“The Sergeant ran in first …” Cropped from the 1880 Chapman & Hall edition of Great Expectations, engraved by Thomas Philibrown (1833–1885) after Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822–1888). Public domain.
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens. The first complete edition was published in 1861. It is the story of a young boy, Phillip “Pip” Pirrip, who receives money from an unknown benefactor to make him “a gentleman”.
Summary[]
The narrator, Philip Pirrip ("Pip”) is a seven-year-old orphan who lives with his older sister (“Mrs. Joe”) and her blacksmith husband, Joe Gargery, on the coastal marshes of Kent. One Christmas Eve, when Pip visits the graves of his parents, he encounters an escaped convict. The convict threatens to kill Pip if he does not bring back food, and tools to cut away his leg iron. “What fat cheeks you ha’ got… Darn me if I couldn’t eat ’em… and if I han’t half a mind to’t!”
Pip steals a file and food, and brings them to the convict. He encounters a second, sleeping convict on the way. That evening, the Gargerys are entertaining guests, and Pip’s thefts are about to be discovered, when soldiers arrive. Hunting the escaped convicts, they need a blacksmith to mend irons. Joe and Pip follow them into the marshes, where they discover both escapees fighting. After an exchange of glances, the first convict realises that Pip hasn’t betrayed him, and confesses to stealing the food.
A few years later, Pip is volunteered to pay regular visits to entertain Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster living in the Satis House; “I sometimes have sick fancies… and I have a sick fancy that I want to see some play.” Miss Havisham had once been jilted at the altar. She had stopped all the clocks in the house at the time of the ceremony, has never since left the House, and wears nothing other than her unused wedding dress.
There Pip meets and falls in love with the beautiful Estella, Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter. Estella is encouraged by her guardian to remain aloof and hostile; “She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace.”This continues, except on one visit, when another boy, “a pale young gentleman” taunts Pip to a fist fight. Pip wins easily, and Estella, who has been watching, allows Pip to kiss her.
Joe accompanies Pip on the last visit to Miss Havisham, and she finances Pip’s apprenticeship with Joe. Joe's assistant, Dolge Orlick, is jealous. One day when Pip and Joe are away from the house, Pip’s sister is attacked, leaving her unable to speak or work. Pip suspects Orlick is the assailant. Pip's former schoolmate Biddy joins the household to help with Mrs. Joe’s care, and becomes the unwilling object of Orlick’s interest.
Four years later, Mr. Jaggers, a London lawyer, informs Pip he has been provided money by an anonymous patron, to allow Pip to be educated and live as a gentleman. “Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.” The one condition is that the young man must always go by the name “Pip”. Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is his benefactress, and fantasizes that she intends to match him with Estella.
Pip moves into Barnard's Inn with Herbert Pocket, the son of his tutor, Matthew Pocket, Miss Havisham's cousin. Herbert is the “pale young gentleman” Pip fought with years ago, although Herbert’s recollection is somewhat different;“… it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive me for having knocked you about so.” Pip’s fellow pupils are the wealthy nobleman Bentley Drummle, and mother’s boy Startop. Pip meets Jaggers’ assistant, John Wemick, a man who at work is efficient, objective and disinterested. At his home, “the Castle” decked out with drawbridge and painted guns, he is whimsical, and caring of his father, the “Aged P”. Jaggers's housekeeper, Molly, is a former convict with manacle scars on her wrists.
Joe visits Pip at Barnard's Inn, and is not well treated by Pip, who has become very conscious of his new status. Joe, who is a natural gentleman, entirely accepting. “…one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.”
Pip returns to Kent, but does not visit his old home. Arriving at Satis House to meet Estella, he is disturbed to see that Orlick is now in service to Miss Havisham. Estella has become a creature of great beauty and glacial coldness. “You must know,” said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, “that I have no heart… I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.” Pip persuades Jaggers, also visiting, to have Orlick dismissed.
Pip confesses his love for Estella to Herbert. In return, Herbert describes his engagement to one Clara, disdained by the Pockets as of mercantile background.
Pip escorts Estella when she is sent to Richmond to be introduced into society by one Mrs. Brandley. Pip is becoming torn between his background and his expectations. He joins Drummle’s gentleman’s club, the “Finches of the Grove”, and builds up debts, dragging Herbert with him;“We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition.”
Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip returns to Kent for her funeral. Biddy, who intends to become a schoolmistress, tells Pip that Orlick can still be seen hanging around the village. Pip declares that he will visit from now on, for Joe’s sake, but this is untrue. When visiting Satis House Pip will always stay at the Blue Boar, not his old home.
Pip turns 21 and comes of age, and is promised £500 per year. With the help of Wemmick Pip anonymously secures Herbert a position with the shipbroker, Clarriker, at an initial cost of £250, with more promised.
At Mrs. Brandley’s, Estella has “admirers without end”, to Pip’s increasing jealousy. On the next occasion Miss Havisham summons Estella to Satis House, even she is upset by Estella’s hardness, at least to Havisham herself; “But to be proud and hard to me!” Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. “Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud and hard to me!”
Back in London, Drummle outrages Pip by proposing a toast to Estella. Pip confronts Estella, who means to “entrap” Drummle; “Yes, and many others,- all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. I’ll say no more.”
Pip is twenty-three when a strange man calls on him, at night, at Pip’s new quarters in the Temple. This is Abel Magwitch, the convict Pip encountered in the churchyard when seven years old. Magwich is, and has always been, Pip’s anonymous benefactor! Magwich had been transported to New South Wales, Australia, after being captured. After gaining his freedom there, he has become a wealthy sheep-farmer and stock-breeder. His recollection of Pip’s kindness and honesty had been his motivation, and he resolved to share his fortune, using Jaggers as an intermediary. No longer able to refrain from seeing his protégé, he has arrived to make himself known, intending to stay in England permanently. But, Magwitch’s sentence still applies, and this was literally exile for life; he returns to England on pain of death.
Pip is anything but grateful to hear the source of his “expectations”. “The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.” But Pip feels a sense of duty to the man. Pip allows Magwitch to hide out at his lodgings, passing him off as an uncle, although Magwitch is confident that only Pip, Jaggers and Wemmick can possibly know of his return. Pip procures Magwitch nearby lodgings under the name Provis.
Magwitch tells his story. The convict with whom Magwitch fought was named Compeyson, a confidence trickster who mhad ionce employed Magwitch as his enforcer. When the two are finally caught, Compeyson made Magwitch a scapegoat, getting a more lenient sentence, though in the same prison hulk. Compeyson was the very man who had abandoned Miss Havisham!
When Pip tells Herbert that he intends to refuse Magwitch’s patronage, Herbert points out that this may drive Magwitch to despair, and to surrender himself to the law. The only recourse is for Magwitch to leave England, even if Pip has to leave with him.
Leaving Magwitch in Herbert’s care, Pip finds that Estella has left for Satis House, for the first time without him. Pip pursues Estella to Kent, and confronts Miss Havisham. Havisham admits she encouraged Pip’s assumption to annoy her despised relatives. Playing on the differences between Matthew and Herbert Pocket against Havisham’s other relations, Pip secures Havisham’s financial support for Herbert.
Pip declares his love to Estella, who coldly tells him she plans to marry Drummle. “‘When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?... Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to him.’” And this is clearly Estella’s choice, not Miss Havisham’s.
Heartbroken, Pip returns to the Temple, where the porter hands him a message from Wemmick; DON’T GO HOME. Pip instead goes to the castle, where Wemmick warns him that the vengeful Compeyson is looking for him and for Magwitch. Pip and Herbert secrete Magwitch at the riverside home of Clara, Herbert’s fiancée, and affect a new interest in rowing, which skill could take Magwitch out of the country at short notice.
Pip realizes that, allowing for age, Molly, Jagger’s servant, greatly resembles Estella, and that she must be Estella’s mother. Wemmick tells Pip how Jaggers rescued Molly from the gallows when she was accused of the murder of a love rival, and suspected of killing her own child, a daughter.
At Satis, a remorseful Miss Havisham sits by the fireside, and confirms that she will finance Herbert’s partnership at Clarriker’s, arranging a transfer of £900 pounds via Jaggers. She explains that Jaggers brought Estella to Satis House as an infant; “‘My dear! Believe this: when she first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first, I meant no more… But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings, and with this figure of myself always before her, a warning to back and point my lessons, I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place.’” She asks Pip for his forgiveness, which he gives. As Pip is about to leave, Miss Havisham's dress catches fire, and Pip injures his hands and arms in an unsuccessful attempt to save her from severe injury.
Tended by Herbert at Clara’s house Pip hears more of Magwitch’s history, and it becomes clear that Magwitch is Estella’s father. Jaggers convinces Pip that the knowledge should go no further, for Estella’s sake. With Pip unable to row, Herbert brings Startop into the conspiracy.
Pip receives an anonymous letter luring him to the sluice-house near his old home in Kent. There he is ambushed and bound by Orlick, who has taken up with Compeyson, and who blames Pip for coming between himself and Biddy. Orlick admits to having injured Pip's sister, out of no more than disgruntlement at Pip’s being preferred as Joe’s apprentice. As he is about to strike, Herbert, who had found Orlick’s note, turns up with Startop to save him. Orlick escapes.
The three pick up Magwitch to row him down the Thames, meaning to hail and board a steamer. They are intercepted by a police boat carrying Compeyson, who has identified Magwitch to the authorities. In the confusion as a steamer sweeps by, Magwitch seizes Compeyson, pulling them both overboard, and they fight in the river. Magwitch, injured, is dragged out and manacled by the police, and Pip, distressed, realizes he is grateful for all that Magwitch had done for him. “‘I will never stir from your side,’ said I, ‘when I am suffered to be near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!’” Compeyson's body is found later.
Herbert is now a partner in Clarriker's, and is preparing to move to Cairo, Egypt, to run the company’s affairs in the east. He offers Pip a position there, which will remain open indefinitely.
Pip realizes that Magwitch's fortune will be seized by the Crown after the trial, but decides to keep this from Magwitch. Magwitch is taken fatally ill, and Pip visits him to tell him that his daughter, Estella, is alive. “‘She lived, and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!’ … The placid look at the white ceiling came back, and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast.”
After Herbert's departure, Pip falls into a fever in his new room, and is visited by bailiffs. He is in debt, and the bailiffs forbear to arrest him only because of his illness. When the fever breaks, Pip finds Joe beside him. Joe has nursed him back to health and paid off the debts. “‘O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me, Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don’t be so good to me!’” Joe informs Pip that Miss Havisham has died, leaving everything to Estella. Orlick had been apprehended after robbing a house, and is now in jail. With Pip recovering, Joe returns home.
On recovering, and settling remaining affairs with Jaggers, Pip returns to Kent, meaning to propose to Biddy, only to find that Biddy has just that day been married to Joe.
Pip leaves for Cairo. There, he moves in with Herbert, eventually becoming a partner in the company. Only then does Herbert learn from Clarriker that Pip paid for his position in the firm. Pip works in Egypt for eleven years. Pip learns that Estella had been mistreated by Drummle, before being widowed two years earlier. Pip returns to England and visits Joe, Biddy, and their son, Pip Jr., with whom he seems to have much in common.
Then, in the ruins of Satis House, he meets Estella. The House’s site is the only asset left to her, and she has recently sold it. She is polite to Pip, and the two confess that they have often thought of each other. The conversation leading up to the final sentence seems friendly and platonic;“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, 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.”
Notes[]
- Pip’s £500 per year is worth £80,000 in 2025, if we talk in terms of strict inflation. But, it would actually pay for a good deal more services than £80,000 would today, since labor was cheaper, at least £200,000 worth of services.
- The Temple is one of the Inns of Court in central London, a very prestigious address.
Comments[]
1.[]
My favourite Dickensian bildungsroman!
Recommendations[]
If you enjoyed Great Expectations you will probably enjoy most of Charles Dickens' novels and short stories. But the following especially are coming-of-age stories like Great Expectations, or similar stories of young people making their way in the world.
- The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1839)
- The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
- David Copperfield (1850)
Or you may enjoy these international coming-of-age works works from the Victorian period:
- Little Women, from the USA. Four sisters navigate poverty, pride, and personal growth. Jo March’s ambition and self-education echo Pip’s striving, but with a warmer domestic tone.
- Sioned, Wales. The coming-of-age story of a Welsh farm girl, Janet Hughes, in north Wales, with an episode in London.
- Les Miserables, France. A natural companion to Great Expectations, a tale of guilt, moral redemption, and great social awareness.
- Anne of Green Gables, Canada. The first in a series about Anne Shirley, an orphan brought to work on a Canadian farm. Anne's coming-of-age arc is completed in the the sequel, Anne of Avonlea.
External links[]
- Text of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1st edition) on Wikisource.
- Great Expectations at TV Tropes for an entertaining insight into Dickens' major themes and imagery.