Lit II, Class 7

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Charles Dickens 1812 -1870
One of the most popular
Victorian novelists.
Despite having no formal
schooling, (he left school at 12
to work in a shoe polish factory
when his father was sent to
debtors' prison), Dickens was a
prolific writer. He edited a
weekly periodical for 20 years,
wrote 15 novels, five novellas,
hundreds of short stories and
non-fiction articles, lectured
and performed readings, was a
great letter writer, and
campaigned for children's
rights, education, and other
social reforms.
His novels contain many
characters who are children,
and shows the effects of the
industrial revolution on British
society.
Great Expectations is a
Bildungsroman, a novel of a
character’s development, but it
is also a comic novel, with
touches of the Gothic and
themes of crime and mystery.
It was published in serial form
between 1860 and 1861 in
Dickens’ All the Year Round.
Great Expectations
Pip lives with his much older sister (‘Mrs Joe’)
who is married to the village blacksmith, Joe
Gargery. The novel opens with Pip out on the
marshes; he meets an escaped convict who
frightens him into helping him by bringing a
file to cut off his chains and some food.
the escaped convict. Joe and Pip go out to
help with the search, and the convicts are
found and sent back to the prison ship
moored off the marsh in the river. The
convict confesses to stealing the food and file
to protect Pip from being punished.

Pip steals food and the file to take to the

convict, and takes it to him on Christmas
morning. He finds that there is a second
convict out on the marshes. He comes home
for Christmas lunch with the Gargeries and
other local people including Mr
Pumplechook, an uncle, and before Mrs Joe
discovers that the pie for the Christmas meal
is missing, some soldiers arrive, needing the
blacksmith’s services. They are looking for
Great Expectations
Soon after, Pip is invited to start visiting
wealthy Miss Havisham and her adopted
daughter, Estella, at Satis House. Miss
Havisham was abandoned by her fiancée
twenty years before and seeks revenge on
men by bringing Estella up to mercilessly
break hearts. Estella's disdain for Pip's
inspires his dissatisfaction with life as an
apprentice blacksmith. He grows infatuated
with Estella and assesses himself by her
standards long after his visits to Miss
Havisham come to an end.

During his early visits, he meets ‘a pale young

man’, and fights with him.
Great Expectations
Pip is apprenticed to Joe and grows
increasingly despondent at his low status,
seeking to elevate himself through
independent study. When Mrs. Joe is brain
damaged by the blows of an intruder at the
forge, Pip suspects Orlick, Joe's cruel
journeyman helper. Biddy moves in to run
the household and becomes Pip's confidante,
trying in vain to help Pip get over Estella.
Great Expectations
One night, the lawyer Mr. Jaggers tells Pip
that he has an anonymous patron who
wishes Pip to be trained as a gentleman. Pip
assumes that this patron is Miss Havisham
and that Estella is secretly betrothed to him.
Unsympathetic to Joe and Biddy's sadness at
losing him, Pip parades his new status and
goes to study with Matthew Pocket, cousin to
Miss Havisham. Pip lives part time with
Matthew's sweet-tempered son Herbert
Pocket in London, where the two become
great friends. Pip's study mates are Startop
and Bentley Drummle, the foul-tempered
heir to a baronetcy who becomes Pip's
nemesis when he pursues Estella, now an
elegant lady. Pip also befriends Wemmick,
Mr. Jaggers' clerk, who is stoic and proper in
the office and warm and friendly outside of
it.
Great Expectations
Pip spends extravagantly and puts on airs,
alienating Joe on Joe's trip to London. Pip
wishes Joe were more refined and fears
association with him will jeopardize his own
social status. He doesn't return to the forge
until he hears Mrs. Joe has died. Even then,
his visit is brief.
Back in London, Pip enlists Wemmick's help
to invest secretly in Herbert's career, a
gesture Pip considers the best result of his
wealth, or "expectations."
Great Expectations
One night, Pip's patron finally reveals
himself: he is Abel Magwitch, the convict Pip
helped on the marshes who has saved up a
fortune while in exile and sailed back to
England illegally just to see Pip. Pip is
appalled by Magwitch's manners and
devastated to realize Estella can't possibly be
betrothed to him. When he confronts Miss
Havisham, she admits she led Pip on
regarding Estella simply to make her selfish
relatives jealous, and that Estella will be
married to Bentley Drummle. When
heartbroken Pip professes his love for her,
Miss Havisham realizes her error in depriving
Estella of a heart. She pleads for Pip's
forgiveness, which Pip readily grants. Back in
London, Pip realizes that Estella is the
daughter of Magwitch and Mr. Jaggers' maid
Molly.
Great Expectations
Magwitch’s rival on the marshes was
Compeyson, Miss Havisham's devious former
fiancée. Compeyson is looking for Magwitch
in London and Pip plans to get Magwitch out
of England by boat. Before they escape,
Orlick manages to lure Pip to the village
marshes and tries to kill him, but Herbert
intervenes. Pip nearly succeeds in escaping
with Magwitch but Compeyson stops them,
then drowns, wrestling with Magwitch in the
water. Magwitch is arrested and found guilty
of escaping illegally from the penal colony of
New South Wales, but dies from illness
before his execution.
Great Expectations
Miss Havisham is injured in a fire and Pip falls
ill after rescuing her. She dies of her injuries,
and Joe nurses Pip and pays his debts.
Healthy again, Pip returns to the village
hoping to marry Biddy only to find her
happily getting married to Joe. Pip goes
abroad with Herbert to be a merchant. When
he returns eleven years later, he finds the
spitting image of himself in Joe and Biddy's
son Pip II and meets Estella on the
abandoned site of Satis House. Suffering has
made Estella less cold and she and Pip walk
off together.
Characters: Joe Gargery and Mrs Joe
Estella
Miss Havisham
Herbert Pocket and Mr Wemmick

Herbert doesn’t like the name Pip, and christens Pip ‘Handel’, because they are ‘harmonious’ and
Pip had trained as a blacksmith; George Frederick Handel wrote a piece called The Harmonious
Blacksmith. Listen to it here: https://goo.gl/2aDah4
Jaggers the bully finds out about Wemmick’s private life