GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Charles Dickens

Summary

Pip (Philip Pirrip) is a young orphan living with his sister, Mrs. Joe, and her husband, Mr. Joe Gargery, the
village blacksmith, in the marshes of Kent, southeast of England. One evening, Pip sits in a cemetery looking at his
parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict named Magwitch, springs up from behind a tombstone, grabs
Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon
captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself.
One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy dowager Miss
Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she goes and keeps all the
clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named Estella, who
treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of becoming a wealthy
gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham intends to make him a gentleman
and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis House, Miss
Havisham decides to help him become a common labourer in his family’s business.
With Miss Havisham’s guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith. Pip
works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain, kind Biddy and
encountering Joe’s malicious day labourer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Mrs. Joe is viciously
attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her signals, Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack.
One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large fortune, and
Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily assumes that his previous
hopes have come true — that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that the old woman intends for him to
marry Estella. In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggers’s law clerk,
Wemmick. He expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine
after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew Pocket, Herbert’s father. Herbert
himself helps Pip learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to receive an income
from his fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has chosen for himself. But for now,
Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London, enjoying themselves and running up debts.
Orlick reappears in Pip’s life, employed as Miss Havisham’s porter, but is promptly fired by Jaggers after Pip
reveals Orlick’s unsavoury past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief and
remorse.

Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges into Pip’s room — the convict, Magwitch, who stuns
Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of his fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved by
his kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune in Australia for that very
purpose. Pip is stunned, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued
both by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime.
A complicated mystery begins to fall into place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned
Miss Havisham at the altar and that Estella is Magwitch’s daughter (1). Miss Havisham has raised her to break
men’s hearts, as revenge for the pain her own broken heart caused her. Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella
to practice on; Miss Havisham delighted in Estella’s ability to toy with his affections.
As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitch’s escape
attempt, Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to Satis House, where
Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him in the past, and he forgives her. Later that day,
when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes up in flames. She survives but becomes an
invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds and to plead for Pip’s forgiveness.
The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape attempt, Pip is
called to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil Orlick. Orlick is on the verge of
killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group of friends and saves Pip’s life. Pip and Herbert hurry back to effect
Magwitch’s escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the river on a rowboat, but they are discovered by the
police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and Compeyson fight in the river, and Compeyson is drowned.
Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his sentence is God’s forgiveness
and dies at peace.
After that, Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to care for him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from
home: Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to
the Pockets; Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write. After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home after him and
marry Biddy, but when he arrives there he discovers that she and Joe have already married.
Pip then decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he
encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her badly, but he is now
dead. Pip finds that Estella’s coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two leave the
garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again.

 (Note: This ending is not the one Dickens originally conceived. In the original manuscript version of the novel, Pip
runs into Estella through a chance coincidence, not at Satis House but on a London street. She has lost her first
husband but has also remarried, which diminishes the possibility that the reunion will trigger a new relationship
between Estella and Pip. In fact, Pip recounts the scene as a one-time incident, recalling that “I was afterwards very
glad to have had the interview.” Seeing Estella again and gleaning the impression that time has softened her and
made her kinder gives Pip a sense of peace, but this original ending makes it clear that Estella and Pip do not end
up together. Before publication, several of Dickens’s friends suggested he change the ending to something that at
least allowed for the possibility of a reconciliation. Dickens made the change, apparently with some reluctance.)

1) Who are Estella’s parents? At the end of the novel, Pip discovers that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and
Molly, a woman who now works as Jagger’s servant after being convicted of murder. This discovery is
important because Estella is elegant, refined, and beautiful, and on the basis of this impression, Pip has always
assumed that she must come from a high-class background. In fact, Estella’s origins are even lower than Pip’s
own.

Character List

- Pip: The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip is passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic
at heart, and he tends to expect more for himself than is reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and he
deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and socially.
- Estella: Miss Havisham’s beautiful young ward, Estella is Pip’s unattainable dream throughout the novel. He
loves her passionately, but, though she sometimes seems to consider him a friend, she is usually cold, cruel, and
uninterested in him. As they grow up together, she repeatedly warns him that she has no heart.
- Miss Havisham: She’s the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called Satis House near Pip’s
village. She’s manic and often seems insane, flitting around her house in a faded wedding dress, keeping a
decaying feast on her table, and surrounding herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. As a young
woman, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fiancé minutes before her wedding, and now she has a vendetta against
all men. She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge, training her to break men’s hearts.
- Abel Magwitch (“The Convict”): A fearsome criminal, Magwitch escapes from prison at the beginning of
Great Expectations and terrorises Pip in the cemetery. Pip’s kindness, however, makes a deep impression on him,
and he subsequently devotes himself to making a fortune and using it to elevate Pip into a higher social class.
Behind the scenes, he becomes Pip’s secret benefactor, funding Pip’s education and opulent lifestyle in London
through the lawyer Jaggers.
- Joe Gargery: Pip’s brother-in-law, the village blacksmith, Joe stays with his overbearing, abusive wife, Mrs.
Joe, solely out of love for Pip. Joe’s quiet goodness makes him one of the few completely sympathetic characters
in Great Expectations. Although he is uneducated and unrefined, he consistently acts for the benefit of those he
loves and suffers in silence when Pip treats him coldly.
- Jaggers: The powerful, foreboding lawyer hired by Magwitch to supervise Pip’s elevation to the upper class. As
one of the most important criminal lawyers in London, Jaggers is privy to some dirty business; he consorts with
vicious criminals, and even they are terrified of him. But there is more to Jaggers than his impenetrable exterior.
He often seems to care for Pip, and before the novel begins he helps Miss Havisham to adopt the orphaned
Estella. Jaggers smells strongly of soap: he washes his hands obsessively as a psychological mechanism to keep
the criminal taint from corrupting him.
- Herbert Pocket: Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a pale young gentleman,
Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in London, and Herbert becomes Pip’s best friend
and key companion after Pip’s elevation to the status of gentleman. Herbert nicknames Pip “Handel.” He is the
son of Matthew Pocket, Miss Havisham’s cousin, and hopes to become a merchant so that he can afford to marry
Clara Barley.
- Wemmick: Jaggers’s clerk and Pip’s friend, Wemmick is one of the strangest characters in Great Expectations.
At work, he is hard, cynical, sarcastic, and obsessed with “portable property”; at home in Walworth, he is jovial,
wry, and a tender caretaker of his “Aged Parent.”
- Biddy: A simple, kindhearted country girl, Biddy first befriends Pip when they attend school together. After
Mrs. Joe is attacked and becomes an invalid, Biddy moves into Pip’s home to care for her. Throughout most of
the novel, Biddy represents the opposite of Estella; she is plain, kind, moral, and of Pip’s own social class.
- Dolge Orlic: The day labourer in Joe’s forge, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of evil. He is malicious
and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it. He is responsible for the attack on Mrs. Joe, and he later
almost succeeds in his attempt to murder Pip
- Mrs. Joe: Pip’s sister and Joe’s wife, known only as “Mrs. Joe” throughout the novel. Mrs. Joe is a stern and
overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her husband and
her brother with her cane, which she calls “Tickler.” She also forces them to drink a foul-tasting concoction
called tar-water. Mrs. Joe is petty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something more than what she is, the
wife of the village blacksmith.
- Uncle Pumblechook: Pip’s pompous, arrogant uncle. (He is actually Joe’s uncle and, therefore, Pip’s “uncle-in-
law,” but Pip and his sister both call him “Uncle Pumblechook.”) A merchant obsessed with money,

 Pumblechook is responsible for arranging Pip’s first meeting with Miss Havisham. Throughout the rest of the
novel, he will shamelessly take credit for Pip’s rise in social status, even though he has nothing to do with it,
since Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor.
- Compeyson: A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated, gentlemanly outlaw
who contrasts sharply with the coarse and uneducated Magwitch. Compeyson is responsible for Magwitch’s
capture at the end of the novel. He is also the man who jilted Miss Havisham on her wedding day.
- Bentley Drummle: An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with Pip at the Pockets’
house, Drummle is a minor member of the nobility, and the sense of superiority this gives him makes him feel
justified in acting cruelly and harshly toward everyone around him. Drummle eventually marries Estella, to Pip’s
chagrin; she is miserable in their marriage and reunites with Pip after Drummle dies some eleven years later.
- Molly: Jaggers’s housekeeper. In Chapter 48, Pip realises that she is Estella’s mother.
- Mr. Wopsle: The church clerk in Pip’s country town; Mr. Wopsle’s aunt is the local schoolteacher. Sometime
after Pip becomes a gentleman, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and becomes an actor.
- Startop: A friend of Pip’s and Herbert’s. Startop is a delicate young man who, with Pip and Drummle, takes
tutelage with Matthew Pocket. Later, Startop helps Pip and Herbert with Magwitch’s escape.
- Miss Skiffin: Wemmick’s beloved, and eventual wife.

Themes
Ambition and Self-Improvement

The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important
than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson,
largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement — ideas that quickly become both the thematic centre
of the novel and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pip’s development. At heart, Pip is an
idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is better than what he already has, he immediately desires to
obtain the improvement. When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his
moral shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he realises that he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pip’s desire
for self-improvement is the main source of the novel’s title: because he believes in the possibility of
advancement in life, he has “great expectations” about his future. Ambition and self-improvement take three
forms in Great Expectations — moral, social, and educational; these motivate Pip’s best and his worst behaviour
throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts
immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for
instance, he torments himself about having behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires
social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by
Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms
the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirise the class system of his era and to
make a point about its capricious nature. Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and
certainly no more moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational
improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to marry Estella: a full education
is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social
advancement. Pip understands this fact as a child, when he learns to read at Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s school, and as a
young man, when he takes lessons from Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy, and
Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real worth and that
conscience and affection are to be valued above erudition and social standing.

Social Class

Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the most
wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class
(Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the novel’s plot and to the
ultimate moral theme of the book — Pip’s realisation that wealth and class are less important than affection,
loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realisation when he is finally able to understand that, despite the
esteem in which he holds Estella, one’s social status is in no way connected to one’s real character. Drummle,
for instance, is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth. Perhaps the most
important thing to remember about the novel’s treatment of social class is that the class system it portrays is
based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens generally ignores the nobility
and the hereditary aristocracy in favour of characters whose fortunes have been earned through commerce. Even
Miss Havisham’s family fortune was made through the brewery that is still connected to her manor. In this way, by
connecting the theme of social class to the idea of work and self-advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the
novel’s overarching theme of ambition and self-improvement.

 Crime, Guilt, and Innocence

The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely through the characters of the
convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the gallows at the prison
in London, the imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming an important symbol of Pip’s
inner struggle to reconcile his own inner moral conscience with the institutional justice system. In general, just as
social class becomes a superficial standard of value that Pip must learn to look beyond in finding a better way to
live his life, the external trappings of the criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become a
superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his inner conscience. Magwitch,
for instance, frightens Pip at first simply because he’s a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him because he is
afraid of the police. By the end of the book, however, Pip has discovered Magwitch’s inner nobility, and is able to
disregard his external status as a criminal. Prompted by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and the
police. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitch’s inner character, he has replaced an
external standard of value with an internal one.

Sophistication

In Great Expectations, Pip becomes obsessed with a desire to be sophisticated and takes damaging risks in order to
do so. After his first encounter with Estella, Pip becomes acutely self-conscious that “I was a common labouring-
boy; that my hands were coarse, that my boots were thick.” (pg. 59). Once he moves to London, Pip is exposed to a
glamorous urban world “so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted,” and he quickly begins to “contract
expensive habits.” As a result of spending money on things like a personal servant and fancy clothes, Pip quickly
falls into debt, and damages Herbert’s finances as well as his own. Even more troubling, Pip tries to avoid anyone
who might undermine his reputation as a sophisticated young gentleman. In the end, sophistication is revealed as
a shallow and superficial value because it does not lead to Pip achieving anything, and only makes him lonely
and miserable.
Education

Education functions as a force for social mobility and personal growth in the novel. Joe and Biddy both use
their education to pursue new opportunities, showing how education can be a good thing. Pip receives an education
that allows him to advance into a new social position, but Pip’s education improves his mind without supporting the
growth of his character. Biddy takes advantage to gather as much learning as she can, with Pip observing that she
“learns everything I learn,” and eventually becomes a schoolteacher. Biddy also teaches Joe to read and write. Pip’s
education does not actually provide him with practical skills or common sense, as revealed when Pip and Herbert
completely fail at managing their personal finances. Pip’s emotional transformation once he learns the identity of
his benefactor is what ultimately makes him into the man he wants to be, not anything he has learned in a
classroom.
Family

Although Pip and Estella both grow up as orphans, family is an important theme in the novel. Pip grows up with
love and support from Joe, but fails to see the value of the unconditional love Joes gives him. He eventually
reconciles with Joe after understanding his errors. Estella is exposed to damaging values from her adopted mother,
Miss Havisham, and gradually learns from experience what it actually means to care about someone. For both
characters, learning who to trust and how to have a loving relationship with family members is a major part of the
growing-up process. As Estella explains at the end of the novel, “suffering has been stronger than all other
teaching.” Both Estella and Pip make mistakes and live with the consequences of their family histories, but
their difficult family experiences also helps to give them perspective on what is truly important in life.

Symbols
• Satis House: In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize
Pip’s romantic perception of the upper class and many other themes of the book. On her decaying body, Miss
Havisham’s wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and degeneration. The wedding dress and the
wedding feast symbolize Miss Havisham’s past, and the stopped clocks throughout the house symbolize her
determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything from the way it was when she was jilted on her
wedding day. The brewery next to the house symbolizes the connection between commerce and wealth: Miss
Havisham’s fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism.
Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that pervade it, symbolize
the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole.
• The Mists on the Marshes: The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations and always sets
a tone that is perfectly matched to the novel’s dramatic action. The misty marshes near Pip’s childhood home in
Kent, one of the most evocative of the book’s settings, are used several times to symbolize danger and
uncertainty. As a child, Pip brings Magwitch a file and food in these mists; later, he is kidnapped by Orlick and
nearly murdered in them. Whenever Pip goes into the mists, something dangerous is likely to happen.

 Significantly, Pip must go through the mists when he travels to London shortly after receiving his fortune,
alerting the reader that this apparently positive development in his life may have dangerous consequences.
• Bentley Drummle: Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley Drummle provides an important
contrast with Pip and represents the arbitrary nature of class distinctions. In his mind, Pip has connected the ideas
of moral, social, and educational advancement so that each depends on the others. The coarse and cruel
Drummle, a member of the upper class, provides Pip with proof that social advancement has no inherent
connection to intelligence or moral worth. Drummle is a lout who has inherited immense wealth, while Pip’s
friend and brother-in-law Joe is a good man who works hard for the little he earns. Drummle’s negative example
helps Pip to see the inner worth of characters such as Magwitch and Joe, and eventually to discard his immature
fantasies about wealth and class in favour of a new understanding that is both more compassionate and more
realistic.
Key Facts

Author: Charles Dickens

Type Of Work: Novel
Genres: Bildungsroman, social criticism, autobiographical fiction
Time And Place Writte: London, 1860-1861
Date Of First Publication: Published serially in All the Year Round in England from December 1860 to August
1861; published in book form in England and America in 1861.
Climax: A sequence of climactic events occurs from Chapter 51 to Chapter 56: Miss Havisham’s burning in the
fire, Orlick’s attempt to murder Pip, and Pip’s attempt to help Magwitch escape London.
Setting (Time) : Mid-nineteenth century
Settings (Place): Kent and London, England.
Point Of View : First person
Falling Action: The period following Magwitch’s capture in Chapter 54, including Magwitch’s death, Pip’s
reconciliation with Joe, and Pip’s reunion with Estella eleven years later.
Tone: Comic, cheerful, satirical, wry, critical, sentimental, dark, dramatic, foreboding, Gothic, sympathetic.
Themes: Ambition and the desire for self-improvement (social, economic, educational, and moral); guilt,
criminality, and innocence; maturation and the growth from childhood to adulthood; the importance of affection,
loyalty, and sympathy over social advancement and class superiority; social class; the difficulty of maintaining
superficial moral and social categories in a constantly changing world.
Motifs: Crime and criminality; disappointed expectations; the connection between weather or atmosphere and
dramatic events; doubles (two convicts, two secret benefactors, two invalids, etc.
Symbols: The stopped clocks at Satis House symbolize Miss Havisham’s attempt to stop time; the many objects
relating to crime and guilt (gallows, prisons, handcuffs, policemen, lawyers, courts, convicts, chains, files)
symbolize the theme of guilt and innocence; Satis House represents the upper-class world to which Pip longs to
belong; Bentley Drummle represents the grotesque caprice of the upper class; Joe represents conscience, affection,
loyalty, and simple good nature; the marsh mists represent danger and ambiguity.