SparkNotes: Great Expectations: Character List Great Expectations Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Pip - The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip begins the story as a young orphan boy being raised by his sister and brother-in-law in the marsh country of Kent, in the southeast of England. Pip is passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic at heart, and he tends to expect more for himself than is reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and he deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and socially. Read an in-depth analysis of Pip. Estella - Miss Havisham’s beautiful young ward, Estella is Pip’s unattainable dream throughout the novel. He loves her passionately, but, though she sometimes seems to consider him a friend, she is usually cold, cruel, and uninterested in him. As they grow up together, she repeatedly warns him that she has no heart. Read an in-depth analysis of Estella. Miss Havisham - Miss Havisham is the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called Satis House near Pip’s village.

She is manic and often seems insane, flitting around her house in a faded wedding dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, and surrounding herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. As a young woman, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fiancé minutes before her wedding, and now she has a vendetta against all men. She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge, training her beautiful ward to break men’s hearts. Read an in-depth analysis of Miss Havisham. Abel Magwitch (“The Convict”) - A fearsome criminal, Magwitch escapes from prison at the beginning of Great Expectations and terrorizes Pip in the cemetery. Pip’s kindness, however, makes a deep impression on him, and he subsequently devotes himself to making a fortune and using it to elevate Pip into a higher social class. Behind the scenes, he becomes Pip’s secret benefactor, funding Pip’s education and opulent lifestyle in London through the lawyer Jaggers. Joe Gargery - Pip’s brother-in-law, the village blacksmith, Joe stays with his overbearing, abusive wife—known as Mrs. Joe—solely out of love for Pip.

Joe’s quiet goodness makes him one of the few completely sympathetic characters in Great Expectations. Although he is uneducated and unrefined, he consistently acts for the benefit of those he loves and suffers in silence when Pip treats him coldly. Jaggers - The powerful, foreboding lawyer hired by Magwitch to supervise Pip’s elevation to the upper class. As one of the most important criminal lawyers in London, Jaggers is privy to some dirty business; he consorts with vicious criminals, and even they are terrified of him. But there is more to Jaggers than his impenetrable exterior. He often seems to care for Pip, and before the novel begins he helps Miss Havisham to adopt the orphaned Estella. Jaggers smells strongly of soap: he washes his hands obsessively as a psychological mech-anism to keep the criminal taint from corrupting him. Herbert Pocket - Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a pale young gentleman, Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in London, and Herbert becomes Pip’s best friend and key companion after Pip’s elevation to the status of gentleman.

Herbert nicknames Pip “Handel.” He is the son of Matthew Pocket, Miss Havisham’s cousin, and hopes to become a merchant so that he can afford to marry Clara Barley. Wemmick - Jaggers’s clerk and Pip’s friend, Wemmick is one of the strangest characters in Great Expectations. At work, he is hard, cynical, sarcastic, and obsessed with “portable property”; at home in Walworth, he is jovial, wry, and a tender caretaker of his “Aged Parent.” Biddy - A simple, kindhearted country girl, Biddy first befriends Pip when they attend school together. After Mrs. Joe is attacked and becomes an invalid, Biddy moves into Pip’s home to care for her. Throughout most of the novel, Biddy represents the opposite of Estella; she is plain, kind, moral, and of Pip’s own social class. Dolge Orlick - The day laborer in Joe’s forge, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of evil. He is malicious and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it. He is responsible for the attack on Mrs.

Joe, and he later almost succeeds in his attempt to murder Pip. Mrs. Joe - Pip’s sister and Joe’s wife, known only as “Mrs. Joe” throughout the novel. Mrs. Joe is a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls “Tickler.” She also forces them to drink a foul-tasting concoction called tar-water. Mrs. Joe is petty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something more than what she is, the wife of the village blacksmith. Uncle Pumblechook - Pip’s pompous, arrogant uncle. (He is actually Joe’s uncle and, therefore, Pip’s “uncle-in-law,” but Pip and his sister both call him “Uncle Pumblechook.”) A merchant obsessed with money, Pumblechook is responsible for arranging Pip’s first meeting with Miss Havisham. Throughout the rest of the novel, he will shamelessly take credit for Pip’s rise in social status, even though he has nothing to do with it, since Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor.

Compeyson - A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated, gentlemanly outlaw who contrasts sharply with the coarse and uneducated Magwitch. Compeyson is responsible for Magwitch’s capture at the end of the novel. He is also the man who jilted Miss Havisham on her wedding day. Bentley Drummle - An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with Pip at the Pockets’ house, Drummle is a minor member of the nobility, and the sense of superiority this gives him makes him feel justified in acting cruelly and harshly toward everyone around him. Drummle eventually marries Estella, to Pip’s chagrin; she is miserable in their marriage and reunites with Pip after Drummle dies some eleven years later. Molly - Jaggers’s housekeeper. In Chapter 48, Pip realizes that she is Estella’s mother. Mr. Wopsle - The church clerk in Pip’s country town; Mr. Wopsle’s aunt is the local schoolteacher. Sometime after Pip becomes a gentleman, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and becomes an actor.

Startop - A friend of Pip’s and Herbert’s. Startop is a delicate young man who, with Pip and Drummle, takes tutelage with Matthew Pocket. Later, Startop helps Pip and Herbert with Magwitch’s escape. Miss Skiffins - Wemmick’s beloved, and eventual wife. 86.01.03: Familial Relationships in Great Expectations: The Search for Identity Familial Relationships in Great Expectations: The Search for Identity by Pip in Great Expectations (Click the character infographic to download.) Pip is like that kid who goes away to college in the big city and comes back wearing designer shoes and thinking he's better than his parents because they don't know the difference between vermicelloni and bucatini . He's ungrateful, pretentious, snobbish, malcontent. He's ashamed of the man who loved and raised him; he's cruel to the girl who likes him; he throws himself after someone who repeatedly insists that she'll never be interested; and he's patronizing to his friends. We also can't help liking him. Pip the Little Boy See, we've known Pip since he was a little boy being abused by his sister.

We have much stricter standards about child abuse these days, but even in a century when it was common to use physical punishment, Pip's upbringing is particularly bad. He tells us himself, from his adult-narrator perspective: My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. (8.95) We get a lot of this child's perspective in the first few chapters of the book. We see the world from Pip's viewpoint, like the "fearful man" (1.4) who accosts him, or the way he "twist[s] the only button on [his] waistcoat round and round" when he hears that his sister has the "Tickler" with her (8). But mostly we hear that he's afraid.

Pip seems to spend his entire life being frightened and terrified—of his sister, of the convict, of the convict's supposed friend, and even of himself, "from whom an awful promise had been extract" (61). Terrified or not, Pip steals the food and file that the convict asks for—and here's where we see the little hints of his character that make us keep liking him, even when he grows up to be a big dummy. Pip may be terrified, but he still manages to "pity" the convict's "desolation" and ask him if he's enjoying his meal (22). That moment of pity is super important. The same pity makes him help Magwitch years later, and the same pity makes him forgive Estella and Havisham, and the same pity makes us, well, pity him instead of hate him. Pip the Malcontent Also, truth: what Miss Havisham and Estella do to Pip is just mean. When the story opens, he's a happy (if scared) little boy, who's looking forward to growing up and working on the forge with Joe.

And then Miss Havisham descends on him like, well, an avenging spirit and wrenches him away from his little marshy idyll: I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham's, and what on earth I was expected to play at. (7.91) In one late-night cart ride, Pip is leaving Joe and his childhood behind, and he hasn't even met Miss Havisham yet. Once he does, his happy—or at least innocent—days are behind him, because for the first time he meets people who are different. He realizes that there's a world beyond the village, and that not everyone is like him and his family. It's a scary realization for anyone, and you have to remember that we're working with pretty strict class boundaries here.

Most people these days still tend to marry within their socioeconomic group, but it's certainly not out of the question to marry someone who grew up much richer or poorer than you did, and lots of people have friends who are from different backgrounds. Not in an English village of the nineteenth century. These are literally the first people Pip has ever met who aren't like him, and it doesn't end well. Estella calls him common, makes fun of his language and his boots and his hands, and from that exact moment Pip is discontented. He can't get her words out of his mind: that I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way. (8.105) So, here's another reason that we never end up hating Pip, even though he's totally asking for it: we feel sorry for him. And we totally get it.

Every single one of us has been in a situation where we've met someone way cooler than us who made us feel bad about our clothes, our taste in music, or our celebrity crush. (Admit it: even you cool kids have been in this situation.) Feeling like that can make people do pretty dumb things—like telling their friends, "I want to be a gentleman" (17.24), or being "ashamed" of their parents/guardians. Think being embarrassed by your folks is something your generation invented? Nuh-uh. Just introducing Joe to Miss Havisham gives Pip a "strong conviction that [he] should never like Joe's trade" (13.69). And the worst part is that, if he'd never met Estella, he wouldn't care: "what would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had told me so" (17.33). Yeah. We can forgive Pip a lot. Pip the Gentleman And that's good, because we have an awful lot to forgive. Once he starts getting educated he gets, well, insufferable.

He tries to "impart" knowledge to Joe to make him "less ignorant and common" (15.20), he patronizes Biddy, and he generally acts like he's too good for anything. So, here's something to think about: if you weren't reading carefully, you might think that Dickens was really down on self-improvement. But we don't think that's true. Both Biddy and Joe end up learning stuff—Biddy learns whatever Pip does, and then she teaches Joe to write—but neither of them lets it go to their heads. Only Pip does. The problem is that Pip has all the wrong ideas about being a gentleman. He sees it as all about surface and appearance: having the right clothes, hiring a servant, spending money in the right places, and having the right friends. But he's fooling himself—something even Estella sees when she says that "you made your own snares. I never made them" (44.22). See, being a gentleman is much more about what's inside than what's outside, and Pip doesn't learn that until much, much later. In fact, he doesn't learn it until he almost loses everything.

No Expectations When Pip first finds out that Magwitch and not Miss Havisham is his benefactor, it almost destroys him: Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I had. (39.98) Pip has no girlfriend and no fortune—since he feels like he can't accept Magwitch's—but he does gain something from this realization: he gains self-respect. Sure, he considers just running away from everything. But he doesn't. Just like that scared little boy on the marshes almost twenty years ago, he has compassion for a fellow human-being. That's the compassion and pity that we liked in the little boy, and it helps him become a true gentleman. So, what are the acts of a true gentleman?

He helps Magwitch hide and plots his escape; he braves Miss Havisham to ask for money to help set up Herbert Pocket as a partner in a shipping firm; and he has the self-control to be happy for Joe and Biddy—and the grace to move himself away from London and dedicate himself to paying them back. It looks like being a gentleman is much more about grace, pity, self-control and compassion than having nice boots and soft hands. Pip the Lover Let's take a look at one last speech—maybe the most important thing that Pip says in the whole novel. It's his farewell speech to Estella, when he learns that she's marrying Drummle: "Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. […] Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.

But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!" (44.70) Pip may not quite have finished his whole growing up, but he's getting close: he "forgives" Estella, and he says that she's done him "far more good than harm." But is this true? He's said more than once that he wishes he'd never met Miss Havisham or gone to Satis House, but now he seems to have changed his mind. Is Pip better off at the end of the novel? Pip the Grownup One way of thinking about this is through Joe. Now, Joe's a good guy. He's kind, cheerful, dutiful, hard-working, and loving. But—and we just have to say this—we're not sure he's really an adult in the sense that Dickens means it. Pip even thinks of him as a child at the beginning of the novel. Sure, he has some hard times, what with his wife dying and his adopted son rejecting him.

But through it all, Joe himself never changes, never experiences (that we know about) a crisis of self-identity that leaves him sadder and wiser. Not Pip. He goes from a contented little laboring boy to a discontented adolescent to a resigned and hard-working man. At the end, he tells Estella, "I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore—yes, I do well" (59.53). We hate to break it to you, Shmoopers, but for most of us, that's what growing up means: realizing that our great expectations aren't going to come true, and that, instead of becoming rock stars or presidents, we'll spend most of our lives working hard for a sufficient living—just like Pip. What's in a name? What's in a name? [ Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Theme and Subject ] In the first sentence of Great Expectations, Pip explains the origin of his name: “My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.

So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip." The evolution of Pip's name mirrors changes in Pip's character in the course of the novel, but Pip's benefactor stipulated that he must “always bear the name of Pip." Once he comes into his great expectations, others begin to refer to him as “Mr. Pip," and Pip's first friend in London, Herbert Pocket, gives him a nickname as a symbol of friendship and familiarity: "I dare say we shall be often together, and I should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?" I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my Christian name was Philip. "I don't take to Philip," said he, smiling, “for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird's-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighborhood.

I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith, — would you mind it?" "I shouldn't mind anything that you propose," I answered, “but I don't understand you." "Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith." "I should like it very much." [Chapter 22; Place within the complete text of the novel ] ] Thus, the names Handel and Mr. Pip accompany Pip's transition into the life of a gentleman. However, Pip finds it painful to be called Mr. Pip by Joe, whom he distances once he moves to London. Joe's familiarity with Pip returns when Pip is sick and helpless in bed — “the dear fellow had fallen into the old tone, and called me by the old names, the dear 'old Pip, old chap,'" but Joe gradually becomes more distant as Pip grows stronger. The character of young Pip eventually returns in the form of Joe's child, whom Pip meets eleven years after leaving England for Cairo.

Joe tells him, “We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap, and we hoped he might grow a little bit like you, and we think he do," and indeed Pip finds that he and the child “understand one another to perfection." Questions 1. Does Dickens use Pocket's description of his aversion to the name Philip to represent a symbolic casting-away of the old Pip? Does the name Handel better suit Pip, considering its homage to the The Harmonious Blacksmith by Handel? Is it of any significance that Handel did not personally name the piece The Harmonious Blacksmith, but that it simply came to be popularly known as such (it is actually just the last movement of Air and Variations from Suite No. 5 in E Major for harpsichord)? 2. How do the names used in Great Expectations reflect the characters with which they are associated? Besides Pip, consider the names Estella (derivative of 'star') and Abel Magwitch (the Biblical Abel is a shepherd and the second son of Adam and Eve, who is killed by his older brother Cain). 3. 'Pip' can also mean the seed of a fruit.

Does Pip's growth in the novel parallel that of a seed into a mature plant, and if so, what fruits does he bear? 4. Compare the descriptive name of Anodos, the main character of the novel Phantastes, to Pip. 5. Was it normal practice in the Victorian era to change one's name in order to better suit a change in social position? It would certainly be easier to assume a new identity then than it is now— of what importance was this to criminals like Magwitch? SparkNotes: Great Expectations: Plot Overview Great Expectations Context Character List Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one evening looking at his parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself.

One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy dowager Miss Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she goes and keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become a common laborer in his family’s business. With Miss Havisham’s guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith. Pip works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain, kind Biddy and encountering Joe’s malicious day laborer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Pip’s sister, known as Mrs.

Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her signals, Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack. One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large fortune, and Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily assumes that his previous hopes have come true—that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that the old woman intends for him to marry Estella. In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggers’s law clerk, Wemmick. He expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew Pocket, Herbert’s father. Herbert himself helps Pip learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to receive an income from his fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has chosen for himself. But for now, Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London, enjoying themselves and running up debts.

Orlick reappears in Pip’s life, employed as Miss Havisham’s porter, but is promptly fired by Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlick’s unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges into Pip’s room—the convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of Pip’s fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved by Pip’s boyhood kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune in Australia for that very purpose. Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued both by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery begins to fall into place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar and that Estella is Magwitch’s daughter. Miss Havisham has raised her to break men’s hearts, as revenge for the pain her own broken heart caused her.

Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella to practice on; Miss Havisham delighted in Estella’s ability to toy with his affections. As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitch’s escape attempt, Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to Satis House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him in the past, and he forgives her. Later that day, when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes up in flames. She survives but becomes an invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds and to plead for Pip’s forgiveness. The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape attempt, Pip is called to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil Orlick. Orlick is on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group of friends and saves Pip’s life. Pip and Herbert hurry back to effect Magwitch’s escape.

They try to sneak Magwitch down the river on a rowboat, but they are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and Compeyson fight in the river, and Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his sentence is God’s forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to care for him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from home: Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to the Pockets; Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write. After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home after him and marry Biddy, but when he arrives there he discovers that she and Joe have already married. Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her badly, but he is now dead.

Pip finds that Estella’s coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two leave the garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again. (Note: Dickens’s original ending to Great Expectations differed from the one described in this summary. The final Summary and Analysis section of this SparkNote provides a description of the first ending and explains why Dickens rewrote it.) More Help Great Expectations Summary - eNotes.com Great Expectations Summary Trivia Great Expectations Summary In Great Expectations, Pip falls in love with Estella, the daughter of a wealthy woman named Miss Havisham. He attempts to win over Estella by becoming a gentleman, but fails. He later moves to Cairo to become a clerk. Great Expectations summary key points: Young Pip lives with his abusive sister and kind brother-in-law, Joe. Pip brings a convict food and a file to escape, but the convict is recaptured the next day. Upon his uncle’s request, Pip visits the wealthy Miss Havisham and falls in love with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip, financed by Miss Havisham, becomes a blacksmith’s apprentice, but wishes to be a gentleman so as to win over Estella.

A mysterious benefactor grants him his wish. Pip goes to London and spends beyond his means. He learns Magwitch, the convict he helped, is his benefactor. Estella plans to marry another man. Miss Havisham dies, Pip discovers Estella is Magwitch’s daughter, Magwitch dies in prison, Joe pays off Pip’s debts, and Pip goes to Cairo to become a clerk. Later he reconnects with a widowed, kinder Estella. link Link Summary of the Novel Great Expectations can be divided into three stages in the life of Pip. The first stage presents Pip as an orphan being raised by an unkind sister who resents him, and her husband, who offers him kindness and love. While visiting the tombstones of his parents in the cemetery, Pip encounters a convict and is made to bring him food and a file the next day. Pip’s convict and a second convict are caught by soldiers of the Crown and returned to the prison ships (the Hulks). Uncle Pumblechook arranges for Pip to go to Miss Havisham’s house to play, and there he meets and falls in love with Estella.

Pip returns to Miss Havisham’s house to walk her around the decayed banquet table every other day for nearly 10 months. Miss Havisham rewards Pip for his service by paying for his apprenticeship to become a blacksmith with Joe. Pip is unhappy with his position and longs to become a gentleman in order that he may eventually win Estella’s affection. One day a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, comes to tell Pip that a beneficiary has left him great fortunes. Pip is to go to London to become a gentleman. Pip believes that the benefactor is Miss Havisham. The second stage of Pip’s life takes place in London where he becomes friends with Herbert Pocket. The two young men live beyond their means and fall deeply in debt. Pip makes friends with Mr. Jaggers’ clerk, Mr. Wemmick, and enjoys visiting him at his Castle. Pip is told the background of Miss Havisham and her ill-fated wedding day. He also is embarrassed by a visit from Joe. An unexpected visit from his convict reveals that the convict, not Miss Havisham, is his benefactor.

The man’s name is Magwitch; he is the one to whom Pip had brought food in the churchyard. This knowledge begins the change in Pip from ungrateful snobbery to the humility associated with Joe and home. The third stage in Pip’s life solves all the remaining mysteries of the novel. Compeyson, the second convict who was Magwitch’s enemy, is drowned when Pip tries to aid Magwitch in his escape from London. Pip finds out who Estella’s mother and father are. Pip is rescued from Orlick. Magwitch dies in prison, and Pip becomes a clerk in Cairo with Herbert. He returns 11 years later and finds Estella at the site of Satis House. The more popular ending indicated that they stayed together. Estimated Reading Time Four weeks should be allowed for the study of Great Expectations. Three weeks will be required to read the novel, reading four chapters at a sitting. The student should read every day from Monday through Friday. After reading the chapters, the student should answer all study questions in this book to ensure understanding and comprehension. The essay questions may be used if needed. The fourth week is set aside for reports, projects, and testing as deemed necessary by the teacher.

One Act of Kindness The basic moral or thesis of Great Expectations is that one act of Christian kindness can change a man's character for the rest of his life. The whole story evolves from what happens in the first three chapters. Pip brings Magwitch a bottle of brandy and a generous assortment of food, consisting of mincemeat, meat-bone, bread, cheese, and pork pie. Pip is acting out of terror, but he also feels pity for this wretched, starving escaped convict. Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie, I made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it." Magwitch is recaptured and transported to Australia, but Pip's act of Christian charity has renewed the embittered man's faith in human nature and given him something to live for. It is because of Pip that Magwitch grows rich through honest labor and enterprise in the far-off land. It is because of Magwitch's gratitude that Pip's life is so miraculously changed. He is able to fulfill his dream of becoming a gentleman--although the fulfillment turns out to be a disappointment.

It is not until Chapter 39 that Pip learns the truth about the source of his great expectations. Magwitch visits him in his rooms on a dark and stormy night and tells him: "Yes, Pip, dear boy. I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth. I worked hard that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy! Do I tell it fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit.

I tell it, for you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman--and, Pip, you're him!" In addition to learning the truth about the source of his money, education, and even higher expectations, Pip learns the greater truth that all gentlemen and ladies owe their fine clothes, rich foods, polished manners, and inflated egos to the dunghill dogs of the world who labor and suffer to make them the meretricious and feckless parasites most of them are. The moral or thesis that one act of Christian kindness can change a man's character for the rest of his life is also the guiding force in Victor Hugo's great novel Les Miserables. Hugo's Jean Valjean is in danger of being taken back to the galleys for stealing Bishop Bienvenu's silverware, but the saintly Bishop creates a transformation in Valjean's character by telling the arresting officers that the silver was a gift and even adding a pair of silver candlesticks to the bounty. Jean Valjean becomes an industrious, generous man who devotes the rest of his life to bringing happiness to others.

Great Expectations was published in 1860 and Les Miserables in 1862, but neither author was indebted to the other for his thesis. Rather, both men were inspired by the teachings of Jesus and his followers recorded in the New Testament. More Content: Summary (hide) link Link Not one of Dickens’s child characters enjoys a happy and uncomplicated relationship with two living parents. In his fiction, Dickens found it necessary not only to orphan himself of the parents who shamed him but also to re-create them in ideal shapes—and sometimes, too, to be fair to them. That is what happens in Great Expectations. What strikes one most powerfully about this compact and streamlined narrative—technically, perhaps Dickens’s best—is the excessive and apparently unmotivated guilt of its hero: guilt, perhaps, for the terrible snobbery into which he falls as he tries to climb the social ladder,guilt at his rejection of his parents, or the guilt of the human condition. Pip is a village orphan brought up roughly by his unmotherly sister (her bosom bristles with pins), the wife of gentle blacksmith Joe Gargery.

In the first chapter of the novel, on the memorable day when he becomes aware for the first time of his identity and his place in a hostile world, Pip meets, in the graveyard where his parents lie buried, a shivering, ravenous, and monstrous man, an escapee from the prison ships across the marshes, who terrorizes Pip into stealing food and drink for him. The convict is eventually recaptured, but not before Pip (and Joe) has come to pity him or before he has lied that it was he who stole a pie and brandy from the Gargery larder. Next, Pip also meets the rich, weird recluse Miss Havisham, who lives in a darkened and dusty room where time has stood still, dressed always in a yellowing wedding dress. He falls in love with her petulant and beautiful ward, Estella, whom the old woman is training to break men’s hearts as vengeance for her own abandonment at the altar. Some years later, a lawyer named Jaggers appears at the smithy with the news that Pip, now Joe’s apprentice, has been left a fortune and is to become a gentleman.

Pip leaves for London, and inevitably a wedge is driven between him and his best friend, illiterate Joe, of whom Pip sinks so low as to become ashamed. Miss Havisham (the wordplay on “sham” is appropriate) lets Pip believe that it is she who is his benefactor, but the real benefactor is actually the least likely person imaginable: Magwitch, the monstrous convict, who has made good in Australia and now returns to England (thereby breaking the rules of his sentence) in hopes that the boy he has “made” will return his devoted affection. Pip is horrified and disgusted: His money is contaminated. The lesson of love and human decency that he must learn comes very hard indeed. Yet he learns it: By the time poor Magwitch is reclaimed by justice, Pip is prepared to stand holding his hand in the public court. Thankfully, Magwitch dies in prison before he can be hanged. Pip himself now falls seriously ill and is nursed back to life by Joe. No one, however, can turn back the clock: The moment Pip is better, Joe (calling him “sir”) retreats to the village.

Pip’s loneliness at the end of the novel seems mediated only by a vague promise that a chastened Estella may some day be his—a modification of the harsher original ending Dickens had intended. Great Expectations is psychologically Dickens’s most mature and realistic novel, although it works through his usual system of displacements and dark doublings. Loutish Orlick, Joe’s other apprentice, for example, seems to function as Pip’s alter ego when he attacks his uncaring sister, Mrs. Joe. It is also a novel that depicts the powerful influence of environment as well as of heredity: Magwitch, the convict, and bitter Miss Havisham were themselves both abused and lonely as children.

For all of its somber coloring, however, the novel is also riotously funny in the characteristically Dickensian mode of excess: Pontificating Uncle Pumblechook, a seed merchant who subjected the boy Pip to humiliation over Christmas dinner, gets his poetic comeuppance, Joe reports, when Orlick robs him, “stuff[ing] his mouth full of flowering annuals to perwent his crying out.” link Link Little Pip was left an orphan when he was a small boy, and his much older sister grudgingly rears him in her cottage. Pip’s brother-in-law, Joe Gargery, on the other hand, is kind and loving to the boy. Pip often wanders alone in the marsh country where he lives with his sister and Joe. One day, he is accosted by a wild-looking stranger who is an escaped prisoner. He frightens Pip and demands that the boy secretly bring him food and a file to cut the iron chain that binds his leg. When Pip brings him a pork pie and file, he sees another mysterious figure on the marsh. This man engages in a desperate struggle with the escaped prisoner, then escapes into the fog.

The man Pip aids promises that he will somehow repay the boy for helping him. He is later apprehended. Mrs. Joe sends Pip to the large mansion of strange Miss Havisham upon that lady’s request. Miss Havisham lives in a gloomy, locked house where all the clocks were stopped on the day her bridegroom failed to appear for the wedding ceremony. She often dresses in her bridal robes; a wedding breakfast molds on the table in an unused room. Pip goes there every day to visit the old lady and a beautiful young girl, named Estella, who delights in tormenting the shy boy. Miss Havisham enjoys watching the two children together, and she encourages Estella in her haughty teasing of Pip. Living in the grim atmosphere of Joe’s blacksmith shop and the uneducated poverty of his sister’s home, Pip is eager to learn. One day, a London solicitor named Jaggers presents him with the opportunity to go to London and become a gentleman. Both Pip and Joe accept the proposal. Pip imagines that his kind backer is Miss Havisham and that perhaps she wants to make a gentleman out of him so that he will be fit someday to marry Estella.

In London, Pip finds a small apartment set up for him. Herbert Pocket, a young relative of Miss Havisham, is his living companion. When Pip needs money, he is instructed to go to Mr. Jaggers. Although Pip pleads with the lawyer to disclose the name of his benefactor, Jaggers advises the eager young man not to make inquiries; when the proper time arrives, Pip’s benefactor will be made known. Soon Pip becomes one of a small group of London dandies, among them a disagreeable chap named Bentley Drummle. To Pip’s dismay, Joe comes to visit; Pip, who has outgrown his rural background, is ashamed of Joe’s simple manners, but Herbert cheerfully helps Pip to entertain Joe in their apartment. After he leaves for the evening, Pip feels ashamed of himself. Joe had brought word that Miss Havisham wants to see the young man, so Pip returns to his old home with his brother-in-law. Miss Havisham and Estella note the changes in Pip, and when Estella leaves Pip alone with the old lady, she tells him he must fall in love with the beautiful girl.

She also says it is time for Estella to come to London, and that she wishes Pip to meet her adopted daughter when she arrives. This request makes Pip feel even more certain that he was sent to London by Miss Havisham to be groomed to marry Estella. Estella is not in London long before she has many suitors. Of all the men who court her, she seems to favor Bentley. Pip sees Estella frequently. Although she treats him kindly and with friendship, he knows she does not return his love. On his twenty-first birthday, Pip receives a caller. It is Abel Magwitch, the man whom Pip helped in the marsh many years earlier. He tells Pip that it is he who has been financing him ever since he came to London. At first, the boy is horrified to discover he owes so much to this crude, coarse man, a former criminal. Magwitch tells Pip that he was sent to the Colonies, where he grew rich. Now he wants Pip to enjoy all the privileges that he himself had been denied in life. He returned to England to see the boy to whom he has tried to be a second father.

He warns Pip that he is in danger should his presence be discovered, for it is certain death for a prisoner to return to England once he has been sent to a convict colony. Pip detests his plight. He realizes that Miss Havisham had nothing to do with his great expectations in life, but he is too conscious of his debt to consider abandoning the man whose person he dislikes. He determines to do all in his power to please his benefactor. Magwitch, who is using the name Provis to hide his identity, tells Pip that the man with whom Pip saw him struggling long ago in the marsh is his enemy, Compeyson, who has vowed to destroy him. Herbert, a distant cousin of Miss Havisham, informs Pip that the lover who betrayed her on her wedding day was named Arthur Compeyson. Pip goes to see Miss Havisham to denounce her for having allowed him to believe that she is helping him. On his arrival, he is informed that Estella is to marry Bentley. Since Miss Havisham suffered at the hands of one faithless man, she reared Estella to inflict as much hurt as possible upon the many men who would fall in love with her.

Estella reminds Pip that she warned him not to fall in love with her, since she has no compassion for any human being. Pip returns once more to visit Miss Havisham after Estella is married. An accident starts a fire in the old, dust-filled mansion; although Pip tries to save the old woman, she dies in the blaze, which also badly damages the gloomy house. From Provis’s story of his association with Compeyson and from other evidence, Pip learns that Provis is Estella’s father; he does not reveal his discovery to anyone but Jaggers, whose housekeeper is Estella’s mother. Pip also learns that Compeyson is in London and plotting to kill Provis. In order to protect the man who tried to befriend him, Pip arranges to smuggle Provis across the channel to France with the help of Herbert. Pip intends to join the old man there. Elaborate and secretive as their plans are, Compeyson manages to overtake them as they are putting Provis on the boat. The two enemies fight one last battle in the water, and Provis kills his enemy. He is then taken to jail, where he dies before he can be brought to trial.

When Pip falls ill shortly afterward, it is Joe who comes to nurse him. Older and wiser from his many experiences, Pip realizes that he no longer needs to be ashamed of the kind man who gave so much love to him when he was a boy. His sister, Mrs. Joe, had died and Joe had married again, this time very happily. Pip, still desolate and unhappy because of his lost Estella, returns to the blacksmith’s home to recuperate. Later, Herbert and Pip set up business together in London. Eleven years pass before Pip goes to see Joe again. Curiosity leads him to the site of Miss Havisham’s former mansion. There he finds Estella, now a widow, wandering over the grounds. During the intervening years, she lost her cool aloofness and softened a great deal. She tells Pip she has thought of him often. Pip is able to foresee that perhaps he and Estella will never have to part again. The childhood friends walk hand in hand from the place that had once played such an enormous part in both of their lives.

Great Expectations Study Guide: Characters Studying Great Expectations: Meet the Characters written by: Trent Lorcher • edited by: Trent Lorcher • updated: 1/17/2012 This is a review of the characters in the book Great Expectations. This study guide lists the characters and describes their roles. slide 1 of 6 Pip's Family Pip (Philip Pirip) - The novel's main character and narrator is raised by his ill-tempered sister. Pip never knew his parents and his first recollection of them occurs at the church graveyard, where he is threatened by an escaped convict. Pip is initially satisfied with his station in life and wishes to be apprenticed to Joe, his sister's husband, as a blacksmith. After meeting Estella at Miss Havisham's house, Pip becomes dissatisfied and decides that being a blacksmith is not good enough. Four years into his apprenticeship, Pip receives a large sum of money and the promise of a gentleman's education. Pip's good fortune transforms him into a snob. The narrator Pip is grown up and often reflects ashamedly on his past behavior. Joe Gargery - Pip's brother-in-law.

Joe is a good and loyal friend to Pip and the only person who showed him love when Pip was a boy. Joe remained loyal despite Pip's snobbish behavior towards him. Mrs. Joe - Pip's sister who raised Pip "by hand." She is an unsympathetic character, who rules by force. She receives a crippling blow to the head shortly before Pip inherits his fortune, becomes a vegetable, and dies not long after. slide 2 of 6 The Havishams Miss. Havisham - Abandoned on her wedding day, Miss Havisham spends the rest of her life at Satis House, her dungeon-like home. She wears her wedding dress, has not seen the sun in years, and keeps the bride's cake, covered in cobwebs and gnawed by mice, on a table in her tomb-like room. She raises Estella for the sole purpose of getting revenge on the male species. She invites Pip to entertain her until he is apprenticed to Joe Gargery. Estella Havisham - Estella is beautiful, intelligent, and raised to torment men. She scorns Pip and treats him poorly on his visits to Satis House.

Despite his ill treatment, Pip falls in love and dedicates his life to getting her approval. slide 3 of 6 Characters from Pip's Childhood The Convict - The novel begins with a convict forcing Pip to bring him food and a file. Despite a rough exterior, the convict proves himself to be a generous man. Mr. Wopsle - A friend of the Gargerys, Wopsle serves as comic relief throughout the novel. He accompanies Joe and the soldiers as they track down Pip's convict and is harangued by Jaggers for passing judgment on an accused killer. He leaves his position in the church, heads to London, and wishes to become a great actor. Uncle Pumblechook - Pumblechook, Joe Gargery's uncle, is present at the Gargery Christmas dinner as the novel opens. He is pompous, arrogant, and mean to Pip. Once Pip gains his fortune, Pumblechook takes credit for it and treats him well. Orlick - Joe Gargery's journeyman blacksmith treats Pip meanly and dotes on Biddy. Biddy - Pip's first teacher, Biddy is common and has a good heart. She takes care of Mrs. Joe after the assault.

slide 4 of 6 Londoners Mr. Jaggers - Pip's guardian is one of the top lawyers in London. He also serves as Miss Havisham's lawyer. Wemmick - Wemmick lives two lives: he's Mr. Jagger's clerk at the office and a loyal son at his castle home. He invites Pip to dine with him shortly after his arrival in London. Miss Skiffins - Wemmick's beloved--her relationship with Wemmick contrasts the mostly negative relationships Pip witnesses. Bentley Drummle - Pip hates Drummle, a fellow student at the Pocket house, because he is a brute and because he maintains affection for Estella. Startop - Another fellow student, Startop befriends Pip and Herbert. slide 5 of 6 The Pockets Herbert Pocket - Originally the pale young gentleman who boxes Pip at Miss Havisham's, Herbert becomes Pip's closest friend in London. Herbert is kind, honest, and ambitious. He is corrupted by Pip's lavish spending and tries to keep up with him, a practice which leads him into debt. Matthew Pocket - Herbert's father refuses to compete for Miss Havisham's favor and makes a living tutoring young gentlemen, including Pip. Mrs.

Pocket - Herbert's mother is obsessed with social status and laments that her grandfather should have been a baronet. She complains that marrying Matthew lowered her social status. Mrs. Pocket is an incompetent wife, mother, and homemaker. Sarah Pocket - Sarah hates Pip. She seeks Miss Havisham's favor in order to inherit her fortune. Camilla and Raymond - They too resent Pip. They flatter Miss Havisham, hoping to gain her favor and fortune. Clara - She lives with her father by the river and is loved by Herbert. slide 6 of 6

Question: What is the name of Pip’s brother-in-law in ‘Great Expectations’?
Answer: JOE GARGERY