essay title great expectations

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Explore the implications of the title “Great Expectations” Analysis

Throughout literary history, the titling of a novel, play or poem can, has and will continue to define not just what a book will be filed under, but how it is received by the readership and critics alike. In the case of Dickens’ “Great Expectations”, the thematically driven ambiguity of the title allows readers and critics to draw interpretations of its implications based on theme, character and the interweaving of these in the narrative, whilst providing intrigue over its relevance and suitability to the Bildungsroman that Dickens crafts.Naturally, the very phrase “Great Expectations” provokes intrigue as to what these expectations are, and the variation between what is great, and expected by various characters is central to the presentation of character and its depth in the novel.

For Pip, the idea of “great expectations” is precisely that, a superficial idea, and it is Pip’s vehement and frequently misguided idealism over the obstacles and events that he comes across throughout his life that shapes his actions.One of the most important examples of this is upon his dreams of becoming a gentleman being realised- the superficial picture of the behaviour that constitutes “gentlemanliness” that he draws from the “very pretty, very proud and very insulting” Estella and the vengeful Miss Havisham lead him to begin to act in a way that is ultimately, “very pretty, very proud and very insulting” towards Joe and Biddy- he is “ashamed of him (Joe)” when Joe visits Satis House, and complains to Biddy that “I am not at all happy as I am.I am disgusted with my calling and with my life”, the ambition with which he so fervidly wishes to learn to read under Matthew Pocket, and to become “a gentleman” overtaking what he previously refers to as “a good natured companionship” with Joe and a description of Biddy, just a few paragraphs previous to his outburst, as “so clever”.However, by the end of the novel, Pip’s idealism has been replaced to an extent with a grounded compassion for life, and a partial realisation that it is not a crime to say “I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore- Yes, I do well”- however like much of the sparse praise afforded to Pip by his adult self in the novel, it stems from painful and foolish experience and ideals, and the negative influence of “Great Expectations”.

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However, Pip is not the only character upon whom the suffering of perceived “Great Expectations” falls, with the inextricably linked Estella and Miss Havisham providing another side to the idea of what constitutes “expectations” and how they are “great”. For Miss Havisham, her “Great Expectations” are great in the sense that they entirely consume her- Compeyson’s jilting of her leaves her in a static inversion of marital bliss, as she decays in her wedding dress- “I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white…

as faded and yellow”, this directly describing Miss Havisham, but also serving as a metaphor for the perceptions of the good and the “white” of expectation, and how throughout the novel these expectations so often become “faded and yellow”.In fact, Miss Havisham can be put on a par with Pip with her vehement idealism, yet hers is to “break their hearts”, and her lack of realisation as to the consequence of her actions is reflected at her outrage at Estella’s “Do you reproach me for being cold, you? upon Estella’s return to Satis House, with “Look at her, so hard and thankless”- the image that Miss Havisham moulded Estella to embody. However, like Pip, she is seen to have a moment of realisation upon the climax of her role- “What have I done! What have I done! ” upon her realisation that Pip was not her idealisation of the men she thought of and sought so bitterly to crush, just as Pip sees that fortune and power are not all that one can desire or be happy from.Like Pip however, her realisation seems futile when put into context with events, as shortly after she is rendered an invalid from the fire.

In contrast to these grandiose expectations that lead to misfortune and only latent redemption, the other side of what can constitute a “Great Expectation” is how it is relevant to he or she who pursues it, and this interpretation of the title is embodied by the character of Joe.From the start of the novel he is seen as an uncompromising character, his job as blacksmith embodying this, but he is described as having “Herculean” solidarity in “strength and in weakness”, implying the later realisation of his character as one, like many who belongs in one place and cannot fit in with another. However, it is the treatment of this, and the contrast between it from Pip to Joe and Joe to Pip that really sets apart the two characters- they both struggle with identity, yet the other’s reaction to this struggle is very different.Pip states that he “Knew I was ashamed of him” when Joe comes to Satis House, and recognises him by “his clumsy manner of coming upstairs”, rather than the sense of moral goodness and solidarity that Joe exudes throughout.

This treatment he receives from Pip is antithetical almost entirely to that which he gives to Pip- “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith.Divisions among such must come. . .

.”, Joe realising before it is too late, unlike Pip that changes must happen and that identity must be accepted, alongside his moral goodness but possible naivety by not blaming Pip, as perhaps he ought to, but on the inherently infallible failure of the human condition. This is furthered by the ending, as his greatest expectation is realised in his marriage to Biddy and his remaining at the forge and his hope that Little Pip “might turn out a little bit like you Pip”.Here Dickens masterfully illustrates how expectations are only truly made relevant and understood by who they are intended for, illustrating how Pip was never made to be a gentleman, yet Joe was always made to be his own gentleman, rather than the socially idealised one that is scorned throughout the text.

One of the pervading elements of the title in relation to the novel’s content is that of irony, and how the individual ironies of the plot shape the themes of the novel as a whole, and as a result shape the implications and meaning of the chosen title.One of the greatest of these stems from one of Pip’s guiding stars, his pursuit of the “very pretty and very proud” Estella. Pip’s agonies and moral naiveties over this subject are central to the novel as a whole, and this ironic naivety can be seen from the first time that they play cards. Estella describes him as a “common, labouring boy” and further on Pip states that he will “never cry for her again”, Dickens masterfully juxtaposing that childish outburst against the following adult line that is of course beneficial to hindsight, “Which was, I suppose, as false a declaration that was ever made”.

However, it is interesting that the greatest irony of her character is never realised and banished from his mind by Pip- even when he learns that his star, that all he has romantically aspired to is in fact one of the lowest of the social lows, born to a murderess and a convict, he does not alter from his cause to be with her, the book ending with the line “I saw no shadow of another parting from her”, even the happier of Dickens’ two endings still portraying the naivety in character and irony in determination Pip displays for the length of the novel, from this closing line filled with a yearning desire of unattainable companionship, back to the opening of the novel, which sees Pip describing how he drew foolish conclusions from gravestones as to their moral nature and ways, just as Pip draws foolish conclusions of the grandeur and beauty of fortune from the opulent surroundings of Satis House. This ironic quality to the novel, and the challenge and social damning of the concept of superficial idealism is one that runs throughout the novel, and is especially relevant in conjunction with the frequent doubling up of portrayals of character and theme.Thematically, the ambiguity irony of the title of “Great Expectations” means that it can be referenced in many themes reflected in the book- monetary expectations, romantic aspirations and moral fulfilment to name but a few, and as a consequence provoking thoughts over what “Great Expectations” is supposed to mean and ultimately will come to mean throughout the course of the novel. The idea of financial expectations and their outcomes (or lack of them) is one that is consistently referenced alongside those described in the title, and these manifest throughout the novel through many characters, most notably of course the eminently mediocre protagonist, Pip.

The course of his transition from the nai??vely sympathetic boy on the misty Kent marshes of Chapters 1-3, where he talks of his “good natured companionship” with Joe, to the moment of social mortification upon Joe’s appearance in at Satis House in Chapter 13 “I know I was ashamed of him- when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously”, highlights the profound impact that his exposure to the festering grandeur of Satis House and the subsequent expectation of wealth has had on him- he is moved to caring more for what is unfulfilled than what is enough, than what is satisfactory.This is highlighted by his sheer dismay when he learns that Miss Havisham had no intention of raising him to be a gentleman, “She seemed to prefer my being ignorant”, and is one of the first hints of the aforementioned ironic quality in the title “Great Expectations”. Love as an idea is one that like many of the themes of “Great Expectations”, has two sides to it caused by the ambiguity of the title, the skilful opposition of character and the reflective nature of the narrative.The first is that driven by these “Great Expectations”, the side that prompts Pip to fall in love with Estella, despite her continual “insulting” and cruelty, and the side that prompts Miss Havisham to regress into a state of vengeful decay, and mould Estella to “break their hearts”.

This reflective side to the novel can be seen in full when it comes to a close, as the two most morally sympathetic characters in Joe and Biddy finally get the affection that they truly deserved, Biddy having previously been only a confidante to Pip, and Joe having been paired with the fearsomely masculine Mrs Joe- to the extent that Dickens does not even grant her a female name.It is interesting also to note that the more minor characters of the book, those less affected by the tantalising distortion of “Great Expectations” are those who find love the most successfully- Wemmick and his beloved Miss Skiffins being a prime example. However, love in “Great Expectations” can be summarised as above- the ideals surrounding it are frequently misplaced by the characters of the novel, with Pip and Miss Havisham being prime examples, and it is only through suffering their evils or remaining true to their nature (with the exception of Miss Havisham) that can see them gain love- Dickens’ sense of social justice and commentary running through the plot more strongly through love than other aspects.However, the sense of love in “Great Expectations” is fully epitomised within the ending of the novel, and more specifically the initial ending that Dickens wished to publish.

Within this, Pip merely shakes hands with Estella, but this is enough for him to realise that “She gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be”, in contrast to “I saw no shadow of another parting from her”. The change in ending’s impact on the title of the story and its continuity has a definite effect- the first ending presents the idea that Estella has to herself remained cold, but to Pip has not, yet the alternative implies a realisation in herself that she has become a better person, that she is now “a better shape”.Meisel puts this secondary ending to be a “disembodied contemplation of life by those who have left it forever,” and this interpretation in my opinion is accurate- the secondary and published ending removes Pip from the all that he has suffered for through these “Great Expectations” and leaves him almost immunised from the suffering that he has caused and went through, an unsuitable and idealistic ending to a novel that is in its very being a challenge to social ideals. A final concept and intrigue relating to the title can be drawn from the meaning of the word “great” in terms of something of power, something that can force events and drive other people through things that are cruel and unwanted, but equally good and pure.

One of these examples can be seen in Estella- the influence of Miss Havisham on her causes to treat Pip with utmost cruelty, but she also consistently tells him “I have no heart”, as if encouraging his refraining from coming near her. This is epitomised at the close of the novel, with the phrase “Now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching…

I have been bent and broken-but, I hope- into a better shape”, highlighting how the power of Miss Havisham’s expectations moulded her into the “very pretty, very proud and very insulting” character that Pip came to adore, but also showing her sense of inner struggle and depth of character that renders her as ultimately a sympathetic character of the novel, .Of similar relevance to this, but in a slightly and importantly different way is Joe- the “Hercules” of the novel, but distressingly borne of this quality “in strength and in weakness”. Despite Pip’s snobbery that is interspersed with moments of personal and retrospective regret, another example of the expectation of self improvement that Pip feels, Joe is only ever respectful, calling him “Sir” when he comes to London, despite Pip’s expectations making him uncomfortable, as his hat, a metaphor for the character that he has to adopt as a result of Pip’s unrelenting and ruthless climb, or fall as it can be interpreted, “ever afterwards falling off at intervals”.However, despite this he always comes through when required, socially and morally when Pip returns to see him eleven years after effectively abandoning him “We hoped he might grow a little bit like you” in referring to “little Pip”, and antithetically perhaps, but equally reflecting upon his kind character, economically when he pays off Pip’s debts.

This again promotes an idea of uncertainty and incongruousness in the title- these forceful “Great Expectations” are in fact more superficial, and can be “bent into a better shape” in a way that is perceivably “in strength and in weakness”. In conclusion, the implication of the title “Great Expectations” is one relating to idealism and perception, as is the entirety of the novel.The title itself is grandiose and powerful, and presents the reader with an initial view of a book about class, money, and good fortune. However, through Dickens’ varied narrative perception and use of ironies, the title is superficially seen to lose suitability, as the narrative becomes one more suited to a title closer to “Eminent Mediocrities” than anything else.

However, this is where the title is so suitable- the narrative itself challenges the title’s idealistic and ironic nature, and provides the implication that things are not what they seem- as Dickens portrays with his interpretations of class against status, money against fortune, and narrative against title.

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Great Expectations

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Great Expectations , novel by Charles Dickens , first published serially in All the Year Round in 1860–61 and issued in book form in 1861. The classic novel was one of its author’s greatest critical and popular successes. It chronicles the coming of age of the orphan Pip while also addressing such issues as social class and human worth.

Pip (Philip Pirrip) narrates the tale from an unspecified time in the future. He grows up in the marshlands of Kent, where he lives with his disagreeable sister and her sweet-natured husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery . While visiting his family members’ graves in the churchyard, the young Pip encounters Abel Magwitch , an escaped convict. Pip brings him food and a file, but the fugitive and Compeyson—his former partner in crime and a supposed gentleman who is now his enemy—are soon caught. Later Pip is requested to pay visits to Miss Havisham , a woman driven half-mad years earlier by her lover’s departure on their wedding day. Living with Miss Havisham at Satis House is her adopted daughter, Estella, whom she is teaching to torment men with her beauty. Pip, at first cautious, later falls in love with Estella, who does not return his affection. He grows increasing ashamed of his humble background and hopes to become a gentleman, in part to win over Estella. However, he is disappointed when he instead becomes Joe’s apprentice.

Several years later a lawyer named Mr. Jaggers appears and informs Pip that an anonymous benefactor has made it possible for him to go to London for an education; Pip believes that the money is from Miss Havisham, who does not dissuade him of the notion. Once in London , Pip is taught to be a gentleman by Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, the latter of whom Pip met years earlier at Satis House. Also receiving instruction is the slow-witted and unlikable Bentley Drummle.

The increasingly snobbish Pip is later horrified to discover that his mysterious benefactor is Magwitch. Not only is Magwitch in danger of being arrested, Pip’s social standing is threatened. Pip reveals the situation to Herbert, and it is decided that Magwitch and Pip should leave England. Before departing, Pip visits Satis House, where he confronts Miss Havisham for letting him believe she was his patron . He also professes his love to Estella, who rejects him. Knowing that Drummle is pursuing her, Pip warns her about him, but she announces that she plans to marry him. Pip subsequently makes several startling discoveries, notably that Magwitch is Estella’s father and that Compeyson was Miss Havisham’s lover. He also grows close to Magwitch, whom he comes to respect.

As Pip and Magwitch attempt to leave London via a boat, the police and Compeyson arrive. The two convicts end up fighting in the Thames, and only Magwitch surfaces; Compeyson’s body is later recovered. The injured Magwitch is arrested, convicted, and dies awaiting execution. A despondent Pip is arrested because of his debts, but his failing health prevents him from being jailed. Joe subsequently arrives and nurses Pip back to health. Joe also informs him that Miss Havisham has died. After Joe leaves, Pip discovers that his brother-in-law has paid all of his bills. Pip later accepts a job offer at the Cairo branch of Herbert’s firm, and he enjoys a simple but content life. After more than 10 years away, he returns to England and visits the place where Satis House once stood. There he encounters Estella, who is now a widow. As they leave, Pip takes her hand, believing that they will not part again.

Great Expectations works on a number of levels: as a critique of Victorian society and as an exploration of memory and writing. However, it is perhaps more importantly a search for true identity. During the course of the novel, Pip comes to realize that his “great expectations”—social standing and wealth—are less important than loyalty and compassion. Great Expectations was also noted for its blend of humour, mystery, and tragedy. In the original ending of the work, Pip and Estella were not reunited, but Dickens was persuaded to write a happier conclusion.

The novel was an immediate success upon its publication in the 1860s. George Bernard Shaw notably hailed it as Dickens’s “most compactly perfect book.” Great Expectations inspired numerous adaptations , including an acclaimed 1946 film directed by David Lean .

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Essays on Great Expectations

Brief description of great expectations.

Great Expectations is a classic novel by Charles Dickens, following the story of an orphan named Pip as he navigates through social class, love, and personal growth. It is a timeless tale that explores themes of ambition, identity, and the impact of social status on individuals.

Importance ... Read More Brief Description of Great Expectations

Importance of writing essays on this topic.

Essays on Great Expectations are important for academic and personal exploration as they provide an opportunity to delve into the complexities of the characters, themes, and social commentary within the novel. Through writing about Great Expectations, students can develop critical thinking skills and gain a deeper understanding of the literary techniques employed by Charles Dickens.

Tips on Choosing a Good Topic

• Focus on a specific theme or character to narrow down your topic
• Consider the historical and social context of the novel for inspiration
• Look for unique angles or interpretations that have not been extensively explored

Essay Topics

• The transformation of Pip's character throughout the novel
• The significance of the marshes in Great Expectations
• How social class influences the characters' actions and choices
• The role of guilt and redemption in Great Expectations
• The portrayal of women in the novel and its impact on the plot
• The societal critique presented in the character of Miss Havisham
• The symbolism of the convict in the opening scene
• The use of foreshadowing in the narrative
• The significance of the title "Great Expectations" in relation to the characters' aspirations

Concluding Thought

Exploring Great Expectations through essay writing offers a unique opportunity to engage deeply with the themes and characters of the novel. By examining different aspects of the story, readers can gain a richer understanding of the timeless literary work and its enduring relevance. Happy writing!

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August 1861

Charles Dickens

Novel, Bildungsroman, Graphic Novel, Social Criticism, Fictional Autobiography

Pip, Estella, Miss Havisham, Abel Magwitch, Joe Gargery, Jaggers, Herbert Pocket, Wemmick, Biddy, Dolge Orlick, Mrs. Joe, Uncle Pumblechook, Compeyson, Bentley Drummle, Molly, Mr. Wopsle, Startop, Miss Skiffins

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Great Expectations | Overview, Characters & Analysis

“Great Expectations,” penned by Charles Dickens, stands as one of the most celebrated literary works in the English language. It captivates readers with its compelling narrative, intricate characters, and profound themes. Understanding the characters and analyzing their roles is crucial for unlocking the depth of this classic novel.

Table of Contents

Overview of “Great Expectations”

Set in Victorian England, “Great Expectations” follows the life of Pip, an orphan who dreams of rising above his humble beginnings. The novel chronicles Pip’s journey from childhood to adulthood, his encounters with various characters, and the consequences of his aspirations. Themes of social class, identity, love, and redemption are interwoven throughout the plot, making it a timeless masterpiece.

Main Characters

• Pip: The protagonist of the story, Pip is a young orphan raised by his sister and her husband in rural England. His encounter with the mysterious convict, Abel Magwitch, sets him on a path of self-discovery and transformation.
• Estella: Raised by the eccentric Miss Havisham, Estella is a beautiful but cold-hearted young woman. Her relationship with Pip is marked by love, longing, and betrayal, shaping his perception of love and social status.
• Miss Havisham: A wealthy spinster who lives in seclusion, Miss Havisham is consumed by bitterness and revenge after being jilted at the altar. She raises Estella to break men’s hearts as retribution for her own pain.
• Joe Gargery: Pip’s kind-hearted brother-in-law, Joe is a simple blacksmith who provides love and stability in Pip’s tumultuous life. Despite his humble origins, Joe embodies moral integrity and unconditional love.
• Abel Magwitch: A convict who encounters Pip in a graveyard, Abel Magwitch becomes an unlikely benefactor, providing Pip with financial support and shaping his destiny in unforeseen ways.
• Jaggers: A shrewd and formidable lawyer, Jaggers serves as the executor of Pip’s mysterious inheritance. His stoic demeanor and sharp wit conceal a complex past and an unwavering dedication to his clients.
• Herbert Pocket: A close friend of Pip’s, Herbert Pocket embodies loyalty and camaraderie. Despite their differing social standings, Herbert remains a steadfast ally throughout Pip’s journey.

Character Analysis

Pip: From his humble beginnings as a blacksmith’s apprentice to his eventual rise in society, Pip’s character undergoes significant growth and development. His pursuit of wealth and social status exposes the complexities of human ambition and the consequences of unchecked desire.

Estella: Estella’s icy exterior masks a profound vulnerability rooted in her tumultuous upbringing. Her inability to reciprocate Pip’s love reflects the novel’s exploration of love, identity, and the struggle for self-acceptance.

Miss Havisham: Miss Havisham’s tragic past serves as a cautionary tale of the destructive power of resentment and bitterness. Her manipulation of Pip and Estella underscores the novel’s themes of betrayal and redemption.

Joe Gargery: Despite his lack of formal education and social status, Joe possesses a moral compass that guides him through life’s challenges. His unwavering loyalty to Pip highlights the importance of integrity and humility in the face of adversity.

Abel Magwitch: As the unlikely source of Pip’s fortune, Abel Magwitch challenges conventional notions of morality and redemption. His unexpected kindness towards Pip reveals the complexities of human nature and the potential for transformation.

Jaggers: Jaggers’ enigmatic presence looms large over the novel, symbolizing the relentless pursuit of justice and the moral ambiguity of the legal system. His role as Pip’s benefactor underscores the novel’s exploration of social class and ambition.

Herbert Pocket: Herbert’s unwavering friendship and support provide a counterbalance to Pip’s obsession with social status. His willingness to stand by Pip through thick and thin underscores the importance of loyalty and companionship in navigating life’s challenges.

Analysis of Themes

“Great Expectations” explores a myriad of themes that resonate with readers across generations:

• Social class and ambition: Pip’s desire to transcend his humble origins exposes the disparities of Victorian society and the allure of wealth and status.
• Identity and self-discovery: Pip’s journey towards self-realization is marked by moments of triumph and despair as he grapples with questions of identity and belonging.
• Love and betrayal: The novel’s central relationships are fraught with themes of love, longing, and betrayal, highlighting the complexities of human emotion and connection.
• Guilt and redemption: Pip’s moral conscience is tested as he grapples with the consequences of his actions, ultimately finding redemption through self-awareness and forgiveness.

Symbolism in “Great Expectations”

Throughout the novel, Charles Dickens employs symbolism to enrich the narrative and deepen the reader’s understanding of the characters and themes:

• Satis House: Miss Havisham’s dilapidated mansion serves as a haunting symbol of stagnation and decay, reflecting her own unresolved grief and bitterness.
• Pip’s “great expectations”: The inheritance bestowed upon Pip symbolizes both the promise of a brighter future and the burden of unfulfilled desires.
• The marshes: The desolate landscape surrounding Pip’s childhood home represents the harsh realities of life and the struggle for survival in a hostile environment.
• Estella’s name: Derived from the Latin word for “star,” Estella’s name symbolizes her beauty and allure, as well as her distant and unattainable nature.

Literary Techniques

Charles Dickens employs a variety of literary techniques to craft a rich and immersive narrative:

• Foreshadowing: Throughout the novel, Dickens subtly hints at future events, building suspense and anticipation for the reader.
• Irony: Irony pervades the story, from Miss Havisham’s twisted manipulation of Pip to the revelation of Pip’s true benefactor.
• Symbolism: As previously discussed, symbolism plays a crucial role in conveying deeper meanings and themes within the narrative.
• Character development: Dickens masterfully develops his characters, imbuing them with complexity and depth that resonate with readers long after the final page.

Critical Reception

“Great Expectations” received mixed reviews upon its initial publication in 1861, with some critics praising its rich characterization and compelling narrative, while others criticized its darker tone and pessimistic outlook. However, over time, the novel has come to be regarded as one of Dickens’ finest works, with its exploration of social inequality, moral ambiguity, and the human condition earning it a place among the literary canon.

Adaptations and Influence

“Great Expectations” has been adapted numerous times for film, television, and stage, attesting to its enduring popularity and cultural significance. From David Lean’s classic 1946 film to more recent adaptations like the BBC miniseries starring Gillian Anderson, the novel continues to captivate audiences with its timeless themes and memorable characters.

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In conclusion, “Great Expectations” stands as a timeless masterpiece that continues to resonate with readers worldwide. Through its rich characterization, intricate plot, and profound themes, Charles Dickens invites us to explore the complexities of human nature and the enduring power of hope, love, and redemption.

Is “Great Expectations” based on a true story?

No, “Great Expectations” is a work of fiction penned by Charles Dickens. However, Dickens drew inspiration from his own life experiences and observations of Victorian society.

What is the significance of the title “Great Expectations”?

The title “Great Expectations” reflects the central theme of the novel, which revolves around the protagonist’s aspirations for a better life and the consequences of pursuing those aspirations.

What age group is “Great Expectations” suitable for?

“Great Expectations” is generally recommended for mature readers due to its complex themes and language. It is often studied in high school or college literature classes.

Why is “Great Expectations” considered a classic?

“Great Expectations” is considered a classic due to its enduring relevance, rich characterization, and exploration of universal themes such as ambition, love, and redemption.

Are there any sequels or spin-offs of “Great Expectations”?

While there are no official sequels or spin-offs of “Great Expectations” penned by Charles Dickens, the novel has inspired countless adaptations, reinterpretations, and fan fiction over the years.

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• 15 July 2024 15 July 2024

Exploring “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens: A Detailed Analysis

Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations,” first published in 1861, remains one of his most beloved works. The novel is a richly textured narrative that delves into themes of ambition, social class, and personal growth through the journey of its protagonist, Pip. This detailed blog post aims to explore the various facets of “Great Expectations,” providing insights into its themes, characters, and literary significance.

Introduction to “Great Expectations”

“Great Expectations” is a coming-of-age story that follows the life of an orphan named Pip, who yearns for self-improvement and higher social status. The novel is set in Victorian England, a period marked by stark social inequalities and rapid industrialization. Through Pip’s journey, Dickens critiques the rigid class structure and explores the true meaning of wealth and personal worth.

Key Themes in “Great Expectations”

Ambition and Self-Improvement:

• Pip’s longing for a better life drives the narrative. From the moment he meets Estella and Miss Havisham, he becomes acutely aware of his lower social status and aspires to rise above it. This ambition shapes his actions and decisions, leading him on a path of self-discovery.

Social Class and Mobility:

• The novel examines the class system in Victorian society, highlighting the struggles of individuals like Pip who wish to transcend their social standing. Dickens portrays the superficiality and hypocrisy of the upper class, contrasting it with the genuine kindness and integrity of characters from humbler backgrounds.

Crime, Guilt, and Redemption:

• The themes of crime and guilt are prevalent throughout the novel, embodied by characters like Magwitch and Pip. Dickens explores the moral consequences of one’s actions and the possibility of redemption, suggesting that true nobility comes from inner virtue rather than social rank.

Love and Rejection:

• Pip’s unrequited love for Estella and the emotional manipulation he experiences at the hands of Miss Havisham highlight the complexities of love and rejection. These relationships significantly impact Pip’s development and his understanding of human connections.

Character Analysis

Pip (Philip Pirrip):

• As the protagonist and narrator, Pip’s character undergoes significant transformation. Initially, he is an innocent and naive boy, but his exposure to wealth and societal expectations leads to a period of moral and emotional confusion. Pip’s journey is marked by his evolving understanding of what it means to be a true gentleman, moving from superficial aspirations to recognizing the value of loyalty, compassion, and integrity.

Estella Havisham:

• Raised by Miss Havisham to break men’s hearts, Estella is a complex character who struggles with her emotions and identity. Despite her beauty and grace, she is emotionally detached and cynical, a product of Miss Havisham’s manipulative upbringing. Estella’s interactions with Pip reveal her internal conflict and ultimate yearning for genuine human connection.

Miss Havisham:

• One of Dickens’ most memorable characters, Miss Havisham is a wealthy spinster who was jilted at the altar. Her life becomes a symbol of decay and stagnation, as she lives in perpetual mourning for her lost love. Miss Havisham’s manipulation of Pip and Estella reflects her own bitterness and desire for revenge against men.

Abel Magwitch:

• Magwitch, the convict who initially terrifies Pip, later emerges as his secret benefactor. His character embodies the theme of redemption, as he seeks to repay Pip for his kindness by funding his education and social ascent. Magwitch’s story highlights the potential for goodness within even the most seemingly irredeemable individuals.

Joe Gargery:

• Joe, Pip’s brother-in-law and a humble blacksmith, represents the moral center of the novel. His unwavering kindness, patience, and loyalty stand in stark contrast to the corruption and superficiality of the upper classes. Joe’s relationship with Pip illustrates the enduring value of true friendship and familial love.

Literary Techniques and Devices

Narrative Perspective:

• “Great Expectations” is narrated in the first person by an older Pip, reflecting on his life experiences. This retrospective narration allows for a deeper exploration of Pip’s character and growth, providing insights into his thoughts and emotions.
• The novel is rich in symbolism, with objects and settings that reflect the characters’ inner lives. Satis House, Miss Havisham’s decaying mansion, symbolizes the destructive power of obsession and the passage of time. The mists on the marshes represent Pip’s moral ambiguity and the uncertainty of his future.

Social Commentary:

• Dickens uses his characters and plot to critique Victorian society’s obsession with wealth and status. Through Pip’s experiences, he exposes the moral failings of the upper class and champions the virtues of humility and kindness.

Key Plot Points

Pip’s Childhood:

• Raised by his sister, Mrs. Joe, and her kind-hearted husband, Joe Gargery, Pip’s early life is marked by hardship and poverty. An encounter with the convict Magwitch on the marshes sets the stage for his future fortunes.

Meeting Miss Havisham and Estella:

• Pip’s visits to Satis House and his infatuation with Estella ignite his desire for self-improvement and social advancement. He becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his modest life and yearns to become a gentleman.

The Great Expectations:

• Pip learns of his mysterious benefactor and moves to London to become a gentleman. He assumes that Miss Havisham is his benefactor and that she intends for him to marry Estella. This period of newfound wealth and status leads to a sense of superiority and estrangement from Joe and his humble roots.

The Revelation of Magwitch:

• Pip’s world is turned upside down when he discovers that his true benefactor is Magwitch, the convict he helped as a child. This revelation forces Pip to confront his own prejudices and moral compass.

The Fall and Redemption:

• Pip’s attempts to help Magwitch and secure his safety demonstrate his growing sense of responsibility and compassion. His financial ruin and the decline of his great expectations lead to a humbling realization of the true values in life.

The Resolution:

• The novel concludes with Pip’s reconciliation with Joe and Biddy, and a poignant meeting with Estella. The ending, which has two versions (one optimistic and one more ambiguous), leaves Pip’s future open to interpretation but suggests a sense of personal growth and maturity.

“Great Expectations” is a masterful exploration of the human condition, weaving together themes of ambition, social class, and personal growth. Through Pip’s journey, Dickens critiques the superficial values of Victorian society and champions the enduring virtues of kindness, loyalty, and integrity. The novel’s richly drawn characters and intricate plot make it a timeless classic that continues to resonate with readers.

As students and enthusiasts delve into “Great Expectations,” they are invited to reflect on their own aspirations, moral choices, and the true meaning of success. Dickens’ profound insights and storytelling prowess ensure that “Great Expectations” remains a vital and cherished work in the literary canon.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 29, 2021 • ( 0 )

Dickens’s 13th novel, published in 36 weekly parts in All the Year Round (December 1, 1860–August 3, 1861), unillustrated. Published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall, 1861. A Bildungsroman narrated in the first person by its hero, Great Expectations recalls David Copperfield, but Pip’s story is more tightly organized than David’s and Pip is more aware of his shortcomings. Pip tells his story in three equal parts, casting his life as a journey in three stages: his childhood and youth in KENT, when he wishes he could overcome his humble origins and rise in the world; his young manhood in London after he receives his great expectations; and his disillusionment when he learns the source of his good fortune and realizes the emptiness of his worldly values. The novel’s concise narration, balanced structure, and rich symbolism have made it the most admired and most discussed of Dickens’s works.

SYNOPSIS Stage I

Part 1 (december 1, 1860).

(1) Philip Pirrip, known as “Pip,” remembers the day when he was seven and gained his “first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things.” Then, while visiting the graves of his parents in the churchyard on a dreary Christmas Eve, the child Pip is surprised by an escaped convict who threatens to kill him if he does not bring him food and a file. (2) Back at the house of his sister, who has brought him up “by hand,” Pip is punished for getting home late for supper, but he has the sympathetic companionship of his sister’s husband, Joe Gargery the blacksmith. At supper Pip secretly saves his bread, and early on Christmas morning, after taking a pork pie and some brandy from the larder and a file from the forge, he slips out of the house and onto the marshes.

Part 2 (December 8, 1860)

(3) There he is surprised by another escaped convict, a young man with a scar on his face. When he finds the ragged man who scared him the day before, Pip watches compassionately as he devours the food and files the manacle from his leg, but he arouses the convict’s anger when he tells him of the other escapee on the marshes. (4) At Christmas dinner, while he guiltily awaits the discovery of the theft from the larder, Pip is admonished by his Uncle Pumblechook and the other guests to “be grateful” and to overcome the tendency of boys to be “naterally wicious.” As his sister goes to the larder to fetch the pork pie that he stole for the convict, a troop of soldiers appears at the door.

Part 3 (December 15, 1860)

(5) The soldiers ask Joe to repair some handcuffs. Then Joe and Pip follow them as they pursue the convicts. The two escapees are captured as they fight with each other on the marshes. Before he is returned to the prison ship anchored in the Thames, Pip’s convict confesses to stealing some food from Mrs. Joe’s larder. Joe forgives him, saying, “We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur.—Would us, Pip?”

Part 4 (December 22, 1860)

(6) Pip is unable to tell Joe the truth about the theft from the larder. (7) As he awaits the time when he will be apprenticed to Joe, Pip gets some rudimentary education from Mr. Wopsle’s great aunt and her granddaughter Biddy, enough to realize that Joe cannot read. Then, about a year after the convict episode, Mrs. Joe announces that her Uncle Pumblechook has arranged for Pip to play at the house of Miss Havisham, a rich recluse in the nearby market town.

Part 5 (December 29, 1860)

(8) Pumblechook delivers the boy to Satis House the next morning. There Pip meets Estella, a supercilious young woman not much older than he, and Miss Havisham, an old woman in a tattered bridal dress, inhabiting rooms in the ruined house where everything is yellowed with age and all the clocks have stopped at 20 minutes to nine. Miss Havisham orders Pip and Estella to play cards and urges Estella to break Pip’s heart. Pip fights back tears when Estella ridicules him as coarse and common, and he escapes into the garden to cry. There he has a sudden vision of Miss Havisham in the abandoned brewery, hanging from a beam and calling to him.

Part 6 (January 5, 1861)

(9) When Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe ask about Miss Havisham, Pip caters to their imaginings by telling them a fantastic tale about a black velvet coach, four dogs, and a silver basket of veal cutlets. Later he confesses to Joe that he made up the story because he felt “common,” but Joe assures him that he is “oncommon small” and an “oncommon scholar.” (10) Pip enlists Biddy’s help in teaching him to be “uncommon.” One Saturday evening, Pip finds Joe at the Jolly Bargeman with a “secret-looking” stranger who stirs his drink with a file and gives Pip a shilling wrapped up in two one-pound notes. Pip fears that his connection with the convict will come to light.

Part 7 (January 12, 1861)

(11) When Pip returns to Miss Havisham’s, her relatives have gathered at Satis House for her birthday. Estella insults him, slaps him, and dares him to tell. Miss Havisham shows him a table spread with a decaying feast, including the remains of a wedding cake, where she will be laid out when she dies. She points out the places her relatives will occupy at this table when she is dead. Again she orders Pip to play cards with Estella and to admire her beauty. When he goes out into the garden, Pip meets a pale young gentleman there who challenges him to fight. Pip reluctantly enters the match, but he knocks the young man to the ground and gives him a black eye. After the fight, Estella invites him to kiss her.

Part 8 (January 19, 1861)

(12) Pip’s visits to Satis House become more frequent. He pushes Miss Havisham around her rooms in a wheelchair and plays cards with Estella as the old lady murmurs, “Break their hearts, my pride and hope!” One day, Miss Havisham, noting that Pip is growing tall, asks him to bring Joe Gargery to Satis House. (13) Two days later, in his Sunday clothes, Joe accompanies Pip to Miss Havisham’s. She asks Joe whether Pip has ever objected to becoming a blacksmith and if Joe expects a premium for taking Pip on as an apprentice. Joe, speaking through Pip, replies no to both questions, but she gives him 25 guineas anyway to pay for Pip’s apprenticeship. The Gargerys celebrate the occasion with a dinner at the Blue Boar, but Pip is wretched, convinced he will never like Joe’s trade.

Part 9 (January 26, 1861)

(14) Pip does not tell Joe of his unhappiness, but as he works at the forge he remembers his former visits to Satis House and sees visions of Estella’s face in the fire. (15) Although Joe advises against it, Pip takes a half-holiday to visit Miss Havisham. His fellow worker, Dolge Orlick, a surly and contrary man, envies Pip and demands equal time off, but when he offends Joe with some derogatory remarks about Mrs. Joe, the blacksmith knocks him to the ground. At Satis House, Pip learns that Estella has gone abroad to be educated. Miss Havisham tells him that he can visit her each year on his birthday, but he is to expect nothing from her. Back at the forge, he discovers that someone has broken into the house and Mrs. Joe has been knocked senseless by an unknown assailant.

Part 10 (February 2, 1861)

(16) The weapon was an old convict’s leg-iron. Convinced that it is the manacle from his convict’s leg, Pip feels guilty, as if he struck the blow himself. Mrs. Joe is left unable to speak and partly paralyzed, but she changes character and becomes good-tempered. Although Orlick is suspected of the crime, Mrs. Joe is conciliatory to him. Biddy, Pip’s schoolmate and teacher, moves to the forge to take over housekeeping duties. (17) On his birthday Pip visits Miss Havisham, receives a guinea, and is told to come again next year. It becomes his regular custom. Meanwhile, Pip and Biddy develop a close friendship and he confesses to her his desire to become a gentleman “on Estella’s account.” She wisely asks him whether he wants “to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?” As Pip and Biddy walk through the countryside, Orlick follows them.

Part 11 (February 9, 1861)

(18) In the fourth year of his apprenticeship, Pip is surprised by Mr. Jaggers, Miss Havisham’s lawyer from London, who announces that Pip has “great expectations.” If Joe will release him from his apprenticeship, Pip is to move to London and become a gentleman. He is to be known as Pip and not to ask the identity of his benefactor. Joe refuses any compensation for Pip’s release, but there is a touch of sadness in his celebration of Pip’s good fortune. (19) After they burn the apprenticeship papers, Pip talks of what he will do to raise Joe up. He bids farewell to Pumblechook, who takes credit for Pip’s good fortune, and to Miss Havisham. After an awkward parting from Joe, Pip sets out for London.

Part 12 (February 23, 1861)

(20) In London, Jaggers, a criminal lawyer, is to act as the representative of Pip’s unnamed benefactor. At Jaggers’s office near Smithfield Market, Pip finds a host of shady characters clamoring for the lawyer’s attention. While he waits, Pip visits Newgate Prison nearby. (21) Jaggers has his clerk, John Wemmick, take Pip to Barnard’s Inn, where he is to stay with Herbert Pocket, the son of his tutor. When he meets Herbert, Pip recognizes him as the pale young gentleman he fought in Miss Havisham’s garden.

Part 13 (March 2, 1861)

(22) Herbert teaches Pip the manners of a gentleman and nicknames him “Handel” (in honor of the composer’s “Harmonious Blacksmith”). Herbert tells Pip of Estella, adopted by Miss Havisham to wreak vengeance on men. He also recounts the story of Miss Havisham’s own past: The daughter of a wealthy brewer, she, with her half-brother, inherited their father’s business. She fell in love with a fast-talking con-man who proposed to marry her and convinced her to buy her brother’s share in the brewery at a high price. Then he split the proceeds with her brother and jilted her on her wedding day, the day she stopped the clocks at 20 minutes to nine and withdrew into Satis House.

Part 14 (March 9, 1861)

(23) At the home of Matthew Pocket, Herbert’s father, who is to act as Pip’s tutor, Pip meets his fellow pupils: Drummle, a disagreeable young man from a wealthy family, and Startop, a delicate and friendly fellow. The Pocket household is in disarray. Matthew, educated at Harrow and Cambridge, is impractical and a poor manager; his wife Belinda, daughter of a knight, is obsessed with social position and pays no attention to housekeeping. (24) When Pip goes to secure Jaggers’s approval for his plan to live at Barnard’s Inn with Herbert, he has an opportunity to watch the lawyer’s intimidating courtroom manner and to become further acquainted with Wemmick, Jaggers’s clerk. Wemmick shows Pip the death masks of some of their former clients; advises him to “get hold of portable property”; and tells him, when he goes to Jaggers’s house for dinner, to observe the housekeeper, whom he describes as “a wild beast tamed.” He also invites Pip to visit his home in the suburbs.

Part 15 (March 16, 1861)

(25) Although some of the Pockets resent Pip, thinking that he has intruded on their rightful portion of Miss Havisham’s fortune, Matthew, who has refused to curry favor with Miss Havisham, bears him no ill will. Pip’s studies progress nicely. When he visits Wemmick at his home in Walworth, he finds him very different from the hard and materialistic clerk he met in the City. Wemmick lives in a bucolic little castle, surrounded by a moat, gardens, and animal pens, and he maintains a domestic establishment with his Aged Parent. Jaggers knows nothing of Wemmick’s private life, for Wemmick’s policy is to keep office and home totally separate. (26) When Pip goes to Jaggers’s house for dinner with Startop and Drummle, the lawyer makes his housekeeper, Molly, display her strong and scarred wrists. Fascinated with Drummle, Jaggers calls him “the Spider” and provokes him to boast of his strength and to reveal his dislike for Pip. As they leave Jaggers advises Pip to keep clear of Drummle.

Part 16 (March 23, 1861)

(27) Joe visits Pip in London. Dressed uncomfortably in his best clothes and intimidated by Pip’s formality and servant boy, he addresses his old companion as “sir.” He tells Pip that Wopsle has come to London to be an actor, that Estella has returned to Satis House and would be glad to see him, and that Pip is always welcome at the forge. Then he leaves. (28) Pip immediately sets out to see Estella. On the coach going to his hometown, he rides with two convicts, one of whom talks of once delivering two one-pound notes to a boy in the town. Pip is shaken by this coincidence. Once he is home, Pip decides to stay at the Blue Boar Inn rather than at the forge.

Part 17 (March 30, 1861)

(29) Pip is disturbed to find Orlick working as the porter at Satis House, but Estella is more beautiful than ever. She warns him that she has “no heart,” but Miss Havisham urges him to “Love her, love her, love her!” Pip is convinced that Miss Havisham has chosen him for Estella. He is uneasy that he has not gone to visit Joe.

Part 18 (April 6, 1861)

(30) As Pip walks through town, the tailor’s boy mocks his snobbery and elegance in the street by pretending not to know him. Pip warns Jaggers about Orlick, and the lawyer promises to dismiss him from Miss Havisham’s service. Back in London, Pip confesses to a dubious Herbert that he loves Estella. Herbert reveals that he is secretly engaged to Clara Barley, the daughter of a ship’s purser. (31) Pip and Herbert see Mr. Wopsle, the parish clerk from Pip’s village who has ambitions for the stage, perform Hamlet. After the wretched but hilarious production, they invite the actor, whose stage name is Waldengarver, to dinner.

Part 19 (April 13, 1861)

(32) When Estella asks Pip to meet her coach in London, he arrives hours early. While he is waiting, Wemmick takes him through Newgate Prison. He returns just in time to see Estella’s hand waving to him in the coach window. (33) She tells him that she is going to be introduced into society and that he may visit her in Richmond. Pip takes this as part of Miss Havisham’s plan for them (33).

Part 20 (April 20, 1861)

(34) Pip falls into lavish spending habits. He and Herbert list their debts, but then, with the other members of their club, the Finches of the Grove, they get even further into debt. When Pip learns that his sister has died (35), he returns home for the funeral. There Biddy tells him that his sister’s last words were “Joe,” “Pardon,” and “Pip.” Pip is annoyed when Biddy doubts his promise to come often to see Joe.

Part 21 (April 27, 1861)

(36) On his 21st birthday, Pip receives £500 from Jaggers to pay his debts. Jaggers says that he will receive the same sum each year until his benefactor reveals himself. Pip asks Wemmick to help him use some of the money to advance Herbert’s prospects. When Wemmick gives his “deliberate opinion in this office” against doing so, Pip asks to solicit his opinion at home. (37) There Wemmick suggests that Pip buy Herbert a position with Clarriker, an up-and-coming shipping broker. Wemmick has Skiffins, his fiancée’s brother, arrange it so that Herbert will not know the source of his good fortune.

Part 22 (May 4, 1861)

(38) Pip visits Estella frequently. Although she warns him to beware of her, she also drives him to jealous distraction. When the two of them visit Satis House, Miss Havisham delights to hear of Estella’s conquests, but she accuses her of being cold and indifferent to her. “I am what you have made me,” Estella replies, proud and hard. Unable to sleep that night, Pip observes Miss Havisham walking the halls of Satis House moaning. Back in London, he is outraged when Drummle toasts Estella at a meeting of the Finches. Pip warns her against him; she says that she is simply out to “deceive and entrap” him. Pip tells the story of the sultan who, at the height of his power, is crushed by a great stone from the roof of his palace, and Pip says that “the roof of [his] stronghold” is about to fall on him.

Part 23 (May 11, 1861)

(39) A week after his 23rd birthday, late on a stormy night while Herbert is away, Pip is surprised by someone calling his name on the stairs outside his door. It is a man about 60 years old with irongrey hair, dressed like a sea voyager. When the man holds out his hands, as if to embrace him, Pip recognizes the convict from the marshes. He has been a sheep farmer in New South Wales and reveals that he is the source of Pip’s expectations. The convict looks about Pip’s rooms with the pride of ownership, especially at his gentleman. “I’m your second father,” he tells Pip, but Pip is horrified and speechless and troubled by knowing that the convict will be hanged if he is discovered in England. Gradually he realizes that all his ideas about Miss Havisham and Estella were a dream and that he deserted Joe and Biddy to be linked with a criminal.

Stage III Part 24 (May 18, 1861)

(40) The next morning Pip learns that his benefactor is Abel Magwitch, going by the name Provis, and that he has returned to England for good, even though he will be sentenced to death should he be caught. Pip dresses him like a prosperous farmer and secures rooms for him in a nearby lodging house. Jaggers confirms Magwitch’s identity as Pip’s benefactor by not denying it; the lawyer says that he warned Magwitch not to return to England. When Herbert returns to London, Magwitch swears him to silence.

Part 25 (May 25, 1861)

(41) Pip and Herbert agree that Pip should take no more of Magwitch’s money and that Magwitch must be gotten out of England. (42) Magwitch tells them the story of his life: about 20 years earlier he became an accomplice of a gentleman named Compeyson, a forger and swindler who, with a Mr. Arthur, had just bilked a rich lady of her fortune. Arthur, near death at the time, had nightmares about a woman in white who tried to cover him with a shroud. When Magwitch and Compeyson were arrested and tried for their crimes, Magwitch was sentenced to 14 years. Compeyson, presenting himself as a gentleman, received a light sentence, and Magwich resentfully vowed revenge. Finding himself on the same prison ship with Compeyson, he struck him, scarring his face, and then escaped from the ship, only to learn that Compeyson had also escaped. In ensuring Compeyson’s recapture, Magwitch was also taken and sentenced to transportation for life. He does not know what happened to Compeyson. After hearing the story, Herbert tells Pip that Arthur was Miss Havisham’s brother and Compeyson her lover.

Part 26 (June 1, 1861)

(43) Pip returns home to see Estella. At the Blue Boar, he finds Drummle attended by Orlick. Drummle is also there to see Estella. (44) Pip accusingly tells Miss Havisham and Estella of his benefactor. Miss Havisham admits to leading him on, but tells him he made his own snares. She justifies her actions as a way of tormenting her avaricious relatives. Pip pours out his love for Estella, but she says he touches nothing in her breast and tells him that she plans to marry Drummle. Distraught, Pip walks back to London, arriving late at night. The watchman at the gate to his rooms has a note for him from Wemmick. It reads, “Don’t go home.”

Part 27 (June 8, 1861)

(45) After a restless night in a hotel, Pip learns from Wemmick that his rooms are being watched by Compeyson and that he must get Provis out of the country. (46) Pip arranges with Provis, now known as Mr. Campbell, to watch for him as he rows on the river. He and Herbert plan to keep a boat at the Temple stairs and to make a regular practice of rowing up the Thames. When the time is right, they will get the convict from his hiding place and take him to the Continent.

Part 28 (June 15, 1861)

(47) As Pip waits for the signal from Wemmick that the time has come to take Magwitch out of the country, he and Herbert regularly row down the river. One evening after attending one of Wopsle’s dramatic performances, Pip learns from the actor that the second convict taken on the marshes was sitting behind him in the theater. Pip knows that Compeyson is watching him, and he writes to Wemmick of the growing danger.

(48) During dinner at Jaggers’s house, Pip notices Molly’s hands. They remind him of Estella’s hand as she waved from the coach window on her arrival in London. Wemmick tells him what he knows of Molly’s story: that she was tried for the strangulation murder of a woman much larger than herself; that Jaggers concealed the strength of her hands during the trial and argued that she was physically incapable of the crime; that she was suspected of destroying her three-year-old daughter at the time of the trial to avenge herself on the father; and that, after her acquittal, she went to work for Jaggers.

Part 29 (June 22, 1861)

(49) Pip goes to Satis House to learn more of Estella’s story. A remorseful Miss Havisham tells Pip how she took the child supplied by Jaggers and turned the girl’s heart to ice, that she knows nothing of Estella’s parentage, and that Estella is now married and in Paris. She supplies Pip with money to pay for Herbert’s position with Clarriker’s and asks him to forgive her. As he walks in the ruined garden outside the house, Pip again sees the vision of Miss Havisham hanging from a beam. When he returns to bid her farewell, her dress is suddenly set afire by the flames in her grate. Pip extinguishes the flames, burning his hands in the process. That evening, as he leaves for London, the seriously injured old woman mutters distractedly, “What have I done?” (50) Herbert cares for Pip’s burns and tells him what he has learned of Magwitch’s story: Magwitch had a daughter of whom he was fond, but he lost touch with her when he went into hiding during the trial of the child’s mother. Compeyson controlled him by threatening to reveal his whereabouts to the authorities. The child, had she lived, would be about Pip’s age. Pip is sure that Magwitch is Estella’s father.

Part 30 (June 29, 1861)

(51) Pip challenges Jaggers to confirm his suspicion about Estella’s parentage. Jaggers obliquely does so, telling Pip that he hoped to save one of the many lost children by giving Estella to Miss Havisham. Jaggers asserts that it will do no one any good—not Molly, nor Magwitch, nor Estella—to reveal the truth now, and he advises Pip to keep his “poor dreams” to himself. (52) When Wemmick signals that the time has come to smuggle Magwitch to the continent, Pip’s hands are still too badly burned to row the boat. He enlists Startop’s aid. Before they can set out, however, Pip receives a mysterious letter telling him to come that evening to the limekiln on the marshes near his former home if he wants “information regarding your uncle Provis.”

Part 31 (July 6, 1861)

(53) In the dark sluice house, Pip is suddenly attacked and bound by a noose. The attacker is Orlick, who plans to kill him. Orlick accuses Pip of causing him to lose his job with Miss Havisham and of coming between him and Biddy. He admits that he struck Mrs. Joe with the manacle, but claims “it warn’t Old Orlick as did it; it was you.” He knows about Magwitch. As he is about to strike Pip with a hammer, Startop, Herbert, and Trabb’s Boy come to the rescue. Exhausted and ill from the ordeal, Pip is now very concerned about Magwitch’s safety.

Part 32 (July 13, 1861)

(54) The next morning, Pip, Startop, and Herbert set out on the river. After picking up Magwitch, they go to an isolated inn to spend the night before rowing out to meet the Hamburg packet steamer the next morning. Pip is uneasy when he sees two men examining their boat. The next morning, they are followed by another boat and ordered to turn over Abel Magwitch. Compeyson is in the other boat. In the confusion that follows, Compeyson and Magwitch go overboard, locked in struggle. Only Magwitch surfaces. Afterward, Pip accompanies Magwitch, injured and having difficulty breathing, back to London. He no longer feels any aversion to the wretched man who holds his hand in his. Pip knows that all Magwitch’s property will be forfeited to the Crown.

Part 33 (July 20, 1861)

(55) Magwitch’s trial is set for a month from the time of his arrest. Meanwhile, Herbert, now a shipping broker, prepares to go to Egypt, where he will be in charge of Clarriker’s Cairo office. He offers Pip a clerk’s position there. Jaggers and Wemmick both deplore Pip’s failure to secure Magwitch’s property. Wemmick invites Pip to breakfast at Walworth. Afterward, they walk to a country church, where Wemmick and Miss Skiffins are married in an apparently impromptu ceremony. (56) Pip visits Magwitch daily in the prison hospital and holds his hand at the trial when he is condemned to hang. But Magwitch is gravely ill and dies with Pip at his side before the sentence is carried out. On his deathbed, he thanks Pip for not deserting him. Pip tells him that his daughter lives and that he loves her.

Part 34 (July 27, 1861)

(57) Pip, deeply in debt, is very ill. When the arresting officers come, he is delerious and loses consciousness. He awakens from the fever to discover Joe, gentle as an angel, caring for him. As he slowly recuperates he learns from Joe that Miss Havisham has died, leaving all of her property to Estella except for £4,000 left to Matthew Pocket. He also learns that Orlick is in jail for assaulting Pumblechook. As Pip recovers, Joe becomes more distant. After Joe returns home, Pip learns that Joe has paid his debts. Pip considers his options: to return to the forge and ask Biddy to take him back or to go to Cairo to work with Herbert.

Part 35 (August 3, 1861)

(58) No longer a man of property, Pip gets a cool reception at the Blue Boar and from Pumblechook. When he returns to the forge, he discovers that it is Joe and Biddy’s wedding day. He asks their forgiveness, promises to repay the money that Joe spent to pay his debts, and goes off to Egypt. There he lives with Herbert and Clara and rises to become third in the firm. Only then does Clarriker tell Herbert that Pip had originally paid for his position. (59) After 11 years in Egypt, Pip returns home to visit Joe, Biddy, and their son Pip. At the ruins of Satis House, he finds Estella, a widow who suffered at the hands of an abusive husband. She asks Pip’s forgiveness “now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.” They vow friendship, and as they leave the ruined garden, Pip takes her hand and sees “no shadow of another parting from her.”

Although Dickens’s original plan seems to have been to publish Great Expectations in monthly numbers, he opted to write it as a weekly serial for All the Year Round when the magazine’s sales slipped during the run of Charles Lever’s tedious A Long Day’s Ride . Expectations restored the audience for the magazine, but it changed Dickens’s novel from what it would have been in monthly parts. Each weekly number comprised only one or two short chapters, and like the other novels in the magazine, it was unillustrated. This format forced Dickens to adopt concise and focused chapters, to concentrate on a single story line, and to work out, almost mathematically, the overall structure of the novel. He divided the story into three equal “stages,” with 12 of the 36 weekly parts devoted to each. The threestage structure reinforces the underlying metaphor of the novel, which casts life as a journey.

As he began work on the novel, Dickens wrote to John Forster that “the book will be written in the first person throughout, and during these first three weekly numbers, you will find the hero to be a boy-child, like David.” Dickens reread Copperfield just to make sure that there were “no unconscious repetitions” of the earlier novel. There are many similarities. Both boys are essentially orphans and both suffer from a feeling of hopelessness as they labor at pasting labels on bottles or working at a forge. Blacksmithing is the later novel’s version of the Blacking Warehouse, for both novels are essentially autobiographical.

The first-person narrator of Great Expectations is more fully identified than the narrator of David Copperfield . Philip Pirrip, a middle-aged businessman who has spent several years in Egypt, tells the story of his earlier life. He also has an ironic perspective and greater awareness of his shortcomings than David, but his growth does not alter his situation. Whatever happens after the novel is over, in the final chapter he is still an outsider.

Expectations is more realistic than its autobiographical predecessor. Written at a time when novels like George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859) were in vogue, Expectations is more restrained stylistically and more consistent in tone than many of the earlier novels. George Gissing (1898) defined its difference from earlier works by comparing Joe Gargery and Daniel Peggotty: “if we compare the two figures as to their ‘reality,’ we must decide in favor of Gargery. I think him a better piece of workmanship all round; the prime reason, however, for his standing out so much more solidly in one’s mind than Little Em’ly’s uncle, is that he lives in a world, not of melodrama, but of everyday cause and effect.”

Although Expectations has no Daniel Peggotty and no Mr. Micawber, it is not lacking humorous scenes or memorable characters. The descriptions of Pip’s Christmas dinner (4), Wopsle’s Hamlet (31), or Wemmick’s wedding (55) are among the great comic scenes in the novels. Its unforgettable characters include the lawyer Jaggers, with his intimidating forefinger, his habit of washing his hands with scented soap, and his conversation by cross-examination; the divided Wemmick, at the office smiling mechanically with his “post-office” mouth as he advises Pip to secure “portable property,” and at home in his castle a loving son who refuses to talk business; and Miss Havisham, the bizarre recluse who lives in a ruined mansion, dressed in the tattered bridal gown that she has worn since she was left standing at the altar many years before. Neither the comic scenes nor the eccentric characters are independent of the story. They are absolutely organic to the plot and theme of the novel.

Great Expectations achieved realism in spite of its status as one of the sensation novels of the 1860s, novels that relied on melodrama, sensational incidents, and surprises to achieve their “special effects.” Dickens advertises these attractions with the title of his story, promising that he will fulfill his readers’ expectations for the sensational. He begins by surprising them—and Pip—in the very first chapter, when Magwitch appears like a ghost in the churchyard, and surprise forms the center of the story, when Magwitch reappears. Even a bizarre character like Miss Havisham expresses the uncanny dimensions of Pip’s illusions, exaggerated to surreal surprise in Pip’s visions of her as the hanging woman.

In Copperfield, David defines himself by establishing his difference from the other characters in his life. Although he sees himself as a victim of others’ cruelty—of Murdstone’s tyranny and neglect, for example—he is more industrious than Pip in pursuing a career and establishing a place for himself in society. David admires Steerforth’s genteel indolence, but he does not adopt it as a way of life. When the tempest comes, he is able to view Steerforth’s body on the beach with only a twinge of regret. He does not consciously connect his own undisciplined heart with Steerforth or link Steerforth’s death to Dora’s. Implicitly, the novel suggests that David survives and is successful because he is not Steerforth.

Pip’s is a more interior story. His expectations make him passive, waiting to discover what others have in store for him. He adopts a life of idleness and is frequently made aware of his connections with Drummle, Orlick, and the convict. He is also more present in the narrative as an older and wiser man judging the mistakes of his past. The stormy night that brings Magwitch to Pip’s door in the Temple forces Pip to acknowledge his connection with the convict, to abandon his illusions, and to reconstruct his life on totally different assumptions. David seems unconscious of the losses and rejections that have been necessary to secure his respectable position as a successful novelist; Pip is painfully aware of what he has left behind or lost, and Great Expectations has a pervasive mood of disillusionment. Joe articulates one of the central themes of the novel when he tells Pip that “life is made of ever so many partings welded together” (27). If David’s story is truer to the outward facts of Dickens’s life, Pip’s may be more revealing of Dickens’s inner autobiography.

The difference is apparent in the opening chapters of the two novels. Copperfield begins with an account of David’s birth; Expectations opens with Pip’s psychological “birth,” when, at age seven or so, he comes to his “first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things.” The setting is bleak: an empty churchyard at dusk on a cold and grey winter day, a “wilderness,” “overgrown with nettles,” where the only distinguishing features are a gibbet and a beacon. A “small bundle of shivers,” Pip is delivered into consciousness by an escaped convict who picks him up, turns him upside down, places him on a tombstone, fills him with fear and terror, and makes him promise to bring food and a file. Every detail in this short chapter simultaneously contributes to the realistic picture of the marsh country on a bleak December evening and to the primal story of Pip’s psychological birth.

Appropriately, this encounter takes place on Christmas Eve, and together the first five chapters of the novel—the first three numbers published in the first three weeks of December 1860—form a kind of Christmas story, similar to the Christmas books that Dickens published in the mid 1840s. It includes Pip’s stealing the Christmas pie from the larder and delivering it to the convict, and a wonderfully humorous Christmas dinner at which the guilty child awaits exposure while the adults at the table lecture him about the ingratitude and natural viciousness of boys. This Christmas story culminates with the pursuit on the marshes, which ends with Pip’s being exonerated by the captured convict, who confesses to stealing the pie himself. Joe states the Christmas theme of the story when he assures the convict, “we don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creature.—Would us, Pip?” (5).

This Christmas story and its message of empathy and compassion is pushed into the background as Pip goes on to tell the main story of his life, which begins with his introduction to Satis House (8). Although he is occasionally reminded of the odd and terrifying incident in his childhood—by the man who stirs his drink with a file (10), for example—Pip treats the Christmas story as if it were an unusual and bizarre event, part of the story of his life but unconnected with its plot.

Pip divides his life between external reality and interior wishes. The realities include his abuse by Mrs. Joe, who brings him up “by hand”; his apprenticeship to Gargery, the blacksmith, and the likelihood of his becoming Joe’s partner and successor; and his humiliating visits to the decaying Satis House, where he is taunted and abused. His wish is to be a gentleman, and in his fantasies he is Miss Havisham’s heir, chosen to inherit her money and to marry Estella, her adopted daughter. By the time Jaggers announces Pip’s “great expectations” (18), Pip has so internalized these wishes and elaborated their implications in his mind, that he is not surprised. He accepts his elevation to gentility as inevitable and deserved, and he rejects his humble beginnings, the forge, and Joe and represses his memory of the traumatic Christmas on the marshes.

Pip’s wishes so control his consciousness that he is unable to see the truth. Joe appears to him an illiterate country bumpkin, and Pip condescendingly tells Biddy how he will educate Joe and “remove [him] into a higher sphere” (19). Only much later does Pip recognize Joe for the “gentle Christian man” (57) he is. While Pip is unable to see the depths in Joe’s character, he cannot see the surfaces in Miss Havisham’s either. In spite of the decay, ruin, and madness at Satis House and the harsh teaching that makes Estella his tormentor, Pip wishes for the old woman’s riches and hopes to be selected, like Estella, as her protégé. By rejecting Joe’s true gentility and idealizing Miss Havisham’s sham, Pip abandons himself to illusions.

This division indicates Pip’s fractured sense of self. In Wemmick, Pip can observe someone who divides his life into public and private parts, surviving in both worlds by keeping them separate. Pip is unable to do so. He attempts to repress the dark and humble sides of his life, but Orlick and Drummle shadow him, and criminals remind him of the “taint of prison and crime” (32) that seems to cling to him. When he rejects Joe and avoids the forge on his visits to his hometown, Trabb’s boy follows him in the streets and taunts him as a snob with the refrain, “Don’t know yah” (30). In the novel’s psychological parable, many of the characters in the story can be seen as fragments of Pip’s self that he has failed to integrate into a full understanding of who he is.

Herbert Pocket acts as Pip’s foil during his years in London. Although he is not Pip’s equal in strength or expectations, he has a more realistic view of the world. He recognizes Miss Havisham’s madness and Estella’s cruelty, and he has no unwarranted hopes of inheriting Miss Havisham’s money, even though he is related to her. His modest ambition is based on a realistic view of his situation and expectations.

The story reaches its crisis in chapter 39 when Pip, alone in his apartment on a stormy winter evening, is forced in a way to reenact the traumatic Christmas Eve on the marshes. Suddenly the story that seemed merely a curious and disconnected episode in his childhood becomes the defining text for his life. Pip’s surprise mirrors that of the reader, who has also constructed Pip’s rags-to-riches tale as a fairy-tale romance. The convict’s revelation redirects the reader’s expectations in this sensational turn of events in the novel. By making our reading of the story mirror Pip’s self-understanding, Dickens engages our wishes and expectations. The romance that Pip has imagined his life to be is the romance that we wish for him—and for ourselves. But Magwitch’s revelation strips Pip of his wishes and of the fairy-tale scenario he has constructed for himself. In the final stage of his life, Pip must redefine the relationships that he has taken for granted, such as his friendship with Herbert, his business relationship with Jaggers, and, especially, his relationships with Miss Havisham and Estella; he must also come to terms with those parts of himself that he has repressed and rejected—with Drummle, Orlick, Magwitch, and Joe.

In the novel’s psychological theme, Pip’s reconciliation with Joe is linked with his acceptance of Magwitch. They represent two related aspects of the father that have both contributed to Pip’s identity. When he denied his criminal father, he also rejected Joe, the companion with whom he could share “larks.” Pip’s acceptance of Magwitch has several stages: At first Pip hopes to get him out of the country; then he plans to go with him to the continent; after the failed escape attempt, Pip accompanies him back to London, appears beside him in court, and attends him as he dies. Critics debate just how complete Pip’s final acceptance of Magwitch is; his refusal to secure Magwitch’s money seems to indicate that he still believes that he can be free of the taint of Newgate, and his final prayer at Magwitch’s bedside, “O Lord, be merciful to him a sinner!” (56), can be read as the condescending words of a Pharisee. But Pip also publicly acknowledges his connection with Magwitch by holding the convict’s hand as he is sentenced to hang (56). By such acts Pip gives up his great expectations and can be reconciled with Joe. Though he is no longer young enough or innocent enough to share larks with the blacksmith, he can recognize Joe’s true gentility and prepare to start life on his own in Egypt.

Jaggers, the novel’s third father figure, embodies aspects of both Joe and Magwitch and represents a darkly realistic assessment of the human condition. As a criminal lawyer, he knows that the taint of Newgate is pervasive and that darkness and violence define the human psyche. Cynical, secretive, and pessimistic, he has abandoned whatever illusions, or, as he calls them, “poor dreams,” that he may once have had. Nevertheless, he acts in ways to redress injustice and impose order. He “saves” Magwitch’s daughter from abandonment, for example, and controls Molly’s violent strength. Yet his cynical realism, his lack of expectations, makes him a discomfiting and morally ambiguous figure.

Pip’s relationships with the women in his life are, if anything, even more complicated than those with the men. Just as Joe, Magwitch, and Jaggers represent for Pip various aspects of the father, Mrs. Joe, Miss Havisham, Estella, and Biddy represent various aspects of the feminine. Mrs. Joe’s harsh abuse may teach Pip resentment and cause him subconsciously to wish for the blow that Orlick inflicts on her, as Orlick suggests when he is taunting Pip in the sluice house (53). She also has a share in introducing Pip to Miss Havisham and encouraging him to think of the madwoman in white as a potential benefactress, thus prompting both his illusions and his masochism as Pip seeks the pain of his visits to Satis House as exquisite testimony to his desires. Pip may wish that Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham suffer for the pain they cause him. He is indirectly implicated in both of their deaths and painfully burned while attempting to extinguish the fire that mortally injures Miss Havisham (49). Only Estella survives the suffering that Pip may subconsciously wish for her. At their final meeting she acknowledges a changed understanding of him; “suffering has been stronger than all other teaching,” she tells him, “and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be” (59).

Estella’s statement appears in both versions of the final chapter that Dickens wrote for the novel and would seem to be central to his final thematic point. Dickens changed the original ending after Edward Bulwer Lytton read the proofs and urged him to do so. In the original ending, which is included as an appendix in many editions of the novel, Pip returns to England after eight years in Egypt, and while he is walking with little Pip, Joe and Biddy’s child, on a street in London, he meets Estella, who has married a Shropshire doctor after her unhappy marriage to Drummle. She assumes that the child is Pip’s, and he does not tell her otherwise; then she confides that suffering has changed her. Pip concludes the original ending by remarking, “I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.” This tough ending has seemed to many readers more consistent with the tone of the novel than the revised ending. John Forster described it as “more consistent with the drift, as well as natural working out, of the tale.”

Forster does not take note of the imagery in the second ending, however, that makes it, as George Bernard Shaw put it, “artistically much more congruous than the original.” In many ways, Great Expectations is a poetic novel, constructed around recurring images: the desolate landscape of the marshes; twilight; chains binding us to home, the past, and painful memories; fire; hands that manipulate and control; wishes as remote and distant as stars; the river linking past, present, and future. In the second ending, Dickens changed the meeting place from London to Satis House at twilight as evening mists are rising, mists that recall the mists as Pip left for London at the end of stage one, an allusion to the rising mists in Milton’s Paradise Lost as Adam and Eve leave Eden. The imagery in the altered ending, then, seems to suggest a new beginning for Pip and Estella, and many readers consider it a “happy” ending, promising the union of the two lovers. But Dickens’s words are more ambiguous than that. The imagery of rising mists and the broad expanse of light may suggest a new beginning, but Pip only concludes that at that moment, “I saw no shadow of another parting from her.” Even if Pip and Estella remain together, the ending seems to suggest that the human condition, so aptly symbolized in the bleak graveyard of the opening chapter, will remain bleak in the ruined garden that was once Satis House. Shaw, who recognized that the atmosphere that Dickens added to the second ending improved it, nevertheless objected to the happy, marital implication. The perfect ending, he suggested, would consist of a sentence added to the revised ending, “Since that parting I have been able to think of her without the old unhappiness; but I have never tried to see her again, and I know I never shall.” If, as the ambiguity in the final sentence allows, Pip and Estella make a final parting as they leave Satis House, never again to see each other—or part from each other—then the second ending confirms the disillusioning note with which the novel began and is the novel’s final statement of Joe’s theme, that “life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” In either case, the final sentence does not describe a historical fact but rather an expectation: “as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her” (59). This concluding sentence confirms a central truth in the novel, that humans, in spite of all suffering, survive by expectation.

CHARACTERS AND RELATED ENTRIES

“the aged p”.

Short for the Aged Parent. Wemmick’s father, who lives with his son in the castle at Walworth; “a very old man in a flannel coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf” (25). Wemmick entertains him with the sound of a cannon, which he can hear in spite of his deafness. Wemmick’s kindness and solicitude for the old man exemplify his Walworth persona.

The wife of Bill, a criminal defendant being represented by Jaggers. She is so persistent in pleading with Jaggers for his help that the lawyer threatens to drop her husband as his client if she does not stop bothering him (20).

Barley, Clara

Herbert Pocket’s fiancée, a “pretty, slight, dark-haired girl of twenty or so” (30), who arranges to hide Magwich, under the name of Campbell, in her father’s house until he can be smuggled abroad. “A captive fairy whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service” (46), Clara does not marry Herbert until after her father, who objects to her marrying for fear she will stop taking care of him, has died.

Barley, Old Bill

Clara’s invalid father, a retired ship’s purser who is “totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum and Purser’s Stores” (46). He speaks in nautical language, comparing his bedridden situation “lying on the flat of his back” to “a drifting old dead flounder” (46).

Barnard’s Inn

One of the Inns of Cour t , now defunct. Located in Hol bor n, it is “the dingiest collection of buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for Tom Cats”; where Herbert Pocket and Pip share rooms when Pip first arrives in London (21).

Wopsle’s great aunt’s granddaughter. An orphan like Pip, she assists in the dame school where Pip receives his earliest education: “her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up at heel” (7). After Pip’s sister is injured, Biddy comes to look after the Gargery house and Mrs. Joe. She becomes Pip’s close friend and confidante, but Pip does not recognize her love for him and treats her with snobbish condescension (17–19). “She was not beautiful—she was common, and could not be like Estella—but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered” (17). She gently reprimands Pip for his condescending treatment of Joe. After losing his fortune, Pip plans to propose to her, but he arrives home to discover that she has just married Joe Gargery (57–58).

Biddy and Joe Gargery define the ideals of simplicity, honesty, and love in the novel. Jerome Meckier (2002) describes her as the true Cinderella figure in the book and contrasts her to Estella and Miss Havisham as false Cinderellas. Blinded by his relationships to these two pretenders, Pip is unable to appreciate Biddy until too late in the novel.

Criminal defended by Jaggers, husband of Amelia (20).

Bill, Black

Inmate of Newgate Prison among Jaggers’s clients visited by Pip and Wemmick on their tour of the prison (32).

Brandley, Mrs.

Society woman with whom Estella stays in Richmond and who sponsors her coming out in London. She has a daughter, Miss Brandley, who is considerably older than Estella. “The mother looked young, and the daughter looked old; the mother’s complexion was pink, and the daughter’s was yellow; the mother set up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology” (38).

Camilla, Mrs.

Matthew Pocket’s sister and one of the parasitic Pocket relatives who gather at Miss Havisham’s, hoping for inclusion in her will (11). She claims that her concern for Miss Havisham keeps her awake at night, so she receives £5 in the will “to buy rushlights to put her in spirits when she wake[s] in the night” (56).

Young shipping broker who is looking for a partner and from whom Pip buys the place for Herbert Pocket (52). After his own loss of expectations, Pip himself joins the firm (58).

Coiler, Mrs.

Neighbor to Matthew and Belinda Pocket, “a widow lady of that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to circumstances” (23).

Fast-talking forger, swindler, and con man, the arch-villain of the novel. He escapes from the prison ship on the same day as Magwitch and is captured on the marshes as he fights with Magwitch, whose desire for vengeance overcomes his will to escape (5). As Magwitch describes him, “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” (42). When they are caught, Compeyson uses his boarding-school polish and good looks—in spite of the scar on his face—to cast blame on Magwitch and get himself a lighter sentence, thus prompting Magwitch’s vengeance and desire to create a gentleman of his own. It is Compeyson, in a scheme with Arthur Havisham, who deceives Miss Havisham to secure her money and then jilts her on the day of the wedding. Compeyson learns of Magwitch’s return to England and aids the police in capturing him, though he drowns in the struggle with Magwitch (53–55). He is married to Sally, whom he physically abuses.

Compeyson is central to the plot of the novel, for he has driven Miss Havisham into angry seclusion and inspired Magwitch’s desire for revenge. Scarred on his face, he plays Cain to Magwitch’s Abel, though, in a reversal of the biblical story, he dies in the struggle between them. Self-serving, cruel, with “no more heart than an iron file” (92), Compeyson represents a totally materialistic version of the “gentleman.” Lacking feeling for others and any capacity for friendship, he is wholly defined by money.

Drummle, Bentley (“The Spider”)

Pip’s fellow student at Matthew Pocket’s; from a rich family in Somersetshire, “the next heir but one to a baronetcy” (23), he is “heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension . . . idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious” (25). To Jaggers, who cultivates those in the criminal underworld, he seems one of “the true sort” (26), and he names him “the Spider.” Estella marries him for his money, but he beats and abuses her. He is, in turn, kicked and killed by a horse that he has illtreated (58).

Born a gentleman and a member of the aristocracy, Drummle helps articulate the theme that true gentility is not something one is born with. Described by Julian Moynahan (“The Hero’s Guilt: The Case of Great Expectations,” Essays in Criticism, 1960) as “a reduplication of Orlick at a point higher on the social-economic scale,” Drummle expresses the dark, vengeful side of Pip and is contrasted to Startop, the idealist.

During Christmas dinner Pumblechook describes this village butcher’s especially adept method of killing a pig as a good reason for Pip to be glad that he was not born a pig (4).

Essex Street

The street between the Strand and the river where Pip finds lodgings for Magwich (40).

The child provided by Jaggers whom Miss Havisham adopts to be the agent of her vengeance against men. When Pip is recruited as a child to play with her (8), Estella, “beautiful and self-possessed,” taunts and humiliates him, mocking his “coarse hands” and “thick boots.” She inspires Pip’s desire to be “oncommon.” When Pip receives his expectations (18), he believes that Miss Havisham is their source and that she also plans for him to marry Estella. While Pip lives as a gentleman in London, Estella continues to tantalize and torment him (32, 33, 38), though at the same time warning him that she has “no heart, . . . no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense” (29). Proud, cold, and disdainful, she also denies Miss Havisham’s request for love, reminding her, “I am what you have made me” (38). Even after he learns that she is not his intended, Pip remains masochistically devoted to her, and he tells Magwitch, after learning that Estella is his and Molly’s daughter, that he loves her (56). Pip is distressed when she plans to marry Bentley Drummle (44), who abuses her so that she separates from him. In the revised ending that Dickens wrote for the novel (59), Estella meets Pip at the ruins of Satis House, and as they leave “the ruined place,” Pip says that he sees “no shadow of another parting from her.” But in the suppressed original ending, Pip and Estella meet and part on a London street with no suggestion that they will meet again.

Estella’s name, from the Latin for “star,” places her as the remote ideal on which Pip hangs his desires. In many ways her story parallels Pip’s: Both are tainted by Newgate as “children” of Magwitch; both of their lives are manipulated by the expectations of others. We know of Pip’s suffering because he tells his own story, but we know Estella’s story only in Pip’s version and must question its reliability. The two endings, as Hilary Schorpoints out, suggest that Pip and Estella emerge from their ordeals with very different understandings of their relationship. Edmund Wilson’s (1941) suggestion that Ellen Ternan was the inspiration for Estella has been seconded by many later biographers and critics, but Doris Alexander (1991) makes a persuasive case that she was based on Maria Beadnell.

Finches of the Grove

Dining club to which Pip, Herbert Pocket, Drummle, and Startop belong. “The object of which institution I have never divined, if it were not 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” (34).

One of Mrs. Pocket’s nursemaids who cares for the distracted mother’s seven children (22, 23).

Gargery, Georgiana Maria (Mrs. Joe)

Pip’s older sister, “tall and bony” with “such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap” (2), she resentfully brings up Pip “by hand” and indulges in “Rampages” at the boy and her husband Joe. With Joe’s Uncle Pumblechook, she arranges Pip’s visitations to Miss Havisham and encourages his false expectations. Her meanness is stilled after she is struck over the head by an unknown assailant (16), a wound that partly paralyzes her, leaves her speechless, makes her much more patient, and leads to her early death (34).

Gargery, Joe

Blacksmith and husband of Pip’s older sister Georgiana: “a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness” (2). “This gentle Christian man” (57) is ruled by his shrewish wife, who makes him and Pip “fellow-sufferers” (2). He befriends Pip as a boy and speaks of the “larks” they will share together as they grow older, “ever the best of friends.” Pip confesses to Joe his lies about Miss Havisham (9), and as Joe’s apprentice he regretfully learns the trade of blacksmith (13). Although Pip is snobbish and condescending to him, Joe remains loyal to Pip (27) and nurses him when he falls ill after Magwitch’s death (57). After his wife’s early death, Biddy takes over Mrs. Joe’s duties as housekeeper and eventually marries Joe (58). They have one son, Pip.

Joe defines the moral message of the novel, representing the ideal of the “gentle Christian man” (57) in contrast to the false ideal of the gentleman that Pip pursues in London. Although he is illiterate and inarticulate, repeating his apologetic “which I meantersay,” he speaks directly and honestly many of the home truths in the novel. Using the language of a blacksmith, he tells Pip that “life is made of ever so many partings welded together,” a theme traced through to the last sentence of the book in images of chains and the motif of life as a journey. Joe’s love and friendship forms one of the chains of gold in Pip’s life, binding the two of them together just as the iron chain from the leg iron symbolically binds Pip to Magwitch.

Havisham, Miss

Eccentric old woman who lives as a recluse in Satis House and who hires Pip to play with her adopted protégée, Estella. “She was dressed in rich materials—satins, and lace, and silks—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, but her hair was white. . . . I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow” (8). She retreated into seclusion after being jilted by Compeyson, stopping all the clocks there at 20 minutes before nine, the hour of her betrayal; leaving the wedding feast to decay on the table; and wearing her tattered wedding gown. She is training Estella to carry out her revenge by despising and spurning men. She brings Pip to Satis House as a victim for Estella to practice on (8), and she also uses him to taunt her relatives into thinking him a rival for her money (11). She pays for his apprenticeship (13), leading Pip to believe that she is the source of his great expectations. After he learns otherwise, she asks for his forgiveness and gives him £900 to pay for Herbert’s position at Clarriker’s. Pip rescues her from burning (49), but her injuries prove fatal. She leaves most of her money to Estella (57).

Miss Havisham’s name suggests her contributions to the illusions (have a sham) that Pip harbors and to the guilt (have a shame) that troubles him. Encouraged by his sister and Pumblechook, Pip takes her for the godmother in the fairy-tale version of his life, ignoring the decay and misery at Satis House. Dorothy Van Ghent (1953) describes Estella and Miss Havisham as “not two characters but a single one, or a single essense with dual aspects. . . . For inevitably wrought into the fascinating jewel-likeness of Pip’s great expectations, as represented by Estella, is the falsehood and degeneracy represented by Miss Havisham.”

Many sources have been suggested for Miss Havisham: William Wilkie Collins’s novel The Woman in White (1860) and the White Woman of Dickens’s essay “Where We Stopped Growing” have been proposed by several commentators. Doris Alexander (1991) proposes Dickens’s godmother and great aunt Elizabeth Charlton as his inspiration for both Miss Havisham and David Copperfield’s aunt Betsey Trotwood.

The village in Kent which, along with Chal k, was the original for the village of Joe Gargery and his forge in Great Expectations .

Hubble, Mr. and Mrs.

Friends of the Gargerys who attend Christmas dinner at the blacksmith’s house. Mr. Hubble is the village wheelwright “with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane” (4). Pip describes his wife as “a little curly sharpedged person in sky-blue, who held a conversationally junior position, because she had married Mr. Hubble . . . when she was younger than he” (4).

The man of all work at the riverside inn where Pip and Magwich stay as Pip attempts to spirit Magwich out of England. His shoes, “taken . . . from the feet of a drowned seaman,” and his certainty about the Custom House officers make his brief appearance in the novel memorable (54) and led Algernon C. Swinburne (1913) to describe him “as great among the greatest of the gods of comic fiction.”

Lawyer with offices in Little Britain who serves both Miss Havisham and Magwitch. “He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a corresponding large hand. . . . His eyes were set very deep in his head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious” (11). As a lawyer with an extensive criminal practice, he carries on conversations through crossexamination and questioning. He also has a habit of washing his hands frequently with scented soap. Pip first meets him at Miss Havisham’s house (11). Later, Jaggers announces to Pip his great expectations (18) and represents Pip’s secret benefactor. After successfully defending Molly, Estella’s mother, on a murder charge, he hired her as his maid. He explains his decision to place Estella in the care of Miss Havisham as a way of saving at least one child from a life in the criminal underworld (51). Jaggers is wholly defined by his professional life. Unlike Wemmick, he has no private domestic world separate from the office. A bully with his clients, Jaggers avoids knowing the truth about their crimes. He adopts an intimidating and aloof manner to control every situation and escape being tainted by the evil he manipulates daily.

The ambivalences in Jaggers’s character provoke contradictory responses to him. Nicholas Bentley, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis (1988), for example, describe him as “a humane man made cynical by his professional experience”; Bert G. Hornback (1987) characterizes him as “a sinister and intellectually selfish man.” Lazarus, Abraham Thief whom Jaggers is engaged to prosecute for stealing a plate; his brother tries unsuccessfully to bribe Jaggers to represent him (20). Little Britain Street in the Cit y where Jaggers’s office is located (20).

Magwitch, Abel (a.k.a. Provis and Campbell)

Unnamed escaped convict for whom Pip steals the Christmas pie from his sister’s larder (2): “a fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped and shivered; glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head” (1). He is recaptured on Christmas Day with Compeyson, another escapee who is Magwitch’s former accomplice and now his enemy (5). Out of gratitude to the boy and a desire to get even with the gentlemen who imprisoned him, Magwitch, who has been transported to Australia for life, secretly uses his earnings as a sheep farmer to provide Pip’s great expectations. When he illegally returns to England to see his gentleman, he surprises Pip and repels him with his commonness and his claim to be Pip’s “second father” (39). While Pip makes plans to smuggle him out of England, he takes the aliases Provis and Campbell and tells Pip the story of his life (42), of his entanglement with Compeyson, of his relationship with Molly, and of their daughter, who turns out to be Estella. He is arrested during Pip’s abortive attempt to escape with him to the continent (54). Sentenced to hang, he dies in the prison hospital before the sentence can be carried out (56).

In the novel’s inversion of the Cinderella story, Magwitch, whose name suggests magic and witchery, is the dark fairy godmother, or, as J. Hillis Miller (1958) describes him, “a nightmare permutation of Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Jarndyce,” the benefactors in Oliver Twist and Bleak House. Magwitch’s harsh treatment and hardships as a child have led to his criminality, just as Pip’s mistreatment by Mrs. Joe has left him with a guilty conscience and a self-image as naturally vicious. The similarities between the lonely, shivering man and the orphaned, shivering boy in the opening chapter establish the identification between Magwitch and Pip. Magwitch’s crass assumption that money can make a gentleman embodies Dickens’s criticism of the money society that fails to appreciate the true gentility of a common man like Joe Gargery. Mary Anne Wemmick’s “neat little” maidservant (25). Mike “Gentleman with one eye, in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches” who is one of Jaggers’s clients (20). Millers One of Belinda Pocket’s nursemaids (22).

Jaggers’s maid, “a woman of about forty . . . [whose] face looked to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches’ caldron [in Macbeth]” (26). Jaggers had successfully defended her in a murder case and then taken her as his maid. She is very strong and has deeply scarred wrists. Jaggers relishes his control over this powerful woman, whom Wemmick describes as “a wild beast tamed” (24). After Pip notices a likeness between Molly’s hands and Estella’s, he confirms that Molly is Estella’s mother (48).

Orlick, Dolge

Joe Gargery’s journeyman blacksmith, “a broad-shouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching” (15). He holds grudges against Pip, whom he thinks Joe favors, and against Mrs. Joe, who has called him a fool and a rogue. He secretly attacks and maims her (16), and these injuries lead to her early death (35). When Miss Havisham hires him as a porter, Pip has him dismissed (29–30). Finally, he falls in with Compeyson and plots to murder Pip by luring him to the limekiln on the marshes, a scheme foiled by Herbert Pocket, Startop, and Trabb’s Boy (53).

While the evil machinations of Compeyson and Drummle are explained in the plot of the novel, Orlick’s attempts to destroy Pip are more mysterious. He appears as a kind of evil alter ego to Pip, expressing the resentment or violence that Pip suppresses. Like Pip, he seems to have named himself, for the narrator tells us that the name Dolge is a “clear impossibility” (15). His first role is as the “idle apprentice” in contrast to Pip’s “industrious apprentice,” a traditional folk-story motif that is developed in George Lillo’s play, The London Merchant (1731), with which Wopsle taunts Pip (15). In this role, Orlick fights with Joe and maims Mrs. Joe. He shadows Pip and Biddy, an apparent rival for Biddy’s attentions, and later becomes the doorkeeper to Satis House, symbolically blocking Pip’s access to Estella, his presence there a reminder to Pip of his unsuitability as a former blacksmith’s apprentice. Orlick makes explicit his role representing Pip’s suppressed anger at the limekiln, when he admits to killing Mrs. Joe but blames Pip: “But it warn’t old Orlick as did it. You was favoured, and he was bullied and beat. . . . You done it” (53). In a more comic vein, his treatment of Pumblechook—“tied him up to his bedpost, and . . . stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals” (57)—also carries out Pip’s desire for revenge on this hypocritical relative. In light of all his crimes, Orlick’s punishment—imprisonment in the county jail—seems unusually indulgent.

Pepper (“The Avenger”)

Pip’s servant boy. “I had even started a boy in boots—top boots—in bondage and slavery to whom I might be said to pass my days. For, after I had made this monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman’s family) and had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to eat” (27).

Name by which Philip Pirrip Jr. is generally known. His “infant tongue” could make of his given name “nothing longer or more explicit than Pip” (1). His benefactor later makes keeping the name a condition for receiving his great expectations (18). It is a name Pip gives himself, suggesting his orphan status and the necessity to make his own way in the world. The name also suggests that Pip is a “seed” or a “hatchling.”

Pirrip, Philip, Jr. (Pip)

Narrator and protagonist of Great Expectations. He is the orphan son of Philip Sr. and Georgiana, who are buried in the local churchyard with five of their children, Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger. Pip is raised by his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery. Pip’s story begins on a Christmas Eve when he is about seven and befriends an escaped convict by stealing for him some food from his sister’s larder and a file from the forge (3). Pip assumes that this episode was simply something unusual that happened to him, and he represses his memory of the convict and his sense of identification with him. Sometime later he is taken to play with Estella, rich Miss Havisham’s ward, who scorns him, makes him discontented with his common life and prospects, and inspires his hopeless adoration (8). While he serves his apprenticeship to his brother-in-law the blacksmith, Pip wishes for a better life, a wish that seems to come true when he is notified that he is the recipient of “great expectations” (18). His unnamed benefactor—assumed by Pip to be Miss Havisham—supports his life as an idle gentleman in London. Pip also assumes that Miss Havisham has chosen him to marry Estella. When his benefactor reveals his identity several years later, he turns out to be Abel Magwitch, the convict Pip befriended as a child (38). At first Pip is repelled, but as he plans Magwitch’s escape from London and then witnesses his arrest, trial, and death, he realizes the shallowness of his expectations and the value of the life he rejected when he left Joe and the forge and went to the city. By the time of Magwitch’s death, Pip has learned to love the convict who gave so much of himself to advance Pip’s fortunes. In the end, Pip gives up Magwitch’s money, works for his living, and is reconciled with Joe (59).

Pip’s character is complicated by the fact that there are at least two Pips—Pip the narrator and Pip the character at the center of the story. Although the narrator does not reveal a great deal about his present life, we do know that he is a moderately successful, middle-aged businessman who has spent several years in Egypt. His ability to laugh at some of his earlier foolishness and to achieve ironic distance on his mistakes, as well as his occasional comments on his former short-sightedness, suggests that the narrator has become wiser and has realized the emptiness of his former expectations and the value of the forge. There are also, however, several reasons to conclude that Pip may not have learned as much as he thinks he has. His confession to the dying Magwitch that he loves Estella (56), his prayer identifying the convict and not himself as the sinner in need of mercy (56), and his final sentence in the novel, in which he still harbors expectations (59), suggest that Pip may not have overcome his condescension and his habit of “expecting.” These ambivalences in the narration seem to indicate that Philip Pirrip cannot be taken as a wholly reliable narrator.

The ambivalences also reveal a tension in the novel between the conventional Bildungsroman, in which Pip grows and learns of his mistaken values, and a satiric novel in which Pip fails to overcome his illusions. The ambiguities in the ending, especially the revised ending that Dickens chose at the urging of Edward Bulwer Lytton, and the shifting point of view that moves between that of Philip Pirrip the middle-aged businessman and that of the younger Pip present a multifaceted character developed with psychological complexity who has both strengths and weaknesses.

The psychological portrait of Pip, nicely analyzed by Bernard J. Paris in Imagined Human Beings (1997), presents a guilt ridden, imaginative boy who harbors suppressed anger, especially toward his sister. The events of his childhood—his orphanhood, his association with criminals, his mistreatment by Mrs. Joe—make him secretive and susceptible to Miss Havisham’s illusions and Estella’s humiliations. By suppressing his guilt and projecting his violent anger onto characters like Orlick and Drummle, Pip is able to maintain the illusion that he is worthy of his elevation to the status of young gentleman. But he is not able, like Wemmick, to keep the two sides of his bifurcated character separated, and he is frequently troubled by reminders of criminality, guilt, and violence. His acceptance of Magwitch and his rejection of Magwitch’s money suggest that he finally comes to terms with this separation and integrates disparate parts of himself, but he does not seem fully able to achieve psychological wholeness. He still has not come to terms with his feelings about Estella. In the original ending, his satisfaction in Estella’s suffering and in her mistaken assumption that young Pip is his child suggests that he has not overcome his resentment at her earlier humiliations. The revised ending implies that Pip still harbors expectations that involve Estella, however one reads the ambiguities in the final sentences of the novel. In both endings the voice is that of a chastened middle-aged bachelor, still a lonely outsider and a psychological orphan.

Pocket, Belinda

Matthew’s wife, a knight’s daughter, “had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless” (23). She is so obsessed with social position that she pays no attention to housekeeping or to her young children Alick, Jane, Charlotte, Fanny, Joe, and an unnamed baby, who “tumble” in the care of two neglectful nursemaids. Doris Alexander (1991) suggests that she was based on Catherine Hogarth Dickens.

Pocket, Herbert

Pip’s roommate at Barnard’s Inn after Pip comes into his expectations. Son of Matthew Pocket, Herbert is the “pale young gentleman” who fought with Pip over Estella (11). He has “a frank and easy way” and “a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean” (22). He names Pip “Handel,” reflecting Pip’s background as a blacksmith and celebrating their harmonious relationship, and he instructs Pip in manners (22). He helps Pip hide Magwitch and plan the escape. Pip secretly secures a position for Herbert with Clarriker’s (37). Herbert marries Clara Barley after a long engagement, manages the Cairo office for the firm, and hires Pip as his clerk there (58).

Pocket, Matthew

Miss Havisham’s cousin, Herbert’s father, and Pip’s tutor when he comes to London to become a gentleman. A graduate of Harrow and Cambridge, he was “a young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was very near being so” (23). He is kind and unselfish but feckless and impractical, and he has a habit of pulling his hair as a sign of frustration. He is the only one of Miss Havisham’s relatives who speaks honestly to her, so he has been banished from her presence. Pip later tells Miss Havisham of Matthew’s good character, and she leaves Matthew £4000 in her will (59).

Pumblechook, Uncle

Joe Gargery’s uncle, a prosperous and hypocritical corn chandler and seed merchant: “a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked” (4). He arranges Pip’s initial meeting with Miss Havisham and Estella (7) and subsequently takes credit for being the founder of Pip’s great expectations (19), toadying to Pip’s new-found wealth. But when Pip loses his prospects, Pumblechook treats him with patronizing pity, suggesting that Pip’s downfall is a result of his ingratitude to him, his “earliest benefactor” (58). He receives his comeuppance when Orlick breaks into his house, ties him to a bedpost, and stuffs his mouth full of flowers (57).

As a seed merchant, Pumblechook is responsible for selling Pip (a seed) to Miss Havisham and introducing him to the materialistic illusions that she fosters. Doris Alexander (1991) connects Pumblechook with John Willett in Barnaby Rudge and suggests that both characters are based on John Porter Leigh, the father of Mary Ann Leigh.

Wemmick, John, Jr.

Jaggers’s clerk, “a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. . . . He wore at least four mourning rings . . . [and] several rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends” (21). These items of “portable property” are gifts from the firm’s executed former clients. With his “post office of a mouth,” Wemmick hides his feelings behind a mechanical smile as he advises Pip repeatedly to value “portable property.” At his home in Walworth, Wemmick has a personal life that he keeps totally separated from his business life. There he cares for his deaf and aged father in a castle complete with a moat and a cannon (25) and courts Miss Skiffins, his fiancée whom he marries in a wonderfully comic ceremony (55). He aids Pip in secretly setting up Herbert Pocket in business (37), warns him of Compeyson (45), and aids him in planning Magwitch’s escape (48).

Wemmick’s response to the corruption of the world is to live two separate lives, a solution he recommends to Pip. But Pip is unable to hide or deny Magwitch’s presence and importance in his life. When Pip sits by Magwitch holding his hand at the trial and when he makes no attempt to secure Magwitch’s money, he implicitly rejects Wemmick’s “split personality” solution and follows the example of Joe, who refuses to take money for releasing Pip to Jaggers. Although Wemmick does much to aid Pip, especially in the attempt to get Magwitch to the Continent, he is, as Bert G. Hornback (1987) points out, “finally corrupted by his preference for money.” Whimple, Mrs. Landlady of the house where old Bill Barley and his daughter lodge and where Magwitch hides (46).

Parish clerk and friend of the Gargerys, he unites “a Roman nose, . . . a large shining bald forehead, . . . [and] a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of” (4). He aspires to enter the church, but he ends up in the theater where he takes the stage name of Waldengarver. Pip sees him perform Hamlet in an obscure London theater (31), and later, when he has been reduced to playing miscellaneous bit parts, Pip sees him at an even more obscure venue along the river (47). Wopsle’s desires to escape his provincial origins and seek success in the theater in London act as a comic parody of Pip’s similar pretensions to gentility.

FURTHER READING The criticism on Great Expectations is voluminous. Several collections bring together significant critical essays on the novel: Richard Lettis and W. E. Morris, Assessing Great Expectations (1960), includes Dorothy Van Ghent’s (1953) classic discussion of the novel’s modes of characterization and Julian Moynahan’s “The Hero’s Guilt: the Case of Great Expectations” (Essays in Criticism, 1960), a psychological analysis of Pip and his doubles. Edgar Rosenberg’s (1999) authoritative edition supplements its carefully established text and thorough explanatory footnotes with a selection of critical essays, among them Peter Brooks’s (1984) Freudian analysis of the plot, “Repetition, Repression, and Returns: The Plotting of Great Expectations.” Janice Carlisle’s (1996) edition also includes Brooks’s essay, as well as others illustrating several contemporary approaches to the novel. Of particular interest among them is Hilary Schor’s feminist reading, “ ‘If He Should Turn to and Beat Her’: Violence, Desire, and the Woman’s Story in Great Expectations .” Harold Bloom’s (2000) volume in the Modern Critical Interpretations series is a good selection of recent essays. The autobiographical roots of the story are discussed by Ada Nisbet in “The Autobiographical Matrix of Great Expectations” (Victorian Newsletter, 1959). F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis (1970) provide a close reading of the novel as an example of psychological realism. Many commentators write on Pip as narrator, including Robert B. Partlow, “The Moving I: A Study of Point of View in Great Expectations” (College English, 1961), Robert E. Garis (1965), and Steven Connor (1985). Beth Herst (The Dickens Hero: Selfhood and Alienation in the Dickens World, 1990) discusses Pip as an example of the alienated hero in Dickens’s later novels. Three book-length discussions of the novel are especially noteworthy: Bert G. Hornback (1987) and Anny Sadrin (1988) provide extended critical introductions to the novel; Jerome Meckier (2002) considers the novel in comparison to other works of Victorian fiction.

Great Expectations was first published as a serial in Al the Year Round and, consistent with the format of that magazine, was unillustrated. Some critics, most notably F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis (1970), have suggested that the realism of the novel made illustrations—especially caricatures in the manner of Hablot Knight Browne—inappropriate. However, there have been many successfully illustrated later editions of the novel. The first American edition—the serial published in Harper’s Weekly—was illustrated by John McLenan. Since it was printed from advance proofs sent from England and appeared a week before the English serial, this edition could be said to be the first edition of the novel. Dickens had Marcus Stone illustrate the Library Edition of the novel in 1862. Especially noteworthy among later illustrators of the novel are F. W. Pailthorpe (1885), Harry Furniss (1910), and Gordon Ross (1937). Source: Davis, P. (2007). Critical companion to Charles Dickens. New York: Facts On File.

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Great Expectations

70 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-14

Chapters 15-19

Chapters 20-26

Chapters 27-33

Chapters 34-40

Chapters 41-48

Chapters 49-56

Chapters 57-59

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

Great Expectations is the 13th novel written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial in Dickens’s periodical, All the Year Round , Great Expectations, and Chapman and Hall published the novelized version in October of 1861. The novel is widely considered to be a classic example of the bildungsroman , or coming-of-age genre , and it has been adapted into numerous plays, films, and television series.

Plot Summary

Great Expectations tells the story of an orphan named Philip Pirrip, or Pip. Pip lives with his tyrannical older sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery , and her gentle husband, a blacksmith named Joe Gargery. Joe is Pip’s closest friend.

Pip finds many ways to improve his life. He seeks further education from Biddy , a relation of his teacher’s. And he begins visiting the home of a wealthy, eccentric old spinster named Miss Havisham . At Miss Havisham’s, Pip falls in love with her adopted daughter, the haughty and beautiful Estella . Miss Havisham encourages this infatuation, but Estella does not reciprocate.

When Pip comes of age, he begins working at the forge. There, he works with a violent man named Dolge Orlick . After an argument, Orlick attacks Pip’s sister, leaving her an invalid. Soon after, London lawyer Mr. Jaggers reveals that Pip has received a large inheritance from an anonymous benefactor, whom Pip suspects to be Miss Havisham. Pip becomes a London gentleman, studying under a tutor named Matthew Pocket. He rooms with Matthew’s son, Herbert, and the two become fast friends. Herbert reveals that a conman broke Miss Havisham’s heart, causing her eccentricities.

Pip begins to look down on his humble beginnings. He returns home after his sister’s death and realizes that he’s been neglecting Biddy and Joe. Back in London, a convict who Pip helped escape from prison at the novel’s open, returns. The convict, Abel Magwitch , reveals that he is Pip’s mysterious benefactor. Magwitch made a fortune in Australia and was so thankful to Pip for his kindness that he was determined to repay him. Magwitch is still on the run and reveals that he used to be partners with a conman named Compeyson. Pip and Herbert deduce that Compeyson is Miss Havisham’s former conman fiancé.

Pip confronts Miss Havisham about leading him on concerning Estella. He learns that Estella is engaged to marry his wealthy classmate, Bentley Drummle. Miss Havisham feels regret about raising Estella to be heartless and begs Pip for forgiveness. As Pip is leaving, Miss Havisham accidentally sets her dress on fire and is badly burned. She eventually dies from her injuries. Soon after, Orlick lures Pip to the marsh and attempts to bludgeon him with a stone hammer, but Herbert and the townspeople arrive, rescuing Pip.

To help Magwitch escape, Herbert and Pip row him down the River Thames. Compeyson and the police intercept them. As the police boat approaches, Magwitch lunges for Compeyson, and the two struggle in the river. Compeyson drowns, and the court sentences Magwitch to death. Pip loses his inheritance.

As he slips further into debt, Pip becomes very ill. Joe comes to London to nurse Pip and pay off some of his debts. Joe also brings news from home: the police arrested Orlick for robbery; Biddy has taught Joe to read; and Miss Havisham divided her will among Estella, Herbert’s father, and Pip. Pip returns home to marry Biddy, only to discover that Joe has married her. Pip decides to work with Herbert in Egypt.

After many years abroad, Pip returns to England. He visits the site of Miss Havisham’s demolished house. There, he finds a recently widowed Estella. Estella’s bitter marriage has made her a kinder person. The novel ends with Pip and Estella walking hand-in-hand. 

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Great Expectations

By charles dickens, great expectations summary and analysis of part i, chapters 1-10 (1-10).

The story opens with the narrator, Pip , who introduces himself and describes an image of himself as a boy, standing alone and crying in a churchyard near some marshes. Young Pip is staring at the gravestones of his parents, who died soon after his birth. This tiny, shivering bundle of a boy is suddenly terrified by the voice of large, bedraggled man who threatens to cut Pip's throat if he doesn't stop crying.

The man, dressed in a prison uniform with a great iron shackle around his leg, grabs the boy and shakes him upside down, emptying his pockets. The man devours a piece of bread which falls from the boy, then barks questions at him. Pip tells him that yes, he is an orphan and that he lives with his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery , the wife of a blacksmith, about a mile from the church. The man tells Pip that if he wants to live, he'll go down to his house and bring him back some food and a file for the shackle on his leg. Pip agrees to meet him early the next morning and the man walks back into the marshes.

Dickens introduces us immediately to Pip, who serves as both the young protagonist of Great Expectations and the story's narrator looking back on his own story as an adult. With this two-level approach, Dickens leads the reader through young Pip's life with the immediacy and surprise of a first person narration while at the same time guiding with an omnipotent narrator who knows how it will all turn out. The adult narrator Pip will foreshadow future events throughout the story by using signs and symbols.

Dickens uses this duality to great effect in the first chapter, where we are personally introduced to Pip as if we were in a pleasant conversation with him: "I give Pirrip as my father's family name..." Immediately after this, however, we are thrown into the point of view of a terrified young child being mauled by an escaped convict.

The narrator Pip then presents an interesting, and prophetic, relationship between the boy and the bullying man. At first, the relationship appears to be based solely on power and fear. The man yells at the boy only to get what he wants, a file and some food, and the boy only responds for fear of his life. And yet, after they part, the young Pip keeps looking back at the man as he walks alone into the marshes. The image of the man holding his arms around him, alone on the horizon save a pole associated with the death of criminals, is strikingly familiar to the initial image of young Pip, holding himself in the cold, alone in the churchyard with the stones of his dead parents. For a moment, then, the relationship seems to warm. They share a common loneliness and a common marginalization from society, the orphan and the escaped convict. Even while he is afraid, Pip instinctively displays a sympathetic reaction.

This initial meeting, between a small boy and a convict, will develop into the central relationship in the book. It is the relationship which will cause Pip's great expectations for himself to rise and fall.

Pip runs home to his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and his adoptive father, Joe Gargery. Mrs. Joe is a loud, angry, nagging woman who constantly reminds Pip and her husband Joe of the difficulties she has gone through to raise Pip and take care of the house. Pip finds solace from these rages in Joe, who is more his equal than a paternal figure, and they are united under a common oppression.

During the dinner, Pip nervously steals a piece of bread. Early the next morning, Pip steals food and a pork pie from the pantry shelf and a file from Joe's forge and runs back to the marshes.

The reader's sympathy once again is directed at Pip who not only lost his parents but is being raised by a raging, bitter woman. A common criticism inherent in many of Dickens' novels is the abuse of children in society at large. Although he paints Mrs. Joe in a rather humorous light at times, the reader is still keenly aware of the fear in which this poor child grew up.

Character names in Dickens' works are often codes which reflect a characteristic of the person or their station. Mrs. Joe's name can be decoded to reflect humorous irony on Dicken's part. Although the wife of Joe has taken both his names in the classic patriarchal manner (usually connoting that the wife is the property of the man) the Gragery household is anything but patriarchal. In fact, her husband is treated as little more than a child and Pip and he are the submissive ones.

The next morning, Pip sneaks out of the house and back to the marshes. He finds a man, wet and cold and dressed like a convict, but he turns out to be a different convict from the man who had threatened him the night before. This man has a badly bruised face and wears a broad-brimmed hat. He runs away from Pip without speaking to him. Pip finally finds his man and gives him the food. The man reacts with anger when Pip tells him about the other convict. Pip leaves him filing at his shackle and returns home.

The second meeting of Pip and the convict is much more civil and sympathetic than the first. Pip even puts away his fear to say, "I am glad you enjoy it," as the convict eats. Since he stole the food and file, Pip is now the convict's partner in crime and feels closer to the man.

Great Expectations is sometimes called, among other things, a mystery or suspense novel, and in this chapter we see elements of that genre. Dickens uses secrets as a way of heightening suspense throughout the novel. Someone is always hiding something from someone else. Sometimes these secrets are clear to the reader and makes the reader a partner in crime with the characters, as we are with Pip last as he sneaks around his house, terrified of getting caught, stealing food. Other times the reader is left out of the secret but we are given the impression that it is an important thing that we need to find out, as in the case of the two convicts. We know that there is some connection between the two that is important to the story but we are given very few clues to help us.

Pip returns home to find Mrs. Joe preparing the house for Christmas dinner. She has invited Mr. Wopsle , the church clerk, Mr. Hubble the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble and Uncle Pumblechook who was a "well to do corn-chandler" who "drove his own chaise-cart." The discussion over dinner was how fortunate Pip should feel about being raised "by hand" by Mrs. Joe and how much trouble she has gone through in that endeavor, though Pip's opinion was never requested. Mr. Pumblechook nearly chokes on some brandy after the meal and Pip realizes that he poured tar water in the brandy bottle when he stole some for the convict. Mrs. Joe becomes too busy in the kitchen to afford a full investigation, but then announces that she is going to present the pork pie. Sure that he is going to get caught, Pip jumps up from the table and runs to the door, only to meet face to face with a group of soldiers who appear to be there to arrest him.

The suspense grows in this chapter as the reader and Pip fearfully await the discovery by Mrs. Joe of the things which are missing from the kitchen. The apprehension is kept light, however, with a foolish dialogue between the adults over how much trouble Pip is to raise for Mrs. Joe. Mr. Pumblechook is presented as a loud mouth idiot, full of himself. The only sympathetic character is Joe, who continues to make gestures of support toward Pip. Dicken's little social commentary here is clear: It is often the dim witted and poor (Joe) who act with more grace and charity than wealthy loud mouths (Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle) who claim that they do.

The soldiers do not want to arrest Pip but they do need a pair of handcuffs fixed by Joe. They are invited in, Mr. Pumblechook offers up Mrs. Joe's sherry and port, and Joe gets to work on the handcuffs in the forge. They are, in fact, hunting two convicts who were seen recently in the marshes. After Joe fixes the handcuffs, he, Pip, and Mr. Wopsle are allowed to follow the soldiers into the marshes. They soon find the two convicts wrestling each other in the mud. The one with the hat accuses the other, Pip's convict, of trying to kill him, but the other replies that he would have done it if he really wanted to. Instead, he had been the one who had called for the soldiers and was willing to sacrifice himself just so the one with the hat would get caught again.

The bring the two back to a boathouse where Pip's convict, eyeing Pip, admits to stealing Mrs. Joe's pork pie by himself, thus getting Pip off the hook.

Joe and Pip watch as the two convicts are brought back to the prison ship.

The reader is presented with the question of why the two convcts are fightng each other. Pip's convict goes so far as to say that he deliberately got himself caught, just so he could make sure the man with the hat would go back to prison. What hatred did this man have that would make him go back to prison just to see another suffer as well?

The relationship between the convict and Pip continues to grow as well, even though they do not speak and the convict hardly looks at him. The convict obviously wants to protect the boy and, suspecting Pip may be threatened, takes the blame for stealing the pork pie. The two are, once again, united in secrecy.

Joe, Pip, and Mr. Wopsle walk back home. Pop decides not to tell Joe the truth about his file and the pork pie -- he is afraid of losing his respect. When they return, the topic of discussion is the question of how the convict managed to get into the locked house. Through his bombastic overbearance, Mr. Pumblechook's argument wins: the convict crawled down the chimney. Mrs. Joe sends Pip to bed.

Pip's fear that Joe would "think worse of me than I was" if Pip told him about the file and pork pie is a fear that Pip will revisit throughout his young life. Joe is the only friend in the world for Pip, he is his entire society. Pip fears to lose this companionship by telling the truth. In the future, Pip will struggle with telling the truth because of the fear that society will think less of him.

Pip describes a little of his education with Mr. Wopsle's great aunt , a "ridiculous old lady" who had started a small school in her cottage. The education, as Pip describes it, is less than satisfactory, but Pip does learn some basics from Biddy , an orphan girl who works for Mrs. Wopsle.

While doing his homework one night, Pip discovers that Joe is illiterate. Joe explains that he never stayed in school long because his father, a drunk and physically abusive to him and his mother, kept him out. Joe goes on to explain to Pip that, because of his father, Joe stays humble to Mrs. Joe. "I'm dead afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing what's right by a woman," he says. He let's Mrs. Joe "Ram-page" over him because he sees how difficult it is to be a woman, remembering his mother, and he wants to do the right thing as a man. Pip has new understanding and respect for Joe.

Mrs. Joe comes home, quite excited, and proclaims that Pip is going to "play" for Miss Havisham , "a rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house." Uncle Pumblechook suggested Pip to Miss Havisham when she asked if he knew any small boys. Pip was to go tomorrow and spend the evening at Uncle Pumblechook's in town.

Chapter Seven and Chapter Eight mark a key turning point in the novel, separating Pip's young childhood in the humble company of Joe from the beginnings of greater expectations in the company of higher society.

The chapter presents a relationship between Joe and Pip which is growing in love and respect. Joe is at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and, particularly, at the bottom of his household's hierarchy but Pip finds new respect for his position. "I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart." The image is almost ideal: the young Pip and Joe sitting next to the fire, Pip admiring him and teaching him the alphabet.

Dickens contrasts this humble setting with the opportunity presented at the end of the chapter by the noisy entrance and rather insolent announcement by Mrs. Joe. She introduces the first of Pip's "great expectations" in the form of the job given to Pip "to play" for Miss Havisham: "...this boy's fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham's." Although little is known about the wealthy woman, and less is known exactly how Pip is supposed to "play," the opportunity is one where Pip will be in the company of a higher social and economic class of people.

Pip spends the evening at Mr. Pumblechook's and is brought to Miss Havisham's after a meager breakfast. They are met at the gate by a young woman, Estella , "who was very pretty and seemed very proud." Estella lets Pip in, but sends Mr. Pumblechook on his way. She leads him through a dark house by candle and leaves him outside a door. He knocks and is let in. There he meets Miss Havisham, a willowy, yellowed woman dressed in an old wedding gown. She calls for Estella and the two play cards, despite Estella's objection that Pip was just a "common labouring-boy." "Well," says Miss Havisham, "you can break his heart." Estella insults Pip's coarse hands and his thick boots as they play.

Smarting from the insults, Pip later cries as he eats lunch in the great house's yard. He explores the yard and the garden, always seeing Estella in the distance walking ahead of him. Finally, she lets him out of the yard and he walks the four miles home, feeling low.

Dickens uses strong imagery to describe Miss Havisham's house ("The Manor House" or the "Satis House") as barren of feelings or even life, even before we meet the bitter Miss Havisham and the rude Estella: "The cold wind seemed to blow colder there, than outside the gate..." Again we have a strange mystery: Why is this woman always in the dark, and dressed in a wedding gown? Who is the young and pretty Estella and what is she doing in such a morbid place?

Pip's first taste of "higher society" is a bitter one, and it leaves him ashamed and embarrassed rather than justifiably angry. Pip is, in fact, just a toy for both Miss Havisham, who wants him to "play," and Estella, who treats him roughly while at the same time flirts. Pip, torn between being insulted and his attraction to Estella, opts to feel ashamed of his upbringing -- so much so that he "wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up." His new found respect and love for Joe was being spoiled by his embarrassment of being brought up in a lower class family.

Pip is forced to talk about his day to Mrs. Joe and Mr. Pumblechook. Pip lies in a fantastical matter, making up stories about dogs being fed veal and Miss Havisham lounging on a velvet couch. He lies, partly in spite, but also because he is sure that the two would not understand the situation at the Satis House even if he described it in detail..

Later, Pip tells Joe the truth, and also confesses that he is embarrassed about being a "commoner" because of his attraction to Estella.

Joe reassures him that he is not common, he is uncommon small and an uncommon scholar. Referring to Pip's lies, he adds, "If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked."

Joe's analysis, though phrased in what Pip would call "common" language, is accurate: Pip is trying to become "uncommon" by lying about his experiences. Pip made up lies about the Satis House with the intention of glorifying it in front of the eager Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe, both of whom eat it up. While Pip is naively honest in admitting to Joe that he wants to become uncommon, he is intelligent enough to know that he can become uncommon by being dishonest, or, as Joe would have it, "crooked."

One of the main themes of the book is spelled out in this chapter, specifically, the desire to rise above one's social station. Dickens, writing this book toward the end of his life, is speaking directly of his own youthful desires and those of his father as well. As the story of Pip unfolds and we witness the different ways in which Pip tries to climb the social ladder -- by making up fantastical stories in this case -- it will be interesting to listen to the running commentary made by the narrator, the older Pip, who, like Dickens himself, is looking back on this theme and reflecting on how it affected his happiness later on in life.

Chapter 10:

Pip states plainly that he wants to be uncommon and so, taking to heart Joe's advice that "you must be a common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one," he asks Biddy at the small school to help him get educated. Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's school is little more than a play school and Pip understands it will be hard to concentrate on some actual learning, but Biddy agrees and gives Pip some books to start with.

On the way home, Pip goes into a pub to pick up Joe. He finds Joe sitting with a stranger, a man with one eye pulled closed and a worn hat on his head. The man asks Joe all kinds of personal questions, some about Pip's relation to him, the whole time staring at Pip. At one point, the man stirs his drink with Joe's file -- the file Pip stole to give to the convict! As Joe and Pip depart, the stranger hands Pip a coin wrapped in paper.

When they get home, Pip realizes that the paper is actually a two pound note. Thinking it was a mistake (though Pip knows somehow that it wasn't) Joe runs back to the pub to give it back but the man is gone.

Pip, excited at the beginning of the chapter by the prospect of educating himself to become uncommon, is reminded of his common, and somewhat illegitimate, past by the stranger in the pub. As he goes to sleep, he is bothered by the fact that it is uncommon to be "on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts."

The man clearly knew something about Pip assisting the convict and wanted Pip to know that he did. How he knows remains a mystery, but Pip's immediate fear is how his past will "haunt" him as he tries to climb out of his common background.

Great Expectations Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Great Expectations is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Briefly explain how the convict ended up in jail at the time when Pip met him on the marshes?

The convict, who'd escaped from the ship, was caught in the marshes while fighting with another convict. Both men were taken back to the prison ship.

discuss pip as both a narrator and a character, how are different aspects of his personality revealed by his telling of his story?

Great Expectations is really a coming of age story. It is essentially a bildungsroman where we watch Pip develop from boy to a man. As protagonist and narrator we see first hand how Pip changes. There are two Pips to observe through his journey....

Great Expectations, Paper 1, English Language

Lines 13-21 in which chapter of the novel, Great Expectations?

Study Guide for Great Expectations

Great Expectations is Dickens' thirteenth novel, completed in 1861. The GradeSaver study guide on Great Expectations contains a biography of Charles Dickens, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Great Expectations
• Great Expectations Summary
• Great Expectations Video
• Character List
• Part I, Chapters 1-10 (1-10) Summary and Analysis

Essays for Great Expectations

Great Expectations is a book by Charles Dickens completed in 1861. Great Expectations literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Great Expectations.

• Pip's Unrealistic Expectations in Dickens' Great Expectations
• Pip's Influences In Great Expectations
• The Essence of Pip
• Constructing Identity in Great Expectations
• Great Expectations: In the Name of Profit

Lesson Plan for Great Expectations

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Great Expectations
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Great Expectations Bibliography

E-Text of Great Expectations

Great Expectations is considered one of the most balanced of Dickens' novels. The Great Expectations e-text contains the full text of Great Expectations.

• Chapters 1-5
• Chapters 6-10
• Chapters 11-15
• Chapters 16-20
• Chapters 21-25

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Great Expectations

Charles dickens.

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Social Class

Great Expectations is set near the end of Industrial Revolution, a period of dramatic technological improvement in manufacturing and commerce that, among other things, created new opportunities for people who were born into "lower" or poorer classes to gain wealth and move into a "higher" and wealthier class. This new social mobility marked a distinct break from the hereditary aristocracy of the past, which enforced class consistency based solely on family lines. Great Expectations is…

Ambition and Self-Improvement

A "pip" is a small seed, something that starts off tiny and then grows and develops into something new. Pip 's name, then, is no accident, as Great Expectations is a bildungsroman , a story of the growth and development of its main character. Dickens presents the ambition to improve oneself that drives Pip along with many of the novel's secondary characters as a force capable of generating both positive and negative results. Pip's early…

Integrity and Reputation

In Great Expectations , Dickens explores pride as both a positive and a negative trait by presenting various types of pride ranging from Estella and Bentley Drummle 's snobbery to Joe and Biddy 's moral uprightness. The crucial distinction between these different varieties of pride is whether they rely on other people's opinions or whether they spring from a character's internal conscience and personal sense of accomplishment. Characters who espouse the former variety are concerned…

As the novel distrusts British culture's traditional blind faith in family lines, it also looks skeptically at the traditional family unit. Great Expectations includes very few models of healthy parent-child relations. Many of the novel's characters—including Pip , Provis , and Biddy —are orphans, and those that aren't orphans come from broken or dysfunctional families like Herbert 's, Miss Havisham 's, Estella 's, Clara 's, and Joe 's. Though Wemmick 's relationship with the Aged …

From Pip 's encounters with escaped convicts at the beginning of Great Expectations , to the grotesque courts and prisons in parts II and III, the novel casts the British legal system in a dubious light. Though Mr. Jaggers functions as an upstanding force in Pip's life by checking Pip's extravagance, it is questionable whether his law practice truly serves the law. After all, Mr. Jaggers built his reputation on successfully acquitting a murderer. Likewise…

Dickens explores many different understandings of generosity in Great Expectations . Though Pip 's initial generosity towards Provis is mostly motivated by fear, Provis understands it as true generosity and responds by selflessly devoting his life's savings towards Pip's future. Meanwhile, Mrs. Joe and Uncle Pumblechook understand generosity as a status marker and are much more interested in being considered generous than in actually acting generously. They thus constantly take credit for Joe 's generosity…

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New Title IX Regulations At Loyola Expand How The OEC Can Help The Loyola Community

Updated Title IX regulations cause changes to Loyola’s Comprehensive Policy, involving sexual harassment and discrimination.

New Title IX regulations put in place by the Department of Education under the Biden administration went into effect Aug. 1, prompting Loyola to update its Comprehensive Policy to reflect the new regulations. These involve discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and conditions like or related to pregnancy in addition to an updated definition of sexual harassment. 

While the new regulations have been accepted in Illinois, and thereby at Loyola, lawsuits have blocked the new regulations from being enforced in over 25 states as well as in colleges and schools throughout the U.S., according to the Associated Press .

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the lawsuits, resulting in the new rules being on hold in states who have filed lawsuits, according to AP .  

Tim Love, the executive director of the Office for Equity and Compliance (OEC) and Loyola’s Title IX coordinator, said the new rules don’t affect much of the university’s policies since Loyola has existing protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation through its own policies and Illinois state law. 

New Definition Of Sexual Harassment

Under the new Title IX regulations, Love said Loyola was able to expand its definition of quid pro quo sexual harassment, which refers to an instance where something is exchanged for a sexual behavior. For example, Love explained, a student receiving an A on an assignment in exchange for sleeping with or going on a date with a professor would be classified as quid pro quo sexual harassment. 

While quid pro quo sexual harassment was previously defined as occuring between two employees or between a student and an employee in power, such as a professor, the new regulations state a relationship between two students, in which one student has power over the other, could classify under quid pro quo sexual harrassment.

“So let’s say, you know, the president of a club says, ‘I’ll let you into my club if you sleep with me, or if you date me,’ or whatever,” Love said. “That could actually be quid pro quo sexual harassment under Title IX, whereas previously, it would have had to be an employee who was doing it.”

The definition of hostile environment sexual harassment was also updated, according to Love. Previously, it was defined as non-consensual action which was both severe and pervasive, but it has now changed to either severe or pervasive, which widens what could be classified sexual harassment. 

The new language targets repeated behaviors such as micro-agressions, which previously weren’t “severe” enough to warrant a sexual harassment tag, Love said. It also allows students and faculty to report instances as sexual harassment after one incident. 

“If it only happens one time, but it’s awful; it makes the person have to leave the class in tears or something crazy — that could be sexual harassment,” Love said. “Whereas in the past, it wouldn’t have been because it only happened once.”

OEC Changes From Hearings To Investigations 

Love said the OEC also updated its procedures to be more victim-focused, specifically by removing hearings from their process since they are no longer required under Title IX. 

Now, when an incident is reported — such as sexual assault, stalking, dating violence or domestic violence — an investigation is conducted by an attorney within the office, who will contact both parties, gather all evidence and make a decision.

Sam Hammett, a violence prevention and advocacy specialist at Loyola who supervises all student workers for “ The Line ,” said there’s been a lot of feedback indicating survivors don’t want to be in a hearing space, even virtually, with the person who has caused them harm. 

The Line is a advocacy service which provides students resources and support if they have experienced sexual assault, dating or domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation or stalking. The Line is also available to students who have questions or would like to talk to a trauma-informed advocate.

Hamment said from a survivor advocacy standpoint moving away from hearings is a move in the right direction for trauma-informed care. 

While Hammett said she understands the fear surrounding whether the new Title IX regulations will be overturned in response to the nationwide lawsuits, she said The Line will always be there to support students and staff no matter the law.

“The line is not going to change who we support and how we support,” Hammett said. “That is the beauty of confidential advocacy. We do not exist because of Title IX. We exist because we want to support students who have experienced gender based violence in all of its forms.”

Protections Against Discrimination On The Basis Of Pregnancy 

Title IX also has an entirely new set of protections for pregnancy and related conditions, such as pregnancy preparation including IVF, miscarriages or termination of pregnancy, postpartum and post-birth recovery, Love said. 

“Students have very strong protections against discrimination based on pregnancy,” Love said “The university has an obligation to provide reasonable modifications to ensure that pregnant students can continue in their educational experience.”

Paige Gutierrez, a fourth-year marketing student and member of the RISE Ambassadors, a group of students who advise the OEC, said the lawsuits occurring throughout the country sadden her, and she wishes people could be accepted for normal human experiences, like pregnancy.

She said she’s grateful Loyola respects student identities and appreciates the policies the university had already enacted to make students feel safe and protected, so she doesn’t have to fear what could happen if the new Title IX regulations are reversed.  

“I think that Loyola does a great job of making sure students feel heard and that they can kind of be who they want here,” Gutierrez said.

Jenna Phillips, a fourth-year economics and political science student who is also part of RISE Ambassadors, said it’s important Loyola students get to know the people behind the reporting process, including people from the OEC and the Wellness Center.

To help bridge the gap, Phillips said she planned an event last year where students could interact with OEC and Wellness Center staff. She said she hoped students could understand not only the technical processes of reporting, but she also wanted students to know why the people in the OEC do the work they do. 

“People are doing this work because they want to do this work,” Phillips said. “Because they care about you as students.”

Phillips said she believes Title IX is the bare minimum of what should be done to protect students and the Loyola community, and she believes Loyola had already exceeded the expectations before the new regulations were enforced nationwide. 

“I would want students to be assured that no matter what the law ends up being, every student is going to always be treated with dignity and respect,” Love said. “Every student is always going to have some rights. The technical wording of those rights might change year to year, but the university is not only guided by the law, which obviously we have to follow, but also by our ethical decisions and our values as an institution.”

Julia Pentasuglio is a second-year majoring in multimedia journalism and political science with a minor in environmental communication and is one of two Deputy News Editors for The Phoenix. Julia previously interned on the Digital Media team at North Coast Media, a business-to-business magazine company based in Cleveland, Ohio. She has also written freelance for The Akron Beacon Journal. Outside of her love for news and journalistic storytelling, Julia enjoys camping, biking, skiing and anything she can do outside.

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