Great ExpectationsStudy Guide

A convict stands dripping in a London sitting-room and names himself as the maker of a gentleman. Pip, already dressed for a life Miss Havisham never funded, hears that his great expectations came from the marshes, not from Satis House, and the fortune he spent to stop being common was paid for by the man he once feared. Dickens published the book in 1861. The boy who wanted to become a gentleman was funded by the one person London would never call one.

Philip Pirrip is an orphan raised by his harsh sister and her husband Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith: kind, barely lettered, and so loyal that Pip will later treat that loyalty as an embarrassment. Estella, raised at Satis House to break men's hearts, calls him common and plants the shame that money cannot cure. Miss Havisham sits in a ruined wedding dress and uses both children as equipment for a revenge that froze on the day she was jilted. Abel Magwitch, the convict from the churchyard, works years in Australia to manufacture a gentleman as spite against the class that hunted him. Jaggers will not name a patron. Herbert Pocket teaches Pip table manners without charging for kindness. Biddy tells the truth Pip does not want. Compeyson is the gentleman-criminal who ruined Miss Havisham. Bentley Drummle is the brutal husband Estella chooses because ice recognises ice.

On the marshes a man in irons demands a file and food, and a terrified child steals both from Joe's house. At Satis House Estella mocks Pip's coarse hands and thick boots, and he goes home ashamed of the forge. Jaggers arrives at the Three Jolly Bargemen with news of a secret fortune and a condition: Pip must never inquire who pays. He leaves for London, stays at the Blue Boar instead of the forge when he visits, and wishes he could pay money to keep Joe away. Magwitch returns in the night and claims the work. Estella marries Drummle. Miss Havisham burns. Pip tries to get Magwitch down the river, holds the dying convict's hand in prison, falls ill, and wakes to Joe paying the debts and never mentioning the years of coldness. He goes home meaning to propose to Biddy and finds she has married Joe. Years later he meets Estella among the ruins of Satis House.

Dickens wrote the novel after the blacking factory, after fame, and after a marriage that was ending, and he made Pip's shame tighter and darker than the comic orphans of his earlier books. He never treats the fortune as a fairy gift, or the gentleman as a prize the poor boy has earned. The benefactor is a transported felon. The beloved has no heart because she was trained not to. The good man is the blacksmith Pip was ashamed to be seen with. The revised ending does not cancel what the climb cost. What remains is not a sermon against ambition. It is a picture of what happens when a boy confuses polish with worth, and when the only way back is to sit with the people his new life taught him to hide.

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