Grat Expectations - Short Notes

Setting:

·         It is set among the marshes of Kent and in London in the early to mid-1800s

·         Great Expectations is a graphic book, full of extreme imagery, poverty, prison ships, "the hulks," barriers and chains, and fights to the death

·         The novel reflects the events of the time, Dickens' concerns, and the relationship between society and man.

Point of View: narrated in the first person

·         Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the novel take place, there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the character

·         Dickens distinguishes the two Pips by giving the voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels about what is happening to him as it actually happens

·         This is perhaps best observed early in the book, when Pip the character is a child; here, Pip the narrator pokes fun at his younger self while narrating the story

Story:

·         Dickens felt Great Expectations was his best work, calling it "a very fine idea"

·         On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, the protagonist encounters the convict, Abel Magwich in the village churchyard

·         Magwich scares Pip into stealing food and a file

·         The next day, soldiers recapture the convict while he is fighting with another convict

·         Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love

·         Pip begins to feel ashamed of himself and Joe due to the influence of Estella

·         Mr. Jaggers tells Pip that he is to receive a large sum of money from an unknown benefactor

·         Pip assuming that Miss Havisham to be his benefactress

·         Years later, Abel Magwitch reveals himself to Pip as his benefactor

·         There is a warrant for Magwitch's arrest in England, and he will be hanged if he is caught

·         Pip and his friends Herbert Pocket and Startop hatch a plan for Magwitch to flee by boat

·         Pip discovers that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and Mr. Jaggers' housemaid Molly

·         Pip learns that Miss Havisham want to take revenge from men because she was jilted

·         He confronts Miss Havisham with Estella's history

·         In a fit of depression and remorse, Miss Havisham accidentally sets her dress on fire

·         Orlick attacks Pip and Herbert Pocket and his friends save Pip

·         Magwitch kills his enemy Compeyson, a con artist and Miss Havisham's fiancé

·         Police capture Magwitch and jail him

·         Pip visits Magwitch in jail and tells him that his daughter Estella is alive

·         Magwitch dies before his execution

·         As Pip has lost his fortune upon Magwitch's death, he is no longer a gentleman

·         He is about to be arrested for unpaid debts when he falls ill

·         Joe comes to London and nurses Pip back to health and pays off his debts

·         Pip realizes that in his pursuit of Estella and wealth, he has callously ignored Joe

·         Pip returns to propose to Biddy only to find that she and Joe have married

·         Pip asks Joe for forgiveness and Joe forgives him

·         Pip promises to repay Joe and goes to Egypt where he works diligently as a clerk

·         Eleven years later, Pip visits Satis House and meets Estella

·         Her dead husband Bentley Drummle had abused her

·         She asks Pip to forgive her, assuring him that misfortune has opened her heart

·         As Pip takes Estella's hand and leaves the ruins of Satis House, he sees "no shadow of another parting from her."

Characters

Philip Pirrip/ Pip

·         Great Expectations is a bildungsroman

·         Depicts the growth and personal development of Pip

·         The title “Great Expectations” refers to Pip’s expectation to inherit his benefactor's property and become a gentleman

·         Throughout his childhood, Pip dreamed of becoming a blacksmith

·         But as a result of Magwitch's anonymous patronage, Pip becomes a gentleman

·         Pip’s two most important traits are his romantic idealism and his good conscience

·         On the one hand, Pip wants to improve himself educationally, morally, and socially

·         Pip’s idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather narrowly

·         When Pip becomes a gentleman he treats Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly

·         On the other hand, Pip is very generous and sympathetic young man

·         helping Magwitch

·         secretly buying Herbert’s way into business

·         he loves all those who love him

·         Pip has to learn to place kindness and conscience above his immature idealism

·         He comes to admire Magwitch and realizes that one’s social position is not the most important quality one possesses

·         Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who narrates the novel

Joe Gargery

·         Pip's brother-in-law, and his first father figure

·         He is a blacksmith who is kind to Pip and the only person with whom Pip is always honest

·         Joe is disappointed when Pip decides to become a gentleman rather than be a blacksmith

Miss Havisham

·         Miss Havisham lives in a crumbling mansion and wears an old wedding dress

·         Her life is defined by a single tragic event: her jilting by Compeyson

·         Miss Havisham is determined never to move beyond her heartbreak

·         She stops all the clocks at twenty minutes to nine, the moment when Compeyson was gone

·         She adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to achieve her own revenge on men

·         Both Miss Havisham and the people in her life suffer because of her quest for revenge

·         At the end she realizes that she has caused Pip’s heart to be broken in the same manner as her own

·         Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness

·         This reinforcing the novel’s theme that bad behavior can be redeemed by repentance

Estella

·         She is raised by Miss Havisham to torment men and “break their hearts”

·         Unlike the heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative

·         Estella wins Pip’s deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty

·         She does not know that she is the daughter of Molly and Abel Magwitch

·         Estella represents the life of wealth and culture for which Pip strives

·         Ironically, she is victimized twice by her adopted class

·         Miss Havisham destroys her ability to express emotion and interact normally with the world

·         Drummle treats her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years

·         Estella’s life reinforces the idea that one’s happiness is not connected to her social position

·         Despite her cold behavior, Estella is still a sympathetic character

·         Estella is not able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but she seems not to want to hurt him

·         She repeatedly warns him that she has “no heart”

·         Due to her painful marriage to Drummle she learns to rely on and trust her inner feelings

·         In the final scene of the novel, she has become an independent person

·         As she says to Pip, “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.”

Biddy

·         Biddy is Wopsle's second cousin

·         She becomes Pip's teacher

·         A kind and intelligent but poor young woman

·         She is, like Pip and Estella, an orphan

·         She acts as Estella's foil

·         Pip ignores her affections for him as he fruitlessly pursues Estella

·         Biddy and Joe later have two children, one named after Pip

Abel Magwitch

·         Uses the aliases Provis and Mr Campbell to protect his identity

·         Magwitch, the convict, is also Pip's benefactor

Compeyson

·         Miss Havisham's fiance, who was in league with Arthur Havisham to cheat her of her money

·         He drowns when, grappling with Magwitch, he falls into the Thames

Mr Jaggers

·         A prominent London lawyer who represents Pip's benefactor and Miss Havisham as well

·         By the end of the story, his law practice links many of the characters

John Wemmick

·         Jaggers's clerk

·         Wemmick is Pip's chief go-between with Jaggers and looks after Pip in London

·         Mr. Wemmick lives with his father, The Aged, in John’s "castle," which is a small replica of a castle complete with a drawbridge and moat, in Walworth

Herbert Pocket

·         Pip first meets him as a "pale young gentleman" who challenges Pip to a fist fight

·         He is Pip's tutor in the "gentlemanly" arts, and shares his apartment with Pip in London

Themes:

Crime, innocence, and punishment

1.       From the beginning Pip feels guilty about helping Magwich

2.       He is afraid that someone will find out about his “crime” and arrest him

3.       The theme is mainly explored through the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers

4.       There are many images of crime and justice in the novel – the police,  the handcuffs Joe mends, the gallows at the prison in London

5.       Pip must learn to see the truth of these symbols of the criminal justice system

6.       For an example, Magwitch frightens Pip at first simply because he is a convict

7.       Pip feels guilty for helping him because he is afraid of the police

8.       By the end of the book, Pip has discovered Magwitch’s inner nobility, and is able to disregard his external status as a criminal

Social classes

1.       Through Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England

a.       the most wretched criminals (Magwitch)

b.      the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy)

c.       the middle class (Pumblechook)

d.      the very rich (Miss Havisham)

2.       Pip realizes that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth

3.       Pip achieves this realization when he understands that one’s social status is in no way connected to one’s real character

4.       Drummle, for instance, is a wife-beating upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth

Ambition

1.       Pip’s desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novel’s title

2.       Pip’s ambition motivates his best and his worst behavior throughout the novel

3.       Ambition take three forms in the novel —moral, social, and educational

4.       This desire for education is connected to his social ambition and longing to marry Estella

5.       Pip understands this when he learns to read from Biddy and when he takes lessons from Matthew Pocket

6.       Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying or moral than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice

7.       Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real worth

Techniques:

Motifs

·         Doubles

·         This doubling of elements adds to the sense that everything in Pip’s world is connected

·         two convicts on the marsh (Magwitch and Compeyson)

·         two young women who interest Pip (Biddy and Estella)

·         two secret benefactors:

·         Magwitch, who gives Pip his fortune

·         Pip, who secretly buying Herbert’s way into the mercantile business

·         two adults who seek to mold children after their own purposes:

·         Magwitch, who wishes to “own” a gentleman and decides to make Pip one

·         Miss Havisham, who raises Estella to break men’s hearts in revenge for her own broken heart

·         Interestingly, both of these actions are motivated by Compeyson

·         Magwitch resents but is nonetheless covetous of Compeyson’s social status and education, which motivates his desire to make Pip a gentleman

·         Miss Havisham’s heart was broken when Compeyson which motivates her desire to achieve revenge through Estella

·         The relationship between Miss Havisham and Compeyson—a well-born woman and a common man—further mirrors the relationship between Estella and Pip

Symbols

Satis House

1.       It mainly symbolizes Pip’s romantic perception of the upper class

2.       The stopped clocks symbolize Mrs. H’s attempt to freeze time

3.       The crumbling house, the darkness and dust symbolize the decadence of the upper class

The Mists on the Marshes

1.       The misty marshes near Pip’s childhood home symbolize danger and uncertainty

2.       As a child, Pip brings Magwitch a file and food in the mist to the marshes

3.       Later, he is kidnapped by Orlick and nearly murdered in the misty marshes

4.       Whenever Pip goes into the mists, something dangerous is likely to happen

5.       Significantly, Pip must go through the mists when he travels to London  

6.       This alerts the reader that this event in his life may have dangerous consequences

Study Questions

Discuss Pip as both a narrator and a character. How are different aspects of his personality revealed by his telling of his story and by his participation in the story itself?

1.       Pip’s story traces his development through the events of his early life

2.       His narration is a product of his character as it exists after the events of the story

3.       Pip’s narration thus reveals the psychological endpoint of his development in the novel

4.       Pip’s behavior as a character often reveals only part of the story—he treats Joe coldly, for instance—while his manner as a narrator completes that story

5.       His guilt for his poor behavior toward his loved ones endures, even as he writes about his early life years later

6.       Of course, Dickens manipulates Pip’s narration in order to evoke its subjects effectively

7.       Pip’s childhood is narrated in a much more childlike voice than his adult years, even though the narrator Pip presumably writes both parts of the story at a single later date

8.       Dickens also uses Pip’s narration to reinforce particular aspects of his character that emerge in the course of the novel

9.       We know from his actions that Pip is somewhat self-centered but sympathetic at heart to others

10.   Pip’s later narration of his relationships with others tends to reflect those qualities.

11.   When Magwitch reveals that he is Pip’s benefactor, for instance, Pip is disgusted by the convict and describes him solely in negative terms

12.   As his affection for Magwitch grows, the descriptive terms he chooses to apply to the convict become much more positive.

What role does social class play in Great Expectations? What lessons does Pip learn from his experience as a wealthy gentleman? How is the theme of social class central to the novel?

1.       One way to see Pip’s development, and the development of many of the other characters in Great Expectations, is as an attempt to learn to value other human beings

2.       Pip must learn to value Joe and Magwitch, Estella must learn to value Pip

3.       Throughout the novel, social class provides an arbitrary, external standard of value by which the characters (particularly Pip) judge one another

4.       Because social class is rigid and preexisting, it is an attractive standard for every character who lacks a clear conscience with which to make judgments—Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook

5.       And because high social class is associated with romantic qualities such as luxury and education, it is an immediately attractive standard of value for Pip

6.       After he is elevated to the status of gentleman, though, Pip begins to see social class as an unjust, capricious standard that is largely incompatible with his own morals

7.       There is simply no reason why Bentley Drummle should be valued above Joe

8.       The most important lesson Pip learns in the novel is that no external standard of value can replace the judgments of one’s own conscience

9.       Characters such as Joe and Biddy know this instinctively

10.   For Pip, it is a long, hard lesson, the learning of which makes up much of the book

What is the role of guilt in the novel? What does it mean to be “innocent”?

1.       At the beginning of the novel, Pip’s feelings of conscience are determined largely by his fear of what others might think, a state of mind no doubt reinforced by Mrs. Joe’s “Tickler”

2.       He has strong feelings of guilt but an inadequate system by which to judge right from wrong

3.       He acts with compassion and sympathy when he helps the convict, but he nevertheless feels deeply guilty and imagines that the police are waiting to take him away

4.       As the novel progresses, Pip comes closer to trusting his own feelings

5.       When he helps Magwitch at the end of the novel, he feels no guilt, only love, and he remains with the convict even after the police arrive to take him away

6.       Throughout the novel, symbols of justice, such as prisons and police, serve as reminders of the questions of conscience that plague Pip

7.       Just as social class provides an standard of value irrespective of a person’s inner worth, the law provides an external standard of moral behavior irrespective of a person’s inner feelings

8.       Pip’s commitment to helping Magwitch escape the law in the last section of the novel contrasts powerfully with his childhood fear of police

9.       It shows that Pip has moved closer to a reliance on his own inner conscience—which is the only way, as Joe and Biddy show, that a character can truly be “innocent.”

Suggested Essay Topics

1. What significance does the novel’s title, Great Expectations, have for the story?

2. For much of Great Expectations, Pip seems to believe in a stark division between good and evil, and he tends to classify people and situations as belonging to one extreme or the other. What is the role of moral extremes in this novel? What does it mean to be ambiguous or caught between extremes?

3. Discuss the character of Miss Havisham. What themes does she embody? What experiences have made her as she is? Is she a believable character? How does she relate to Pip and Estella?

4. Think about the novel’s two endings—the “official” version, in which Pip and Estella are reunited in the garden, and the earlier version, in which they merely speak briefly on the street and go their separate ways. Which version do you prefer? Which version seems more true to the thematic development of the novel? Why?