:

"Wemmick," said I, "do you remember telling me before I first went to Mr. Jaggers's private house, to notice that housekeeper?" Wemmick did. "A wild beast tamed, you called her. [...] How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?"

"That's his secret. She has been with him many a long year."

"I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest in being acquainted with it. You know that what is said between you and me goes no further."

Molly's story

Wemmick says that he doesn’t know all of Molly’s story, but what he knows he will tell Pip, "in our private and personal capacities, of course."

"A score or so" years earlier, Molly was tried at the Old Bailey for murder, and was acquitted. Mr. Jaggers was her attorney "and worked the case in a way quite astonishing." A very difficult case, it virtually made his reputation as a lawyer, in Wemmick’s view. "The murdered person was a woman; a woman, a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. Both women "led tramping lives,” and the younger “had been married very young [...] to a tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of jealousy." The older woman was found dead in a barn; there had been "a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had been held by the throat at last and choked." There was no reasonable evidence to implicate anyone other than Molly, but Jaggers made his case on the improbability that a woman as small as Molly could overpower one so much larger. Wemmick points out that "Jaggers never dwelt upon the strength of her hands then, though he sometimes does now."

Jaggers so very artfully dressed Molly from the time of her apprehension that she looked much slighter than she really was; in particular, her sleeves were done so as make her arms appear delicate. "She had only a bruise or two about her—nothing for a tramp—but the backs of her hands were lacerated, and the question was, was it with finger-nails? In this Jaggers demonstrated that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles which were not as high as her face and that bits of brambles were actually found in her skin and put in evidence, and that the brambles in question were found on examination "to have been broken through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little spots of blood upon them here and there."

The boldest point Jaggers made, Wemmick relates, is that the prosecution attempted to prove this was a crime of jealousy, that Molly was "under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man—some three years old—to revenge herself upon him." Mr. Jaggers skillfully asserted that the marks on her hand were the marks of brambles, not finger-nails, and that the prosecution set up the "hypothesis that she destroyed her child." While Jaggers allows that "[f]or anything we know, she may have destroyed her child, and the child in clinging to her may have scratched her hands," he then challenges the prosecution as to why she is not being tried for the murder of the child. " ’To sum up, sir,' said Wemmick, 'Mr. Jaggers was altogether too many for the Jury, and they gave in.’ "

From that point Molly, immediately after her acquittal, went into Jaggers’s service and she is still there "tamed as she is now."

"Do you remember the sex of the child?" queries Pip. "Said to have been a girl."

Miss Havisham's generosity, and her remorse

Significant characters in "Great Expectations"

Pip, the protagonist, and his family

• Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip – an orphan, and the protagonist. Pip is to be trained as a blacksmith, a low but skilled and honest profession, but strives to rise above his class after meeting Estella Havisham.
  • Handel- Herbert Pocket's nickname for Pip, which he uses to address Pip from their first meeting.
• Joe Gargery - Pip's brother-in-law, and his first father figure. Joe represents the poor but honest life that Pip rejects.
• Mrs. Joe Gargery - Pip's adult sister, who brings him up after the death of their parents, but complains constantly of the burden Pip is to her. A hot tempered woman, Mrs. Joe goads Joe into defending her honour against Orlick, Joe's journeyman blacksmith, who secretly attacks her as revenge, eventually leading to her death.
• Mr. Pumblechook - Joe's uncle, an officious bachelor man who tells Mrs. Joe how noble she is to bring up Pip, and who holds Pip in disdain. As the person who first connected Pip to Miss Havisham, he ever after claimed to have been the original architect of Pip's good fortune.

Miss Havisham and her family

• Miss Havisham - Wealthy spinster who takes Pip on as a companion, and who Pip is led to believe is his benefactor. Miss Havisham does not discourage this as it fits into her own spiteful plans.
• Estella [Havisham] - Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, who Pip pursues romantically throughout the novel. Estella represents the life of wealth and culture that Pip strives for. Since her ability to love any man (or anyone for that matter) has been ruined by Miss Havisham, she is unable to return Pip's passion. She warns Pip of this repeatedly, but he is unwilling or unable to believe her.
• Arthur (Havisham) - Miss Havisham's half-brother, who felt he was shortchanged in his inheritance by their father's preference for his daughter. He joined with Compeyson in the scheme to cheat Miss Havisham of large sums of money by gaining Miss Havisham's trust through promise of marriage to Compeyson. Arthur is haunted by the memory of the scheme and sickens and dies in a delirium, imagining that the still-living Miss Havisham is in his room, coming to kill him. Arthur has died before the beginning of the novel, and is only described to Pip by Magwitch.
• Herbert Pocket - a member of the Pocket family, Miss Havisham's presumed heirs, who Pip first meets as a "pale young gentlemen" at Miss Havisham's house when both are children. He is the son of Matthew Pocket, Pip's tutor in the "gentlemanly" arts, and shares his apartment with Pip in London, becoming Pip's fast friend who is there to share Pip's happiness as well as his troubles.

Characters from Pip's youth

• The Convict - an escapee from a prison ship, who Pip treats kindly, and who turns out to be his benefactor, at which time his real name is revealed to be Abel Magwitch, but who is also known as Provis and Mr. Campbell in parts of the story to protect his identity.
  • Abel Magwitch - the convict's given name.
  • Provis - a name that Abel Magwitch uses when he returns to London, to conceal his identity.
  • Mr. Campbell - a name that Abel Magwitch uses after he is discovered in London by his enemy.
• Mr. Wopsle - The clerk of the church in Pip's town. He later gives up the church work and moves to London to pursue his ambition to be an actor.
  • Mr. Waldengarver - The stage name that Mr. Wopsle adopts as an actor in London.
• Biddy - The granddaughter of Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt; the latter runs an evening school in her home in Pip's village and Biddy becomes Pip's teacher. A kind and intelligent but poor young woman, like Pip and Estella an orphan, who is the opposite of Estella. Pip ignores Biddy's obvious love for him as he fruitlessly pursues Estella. After he realises the error of his life choices, he returns to claim Biddy as his bride, only to find out she has married Joe Gargery.

The attorney and his circle

• Mr. Jaggers - Prominent London attorney who represents the interests of diverse clients, both criminal and civil. He represents Pip's benefactor and is Miss Havisham's attorney as well. By the end of the story, his law practice is the common element that touches many of the characters.
• Mr. (John) Wemmick - Jaggers's clerk, only called "Mr. Wemmick" and "Wemmick" except by his father, who himself is referred to as "The Aged Parent", "The Aged P.", or simply "The Aged." Wemmick is Pip's chief go-between with Jaggers and generally looks after Pip in London.
• Molly - Mr. Jaggers' maidservant who Jaggers saved from the gallows for murder. She is revealed to be the former wife of Magwitch, and the natural mother of Estella.

Pip's antagonists

• Compeyson (surname) - another convict, and enemy to Magwitch. A professional swindler, he had been Miss Havisham's intended husband, who was in league with Arthur to defraud Miss Havisham of her fortune. He pursues Magwitch when he learns that he is in London and eventually dies while battling him.
• "Dolge" Orlick - Journeyman blacksmith at Joe Gargery's forge. Strong, rude and sullen, he is as churlish as Joe is gentle and kind. His resentments cause him to take actions which threaten his desires in life, but for which he blames others. He ends up in a fistfight with Joe over Mrs. Joe's taunting and is easily beaten. This set in motion an escalating chain of events that lead him to secretly injure Mrs. Joe grievously and eventually make an attempt on Pip's life.
• Bentley Drummle - A coarse unintelligent young man whose only saving graces are that he is to succeed to a title and his family is wealthy. Pip meets him at Mr. Pocket's house, as Drummle is also to be trained in gentlemanly skills. Drummle is hostile to Pip and everyone. He is a rival to Pip for Estella's attentions and eventually marries her.
  • "The Spider" - Mr. Jaggers' nickname for Drummle.

Significant places in "Great Expectations"

The physical setting

• Rochester, Kent and surrounding countryside – locale of Pip's childhood home
• London and environs in the early 19th century – primary location of the events of Pip's adult life

Real places referred to

• The marshes - Wetlands on the banks of the River Thames estuary in Kent near to Pip's boyhood home and town.
• The Hulks - Prison ships anchored off the marshes holding prisoners who are to be transported to Australia as punishment.
• Little Britain - Old London neighbourhood of narrow streets and location of Mr. Jaggers's offices.
• Newgate Prison - ancient prison near Mr. Jaggers's office, where criminals are imprisoned and executed.

Fictional places in Kent

• The Forge - the workplace and home of Pip and his family. In the forge itself his substitute father Joe Gargery works as a master blacksmith. Pip later works there as his apprentice.
• Satis House - also known as Manor House, Miss Havisham's ruined mansion where she lives with her adopted daughter Estella, and where Pip serves for years as her periodic companion.
• The Three Jolly Bargemen - The public house and general meeting place of Pip's town.
• The Blue Boar - Inn/hotel in Pip's home town.

Fictional places in London

• Barnard's Inn - Shabby apartment block in London where Pip shares a flat with Herbert Pocket.
• The Castle - Wemmick's fanciful home, where he lives with his father and receives Pip.
• The Temple - Location of houses where Pip and Herbert move, and where Pip meets his benefactor.

Comparison to Dickens' other works

There is very little agreement amongst readers as to which of Dickens' novels is the best, but today Great Expectations is often placed near the top of polls. This contrasts with the end of the 19th century, when the author George Gissing, in his study of Dickens' works, had to remind the readers of the plot of Great Expectations as it was largely ignored compared to his other works. The book's lack of popularity shortly after it was written and its greater status today is perhaps due to the fact that it is the least "Dickensian" of any of his books. The usual grotesque characters common to many of his books are more muted and believable in this book. The book is very carefully plotted and less episodic than many of Dickens' other stories with the central character's changing viewpoint and perception of the world around him an important element of the story. There was an academic revival of interest, particularly by American critics starting in the 1940s, which has since placed it in the canon of often-read school texts.

The character of Pip contrasts sharply with the title characters in such books as Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. In these novels, the main character is more simply portrayed and the characters around them are of far greater interest. Pip, on the other hand, begins as a likeable, but simple child, but develops into quite an unsympathetic character later in the book. Dickens draws the reader into following the fortunes of the changing Pip from childhood - a subject in which Dickens is an acknowledged master - on to a rather snobbish and objectionable adolescent and then to his final reformation. Although he would probably not have liked to admit it, Dickens himself was a very clear model for Pip's personality. Despite having great fondness for the poor and oppressed and wishing to improve their conditions, Dickens felt himself to be superior to them. What he saw as a shameful personal connection to the poor earlier in his life made his desire to separate from them more pronounced, and this is mirrored in Pip's story.

The ending of the book is another measure of the difference to other Dickens novels and also greatly affects the reader's interpretation of the whole story. Dickens originally wrote an unhappy ending to the book that was, however, consistent with the book's theme. Dickens rarely did this and indeed it was very unusual for Victorian novels in general. After talking to his friends and fellow novelists Wilkie Collins and Edward Bulwer-Lytton he re-wrote a more hopeful ending which is the one used in all subsequent editions. Many critics regard the first ending as far more in keeping with the morality of the proceeding story but the second ending is acknowledged to be better written from a stylistic point of view. Both endings though are atypical compared to his other books and shows an uncertainty or ambivalence in the author's mind as to how the work should be ended.

Like many of Dickens's works, Great Expectations has been criticized for its excessive use of words. ^{[citation needed]} This may be related to the fact he was paid by installement for his serialised work (although often mistaken for being paid by the word). It is possible that the installment approach did lead to a more verbose style than would otherwise have been used. ^[3]

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Like many other Dickens novels, Great Expectations has been filmed several times:

Main article: Great Expectations (film)

• 1917 - silent, starring Jack Pickford, directed by Robert G. Vignola.
• 1922 - silent, made in Denmark, starring Martin Herzberg, directed by A.W. Sandberg.
• 1934 - starring Phillips Holmes and Jane Wyatt, directed by Stuart Walker.
• 1946 - starring John Mills as Pip and Jean Simmons as Estella, directed by David Lean.
• 1959 - starring Dinsdale Landen as Pip, Helen Lindsay as Estella and Derek Benfield as Landlord. (BBC television series)
• 1967 - starring Gary Bond and Francesca Annis.
• 1974 - starring Michael York and Sarah Miles, directed by Joseph Hardy.
• 1981 - starring Derek Francis, directed by Julian Amyes.
• 1989 - starring Anthony Hopkins as Magwitch and Jean Simmons as Miss Havisham, directed by Kevin Connor.
• 1998 - starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, directed by Alfonso Cuarón.
• 1999 - starring Ioan Gruffudd as Pip, Justine Waddell as Estella, and Charlotte Rampling as Miss Havisham (Masterpiece Theatre—TV)

A spin-off movie depicts the adventures of Magwitch in Australia:

• 1986 - Great Expectations, the Untold Story, starring John Stanton, directed by Tim Burstall.

Reference

1. ^ Meckier, Jerome Dating the Action in Great Expectations: A New Chronology.
2. ^ God Bless The Child That's Got His Own, by Elaine O'Toole
3. ^ Was Dickens really paid by the word?. The Dickens Project - Dickens FAQ. Retrieved on 2006-06-23.

See also

• Great Expectations (film)
• Pip (South Park episode) parody style treatment

External links

Online editions

• Great Expectations, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• Great Expectations - Searchable HTML version.
• Great Expectations - Easy to read HTML verson.
• Great Expectations - PDF scans of the entire novel as it originally appeared in The Strand Magazine.

Study Guides

• Great Expectations - CliffNotes
• Great Expectations - MonkeyNotes
• Great Expectations - Barron's Booknotes
• Great Expectations - BookRags
• Great Expectations - SparkNotes