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 Charles Dickens Contempt for Lawyers Revealed Great Expectations :: Great Expectations Essays Charles Dickens Contempt for Lawyers Revealed Great Expectations :: 2 Works Cited Length: 1470 words (4.2 double-spaced pages) Rating: Excellent Open Document Charles Dickens Contempt for Lawyers Revealed Great Expectations Charles Dickens viewed lawyers as being mean, cruel, and relatively heartless (Collins 175). Throughout much of Dickens' literature, lawyers are stereotyped through characters and these characters are used as a means of commentary about the lawyers of the time. Jaggers, from the novel Great Expectations , seems not to be an exception. Through the character of Jaggers, an understanding of Dickens' view of early nineteenth-century lawyers can be obtained. Dickens felt that lawyers were overly concerned with power and not concerned enough about truth. Through Jaggers, the first evidence of this claim can be seen by his name alone. By sound, the name "Jaggers" creates an image of something that cuts.

In a similar vein, "Jaggers" closely resembles "jagged" which portrays a rough and sharp image. The images produced by this name aptly describe the business attitude of Jaggers, an attitude that Dickens seems to revere as efficient, but condone as heartless. The first meeting with Pip reinforces the idea of Jaggers as the power-centered lawyer. In explaining his presence there to Pip, Jaggers states, "If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here" (140; ch. 18). After reading about the business that Jaggers is there to conduct, this statement begins to take on some meaning. Jaggers is saying that if he were asked, he would not advise anyone to throw away such money on a trivial charity case. Jaggers, wrapped up in the power of his profession, could not possibly advise such a careless handling of money. For Jaggers, power is not about helping the little man for charitable purposes. Dickens seems to suggest here ideas about how power has corrupted the intentions of lawyers, people who are in a position to help those in need. Even Jaggers' mannerisms seem to suggest the image of power.

For example, Pip observes Jaggers eating a sandwich and comments that "he seemed to bully his sandwich as he ate" (167; ch. 20). It is as if Dickens wants to make a point about how lawyers are power hungry all of the time, even in the handling of their inanimate meals. The way that Jaggers bullies his sandwich is not unlike how he bullies the clients that he is supposed to be serving. How to Cite this Page MLA Citation: Dickens also felt that, far too often, lawyers worked for their own personal gain. Jaggers serves as a very precise attack on lawyers on this regard. In every dealing with clients, Jaggers concerns himself with payment before he will worry about taking action on their behalf. To one client, he asks, "Has Wemmick got it [payment]?" (164; ch. 20). To another, he again asks, "Have you paid Wemmick?" (165; ch. 20). After both clients answer that they have, Jaggers answers, "Very well" (164,165; ch. 20).

This is as if to say that since he has now profited, he will grace these clients with his expertise. The fact that he is working for money is not the astonishing point here. Rather, it is the fact that he is so focused on payment and it must come before he will actually work a case. Dickens uses Jaggers to show how a lawyer may go to extremes in using his profession for personal gains. At a dinner party, Pip meets Molly, Jaggers' housekeeper. This is a woman who is in service to Jaggers in repayment for his defending her in a case. Despite her pleading "Master, Please!" (206; ch. 26), Jaggers forces her to expose her wrists to his company, a show of power and control over her as if she is his animal. To own a person in such fashion, is a pointed shot from Dickens about lawyers' corrupt use of power. Molly's case in general becomes another example of a trait of lawyers which Dickens deemed unrespectable. Defense lawyers in the early nineteenth century were able to use a variety of defenses in order to try and protect their client.

The object was not to search for the "truth", but rather to create a truth that would enable their clients to be judged innocent. Jaggers was able to find just the right defense to help Molly avoid prosecution. Dickens used Jaggers again as commentary about how lawyers never seemed to represent truth, a quality that should have been inherent in their profession in Dickens' eyes. Dickens' subtlety shows this quality by showing Jaggers' unwillingness to ever have a definite opinion. For example, Jaggers says to Pip, "I don't recommend him, observe; because I never recommend anybody" (142; ch. 18). The reason Jaggers does not recommend anybody is because that would require Jaggers to maintain a definite opinion. The danger of having that definite opinion would be that Jaggers could later be held accountable for it if something were to go wrong. In similar fashion, Jaggers later states, "Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or other, on the trust I undertake" (145; ch. 18). Again, Jaggers' unwillingness to choose a side allows him to manipulate both sides without having to take responsibility for his actions.

For lawyers of the time, manipulating the truth was very much similar to never having to put forth their own definite opinion. However, for a more concrete example of how Jaggers manipulated the truth, the case of Molly once again becomes important. In her case, she was most certainly guilty of her crime of murder as detailed in events in the novel. Nevertheless, by manipulating details and facts, Jaggers is able to earn her acquittal. This situation seems quite distasteful to Dickens. Not only is justice not being served, but "truth" is being perverted. During Dickens' time, despite their questionable means of action in their profession, lawyers still held a great deal of respect in their society. Dickens made sure to make Jaggers seem respected as well. However, Dickens takes it to the next level and shows how it is more often fear rather than respect that fills his clients' hearts. This can be seen in many examples of Jaggers' interactions with people. For example, Jaggers' coachman says, "I don't want to get into trouble. I know him" (161; ch. 20). This comment is not made out of respect for his boss, but rather out of fear of punishment from his boss.

Likewise, Pip observes many of Jaggers' clients discussing how Jaggers is their only chance for help and agree on the skill of the lawyer. Pip is very impressed and views this as a show of how respected Jaggers is by his clientele (164; ch. 20). However, Jaggers' actual dealings with his clients just a short time later paints a different picture. The various clients submit and cower under Jaggers' commanding voice and barking tones. They humbly exit after being chastised by the lawyer (164-65; ch. 20). The manner in which Dickens describes these relations leaves the impression that the clients fear the very man who is representing them. In the previous cases, the people who were reacting to Jaggers were substantially lower in social class and therefore may have had reason to cower before him. Therefore, Dickens created another example to show that it was not just the lower social classes who feared Jaggers, but everyone. When Jaggers arrives to eat with Pip, Miss Havisham, and Estella, Pip notes, "Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like everybody else) afraid of him" (229; ch.

29). Now, Miss Havisham is not just another member of the lower class. In fact, she had paid Jaggers for services before and could possibly be considered to at least be his social equal. Yet, despite her social standing and normal coldness to people, she still is viewed as fearing Jaggers in Pip's eyes. Notice that Pip does not say that she respects Jaggers, but rather she fears him. All of this evidence points to the fact that Dickens did not feel that lawyers were respected in his time, but rather feared. They were not filling an honorable profession, but instead acting like legal bullies to groups of people who needed their services in matters of life and death. Dickens' portrayal of Jaggers as being feared by everyone was his way of criticizing his era's lawyers of abusing their powers. Dickens clearly disliked the lawyers of the early nineteenth century for their manipulations of the truth as well as their bullying tactics. He uses the character Jaggers in Great Expectations to exaggerate these negative qualities to show how heartless lawyers can be. Although he does not portray Jaggers as an evil character, he does not show him as an admirable one either. Clearly Dickens' distaste for lawyers shines through this novel.

Works Cited Collins, Philip. Dickens and Crime. New York: Indiana UP, 1994. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. New York: St. Martin's, 1996. Dickens' Attitude to the Law - Charles Dickens' Great Expectations Charles Dickens' Great Expectations A new interpretation for students, by Rupert Christiansen Dickens' Attitude to the Law Dickens was a lifelong critic of the iniquities of a social system that produced criminals and then punished them - his contempt being most succinctly summed up in Mr Bumble’s pronouncement in Oliver Twist that ‘The law is a ass’ and expressed at length in Bleak House, his great satire of the courts of chancery and their self-perpetuating property disputes. Elsewhere his fiction is full of prisons, judges, trials, lawyers, wills and lawsuits, focused on the City of London, where the system had its fulcrum: when he was a teenager, Dickens spent time working there as a solicitor’s clerk and considered a legal career. Not least because he was a superb public speaker, he might well have made a magnificent barrister had he pursued the idea.

Although he stood aside from the hang ’em-and-flog ’em tendency, he was far from soft on convicted criminals. He approved of hard labour in prisons and felt satisfaction at witnessing a ‘determined thief, swindler or vagrant, sweating profusely at the treadmill or the crank.’ In Chapter 32 of Great Expectations, Pip momentarily sounds like a Daily Mail columnist when he makes ironic reference to a period where ‘felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers) and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavour of their soup’. Once you had committed a criminal act, Dickens believed, you had to take responsibility for it, and incarceration was more about expiatory retribution and repentance than reform. Yet Dickens also had a deep imaginative empathy with the criminal mind.

In his earlier novels, he relished creating and inhabiting villains such as Quilp, Fagin, Bill Sikes and Uriah Heep, whose wickedness is caricatured and exploited for melodramatic effect, but he also understood how people were from childhood pushed or drawn into crime, in the face of heartless Poor Law institutions such as workhouses and appallingly inadequate housing, education, sanitation and moral guidance. Magwitch is one such, as the story he tells of his life in Chapter 42 makes clear. Without parents, a home or schooling, he grows up ‘a ragged little creetur’, who ‘first became aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving turnips for a living’ and whose teenage career of tramping, begging and stealing interspersed with odd jobs results in several prison sentences and earns him the reputation of being ‘a terrible hardened one’. His defence is ingenuous: ‘They always went on agen me about the Devil. But what the Devil was I to do?

I must put something into my stomach mustn’t I?’ Magwitch falls prey to the wiles of Compeyson, a smooth public-school educated fraudster – ‘that man got me into such nets as made me his black slave’. When they are rumbled and come up for trial, the Judge feels that Compeyson, the well-spoken young gentleman with good character witnesses, has been led astray by the older Magwitch, whose prison record suggests that he is ‘hardened’, and Magwitch ends up with a sentence twice as long as Compeyson’s (despite having as his lawyer the marvel Jaggers, whose golden touch seems to have failed him on this occasion). Far from being ‘hardened’, however, Magwitch fulfils the cliché of the soft and beating heart beneath the rough exterior. Flinching (understandably) at his uncouth manners and appearance, Pip succumbs to the common prejudice of suspecting him of worse crimes than he had actually committed (‘I shuddered at the thought that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood’, Chapter 39).

But although Magwitch can react like a ferocious wild animal when provoked, he is never a monster, and the only physical violence of which he is guilty is directed against Compeyson. His Christian name of Abel is significant too - a reference to the story in Genesis of the innocent shepherd who falls victim to the wrath of to his brother Cain. In contrast, the novel contains two villains from Dickens’ earlier repertory. No exploration of their formative past is required, and no mercy is extended to them: both Compeyson and Orlick are simply bad lots, born nasty and motivated by revenge. (Orlick is another name with religious overtones, suggesting ‘Old Nick’, a demotic title for the devil.) Magwitch, on the other hand, is emphatically not vindictive. Showing gratitude towards the little boy he frightened in the churchyard becomes the great romance of his life, and his only desire, as an old man who knows that his time will soon be up, is to see Pip (whom he regards in a quasi-paternal light) for himself. Miraculously, Dickens’ treatment of Magwitch doesn’t seem sentimental.

This is partly because Magwitch never shows any penitence for what he has done – he feels, with a shrug that having been sucked into a vortex, he had no alternative - and partly because his extravagant gift to Pip is the gesture of someone deluded, if not mentally unhinged, by a fantasy. Facing death, he ponders ‘over the question whether he might have been a better man under better circumstances’ (Chapter 56), but he never whimpers or complains. He is a character with hard edges, and his warm-heartedness doesn’t extend beyond Pip. But Dickens obviously felt that someone who had served his time in Australia, worked hard and honestly, given away his wealth and shown a sincere determination nor to be ‘low’, is deserving of the reader’s compassion. The trial in Chapter 56 dramatises this forcibly, demonstrating Dickens’ strongly held belief that there are two realms of law – the law of the land, a faulty, fallible and often corrupt system which cannot be relied on to deliver justice (in fact, from 1834, Magwitch would no longer have faced the death penalty for the ‘crime’ of returning); and the law of Christian morality, which is absolute.

In Magwitch’s case, the law of the land does what it has to do in condemning him to death, but in prose of incomparably moving power, Dickens turns the court room into an eschatological scene in which we are reminded that God, not man, is the judge of whom we should be in awe: The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, through the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a broad shaft of light between the two and thirty [convicts] and the judge, linking both together, and perhaps reminding some among the audience, how both were passing on, with absolute equality, to the greater judgment that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light, the prisoner {Magwitch] said, ‘My Lord, I have received my sentence of Death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours” and sat down again. The implication is that Magwitch has found salvation, and he dies reconciled and smiling, happy in the illusion that Pip has inherited his fortune. This is a simple tale, rooted in New Testament morality.

Far more complex - and illustrative of Dickens’ mature genius - is the ambiguity surrounding the lawyer Jaggers and his clerk Wemmick. In the words of the critic John Lucas, ‘the two men are highly disturbing creations’: what are we meant to think of them, whose side are they on, are they good or bad men? Those are questions which the novel never completely answers. What they embody is the hypocrisy which Dickens saw at the heart of the legal system. For Jaggers, good and bad, right and wrong don’t enter the equation.’ He knows the law is a game and he acts entirely in accordance with its rules – that’s his job, that’s what he is paid for. For a fee, he will turn murder into manslaughter, lies into truth. He will not become emotionally involved, he suppresses any personal opinion, and like Pontius Pilate, he constantly washes his hands of responsibility.

Jaggers’ absorption in his role is complete, twenty-four hours a day: even the furnishings in his bachelor apartments in Gerrard Street have ‘an official look’, and his bookcase is full of titles relating to ‘evidence, criminal law, criminals, biography, trials, acts of parliament and such things.’ Even out of court, he doesn’t talk to people so much as cross-examine them forensically. He is, as Wemmick puts it in Chapter 24, predatory: ‘a man-trap … Suddenly – click – you’re caught. Wemmick’s dissociation, in contrast, is schizophrenic. He plays the game for the duration of the working day only, his role being to adopt a superficially friendly attitude to the clients and thereby ensure that they pay their bills. In Chapter 32, Wemmick takes Pip on a tour of the prisoners in Newgate, where in lieu of cash, Wemmick accepts in payment what he calls ‘portable property’, coolly negotiating the receipt of two pigeons from a client of Jaggers who is about to be executed.

They shook hands again, and as we walked away Wemmick said to me ‘A Coiner [forger], a very good workman. The Recorder’s report is made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on Monday. Still, you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are portable property, all the same.’ But as he walks home, Wemmick’s ‘square wooden face’ and ‘post-office smile’ softens, and he gradually turns back into a charming, kindly, regular sort of chap who looks after his Aged P, courts the prim Miss Skiffins and tends the garden of a cosy crenellated cottage complete with flagstaff, cannon and drawbridge which both suggests the familiar proverb that ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’ and also symbolizes the (Walworth) wall that he has built around himself. Here the portable property has become a little parlour collection of curiosities which Wemmick proudly shows Pip as though the objects were nothing more gruesome than the seashells of a beachcomber.

Wemmick is ultimately a delightful character – in his Walworth guise, he is extremely kind to Pip and sensitive to his predicament, and by allowing him a happy ending with Miss Skiffins, Dickens indicates that we are right to be charmed by him. But in his ability to live by two moral codes, is he not alarmingly reminiscent of that concentration camp official who sent Jews to the gas chambers in the morning and spent the evening playing Schubert on the piano? What is most chilling about Jaggers and working-hours Wemmick – and what fascinates Dickens about them - is their refusal to acknowledge the difference between innocence or guilt, or to invest any moral element into their professional dealings with crime, even if life and death are at stake. Acting on behalf of their clients and winning a case, for a fee, is the bedrock of their ethics. Jaggers doesn’t lie – he merely observes the letter of the law, and within that frame, he is prepared to manipulate the facts, use false witnesses and argue that black is white. His private view of the truth is neither here nor there, and he is at pains to shut his ears to any attempt to expose them to it.

This is brilliantly dramatised in the scene in Chapter 20, when he crosses the street in Little Britain only to be accosted by some defendants who are on the verge of letting slip incriminating facts that he doesn’t want to hear: ‘We thought, Mr Jaggers – ’ one of the men began, pulling off his hat. ‘That’s what I told you not to do!’ said Mr Jaggers. ‘You thought! I think for you, that’s enough for you. If I want you, I know where to find you. I don’t want you to find me. Now I won’t have it. I won’t hear a word.’ … But Dickens springs a surprise in Chapter 51, where in Jaggers’ chambers, the masks threaten to become unstuck. In front of Jaggers, Pip blurts out that Wemmick has ‘a pleasant home’ where he indulges in ‘innocent cheerful playful ways’ – a revelation that discombobulates both Jaggers and Wemmick, making them tetchy with each other – and Jaggers ‘puts the imaginary case’ that someone (in fact, himself) has acted with disinterested compassion on behalf of the child Estella.

Suddenly, Jaggers is in danger of revealing what he really thinks and feels: ‘Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life, he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net – to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, be-devilled somehow.’ Some critics have felt that this strikes a false note, but others find it brilliantly tantalising. Jaggers is still only ‘putting the case’ and makes ‘no admissions’. The mask may slip, but it does not fall: he never directly admits that this is what he has done. Yet the sense that the dam holding back whatever inner self he possesses is on the verge of being breached, releasing a deep and thoughtful compassion is electrifying – one of the most psychologically subtle and powerful moments in the novel. Great Expectations | Charles Dickens Info Charles Dickens Info Great Expectations Miss Havisham with Estella and Pip Great Expectations was the thirteenth novel of Charles Dickens. He began writing it in October of 1860. Its initial publication was in All the Year Round, a weekly periodical founded and owned by Charles Dickens.

It appeared in nine monthly installments from December of 1860 until August 1861. Great Expectations – Dickens’ Life At The Time In September of 1860 Gad’s Hill Place becomes Dickens’ permanent residence. Dickens and Wilkie Collins travel to North Devon on November of 1860 to gather materials for “A Message from the Sea”. Dickens begins a series of readings at St. James’s Hall in March of 1861. In October of 1861 Dickens begins another series of readings. The Ending of Great Expectations Originally Dickens planned a different ending for Great Expectations. However he was persuaded by his friend, Bulwer-Lytton, to change the ending to a happier one. The original ending had Estella remarrying after the death of her first husband. She and Pip had a brief meeting in London and then parted forever.

The rewritten ending hints at a reconciliation for Pip and Estella: 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. All the Year Round Charles Dickens founded the weekly publication All the Year Round. Its first issue was printed on April 30, 1859. Dickens served as editor and publisher. One feature of the publication was its serialization of novels. The first novel serialized in All the Year Round was A Tale of Two Cities . In October of 1860 sales of All the Year Round were dropping because the featured novel, A Day’s Ride by Charles Lever, wasn’t very popular. Dickens was originally going to have Great Expectations published in another format, however to increase sales of All the Year Round he adapted it to the weekly format. His plan worked and sales for the publication increased. At the time of Dickens’ death circulation of the publication was 300,000.

Themes of Great Expectations Pip, like Dickens himself, dreams of becoming a gentleman. However during the course of the novel Pip comes to realize that there is more to life than wealth and station. Pip is raised by his sister and her husband, Joe. Joe is an honest, hard-working man. However as Pip ascends in society he is embarrassed by Joe and his simple ways. Another example of this theme is Pip’s relationship with Magwitch. Initially Pip is horrified to learn that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham, but instead Magwitch the convict. At the end of the story Pip has different feelings toward Magwitch. He is very fond of him and is at his side when he dies. Magwitch himself experiences how highly society values the appearance of gentility. Here Magwitch describes how differently he and his partner in crime, the supposed gentleman Compeyson, are treated during their trial: “. . . And when it come to character, warn’t it Compeyson as had been to the school, and warn’t it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn’t it him as had been know’d by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his disadvantage?

And warn’t it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know’d up hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups? And when it come to speech-making, warn’t it Compeyson as could speak to ’em wi’ his face dropping every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher – ah! and wi’ verses in his speech, too – and warn’t it me as could only say, ‘Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal’? And when the verdict come, warn’t it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn’t it me as got never a word but Guilty? . . . “ Another theme that runs through Great Expectations, as it does through Our Mutual Friend , is the ease with which wealth can corrupt people. Pip describes his spending habits: 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.

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one. In the end Pip, like Estella, has undergone some serious interior transformations. Estella states: ” . . .suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” Information About Great Expectations David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page - Great Expectations Great Expectations Many of the locations in Great Expectations are featured on my map of Dickens' Rochester/Chatham. Dickens wrote to his friend and advisor, John Forster , telling his plan for Great Expectations: "The book will be written in the first person throughout, and during these first three weekly numbers you will find the hero to be a boy-child, like David. Then he will be an apprentice. You will not have to complain of the want of humour as in the Tale of Two Cities. I have made the opening, I hope, in its general effect exceedingly droll.

I have put a child and a good-natured foolish man, in relations that seem to me very funny. Of course I have got in the pivot on which the story will turn too -- and which indeed, as you remember, was the grotesque tragicomic conception that first encouraged me. To be quite sure I had fallen into no unconscious repetitions, I read David Copperfield again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe." Miss Havisham has Pip and Estella play Beggar My Neighbor to entertain her. Estella uses the game to make Pip aware of how common he is: "He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!" said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. "And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!" I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it. She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.

With the story complete, Dickens decides to change the ending, on the advice of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. August 1861 River Research for Great Expectations At the opening of the story there had been an exciting scene of the wretched man's chase and recapture among the marshes, and this has its parallel at the close in his chase and recapture on the river while poor Pip is helping to get him off. To make himself sure of the actual course of a boat in such circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might have, Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to Southend. Eight or nine friends and three or four members of his family were on board, and he seemed to have no care, the whole of that summer day (22 May, 1861), except to enjoy their enjoyment and entertain them with his own in shape of a thousand whims and fancies; but his sleepless observation was at work all the time, and nothing had escaped his keen vision on either side of the river. From The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster Advertisement for the upcoming serialization of Great Expectations in Dickens weekly journal All The Year Round-November 1860.

The weekly installments began the following month. 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens' birth, saw the release of two film adaptations of Great Expectations. The first starred Gillian Anderson, Ray Winstone, and Douglas Booth. The second starred Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes. Great Expectations - Published in weekly parts Dec 1860 - Aug 1861 Read it online | Shop for the Book | Shop for the Video | Illustrations | Locations Dickens' thirteenth novel was published in Dickens' weekly journal All the Year Round without illustrations. An American edition was also published, curiously a week in advance of the English version, in Harper's Weekly . The novel contains a strong autobiographical element, though not as openly as in David Copperfield . Dickens reread Copperfield before beginning Great Expectations to avoid unintentional repetition. Called Dickens' darkest work by some, it was very well received by Victorian readers and remains one of Dickens' most popular works today. Many consider this novel Dickens' greatest use of plot, characterization, and style and Great Expectations the masterpiece of Dickens' works.

Plot (contains spoilers) Pip, an orphan, is brought up by his abusive sister and her husband, Joe Gargery, the kindly village blacksmith. Magwitch, an escaped convict, confronts Pip in the churchyard on the Kent marshes and demands food and a file to break his chains. Out of fear Pip complies and Magwitch escapes. He is later recaptured and transported to Australia where he prospers. Pip is introduced to Miss Havisham, an eccentric old woman, and her charge, Estella, with whom Pip falls in love. Estella has been taught by Miss Havisham to break men's hearts as restitution for Miss Havisham's having been left at the altar years before by Compeyson, who later turns out to be a convict who was once partnered with Magwitch. Pip is apprenticed to Joe but longs to become a gentleman after having been made to feel inferior by Estella who had criticized Pip's "coarse hands and thick boots." He begins to be ashamed of Joe and home and enlists Biddy to help educate him. Pip and Joe meet the lawyer, Jaggers, at the local pub.

Pip recognizes Jaggers as a man he has seen at Miss Havisham's. Jaggers relates to Pip and Joe that Pip has great expectations through an unnamed benefactor which Pip assumes is Miss Havisham. Jaggers tells them that Pip is to be released from his apprenticeship to Joe and become a gentleman and is to go to London to begin his education. As part of the mysterious circumstances of his great expectations Pip is told that he is not to try to discover who his benefactor is. Pip goes to London where Jaggers and his clerk Wemmick set him up to begin his education with Matthew Pocket, who is Miss Havisham's cousin. Pip has chambers with Matthew's son Herbert at Barnard's Inn and discovers Herbert is the "pale young gentleman" he had scuffled with at Miss Havisham's Satis House. Pip's sister, Mrs. Joe Gargary, has been attacked by Orlick, a journeyman blacksmith in Joe's shop. She lingers in a state of insensibility and later dies. Pip continues and finishes his education and secretly sets Herbert up in business. He becomes Estella's escort in London and continues to adore her as she continues to torment him.

When Pip turns 21, and reaches his majority, he is told by Jaggers that he is to receive 500 pounds per year from his still unnamed benefactor. Pip wonders when Miss Havisham will make herself known as the provider of his great expectations and he will come into his promised property. On a stormy night in his 23rd year Pip is home alone and is visited by a man who seems to know him, but whom Pip does not recognize. Finally, to his horror, Pip recognizes the convict Magwitch and, to his further horror, Magwitch relates that it was he who has provided Pip's great expectations. Magwitch has returned to England, in violation of his sentence of transportation, to see the gentleman he has made. Pip learns that Estella will marry the hated Bentley Drummle. Estella quarrels with Miss Havisham over her heartless upbringing. Later Miss Havisham is repentant and begs Pip to forgive her. Pip rescues her when her clothes catch fire but she is badly burned and later dies. Pip's arms were also badly burned and he recovers slowly. Estella's marriage goes badly, she is mistreated by Drummle and she leaves him.

Drummle later dies in an accident involving the mistreatment of a horse. Pip enlists Herbert to help him find lodging to hide the convict, now called Provis, until they can spirit him abroad. They lodge Provis in an upstairs room in a house at Mill Pond Bank, on the Thames, occupied by Herbert's fiancee Clara and her invalid father. They then make plans to take Provis down the river in an open boat and catch a steamer bound for Hamburg. On the way they are overtaken and Provis identified as the convict Magwitch by Compeyson. Compeyson drowns when he and Magwitch scuffle and fall from the boat. Magwitch sustains serious injury. Despite his health Magwitch is tried and sentenced to death but dies of his wounds before the execution can be carried out. Pip has learned that Magwitch is Estella's father and, now softened towards the convict, tells him of his daughter just before Magwitch dies. Magwitch's wealth, which was intended for Pip, is confiscated by the Crown and leaves Pip destitute and ill. Joe comes to care for Pip in his illness and for a while it is like the old days at the forge.

Pip is truly sorry for having forgotten Joe, Biddy and home. When his strength returns he decides to ask Biddy to marry him. On arrival at the forge he finds that Biddy has married Joe. Pip leaves England to take a clerk's position in Herbert's firm. After many years he returns to visit Joe and Biddy at the forge and finds a copy of himself, Joe and Biddy's son, sitting in his old corner in the kitchen firelight. He visits Satis House, now in ruins, and meets a now softened Estella with the "freshness of her beauty gone but its indescribable majesty and its indescribable charm remaining" and sees "no shadow of another parting from her." Characters: Map of Dickens' Great Expectations Connections Rochester - Pip's village located near here. Chalk - Model for Gargery's forge located here. Dickens honeymooned here in 1836. Cooling - Cooling churchyard is where Pip's family is buried, Pip meets Magwitch here. Chatham - Dickens lived here as a child. Gad's Hill - Dickens walked with his father by a mansion here as a child.

Dickens bought the house in 1856 and lived there the last 12 years of his life. Kent Road - Route Pip takes between London and home. Thames - Pip practices rowing between London and Erith. Attempt to escape with Magwitch from London to near the Cooling Marshes. The Nore - Sandbank off the Isle of Grain. Great Expectations Links: Pip: My favourite Charles Dickens character - Telegraph Charles Dickens Pip: My favourite Charles Dickens character Pip, the hero of Great Expectations, is the first in the Telegraph picks of the best Charles Dickens characters. Image 1 of 6 Pip, the hero of Great Expectations, was played - in his adult years - by Douglas Booth in the BBC 2011 adaptation of the novel by Charles Dickens. Photo: BBC Image 1 of 6 Anthony Wager played Pip as a boy in the David Lean's 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations. He is seen here in a classic early scene where he is grabbed by the convict Abel Magwitch, played by Finlay Currie. Image 1 of 6 Douglas Booth played the older Pip in a 2012 BBC adaptation of Great Expectations.

Photo: BBC Image 1 of 6 Pip has his heart broken by Estella, played in the 1946 David Lean film by Jean Simmons. Image 1 of 6 Great Expectaions by Charles Dickens was first published in serial volumes from December 1860 to August 1861. By Neil McCormick , Music Critic 3:22PM GMT 01 Feb 2012 Follow My Favourite Charles Dickens character: Pip from Great Expectations (1861) Pip and Hamlet, though very different, are two characters that have carried me a long way, literary orphans working out father-son issues in dramatic fashion. I read Great Expectations in my teens, and again in my twenties, and again in my thirties, and at each stage I was astonished to see more in Pip, and feel more resonance in myself.

So much so that I have burned with indignation at the sense of guilt that suffuses Pip’s childhood, blushed with embarrassment at Pip’s snobbish pretensions, empathised with the quiet humiliation of his unrequited love, shuddered with shame at his condescension to the ones who love him most, and yet rooted for him all the way through this Gothically compelling, tragi-comic thriller because he is, at heart, a decent, sensitive young man stumbling towards self-knowledge. His ultimate heroism is not enacted through derring-do but by showing moral courage and a comprehension of his own weakness in his belated care for the bogeyman of his childhood, Abel Magwitch. Sometimes the hero of a Dicken’s novel is amongst its least colourful and dynamically interesting characters but Pip is a portrait of real psychological depth and complexity. His slow journey towards self-knowledge is a masterpiece of first person narration, the sound of someone talking to themselves, rather than a writer addressing a reader. Related Articles In the footsteps of Dickens 23 Jan 2012 As a young reader growing up as an existentially terrified atheist in Catholic Ireland, the condition of childhood guilt is something with which I am all too familiar.

Somehow, across a century and a sea, Dicken’s creation spoke to me in a voice that chimed perfectly with my own internal narrative. As an older reader, the father-son dynamic struck me with unexpected intensity, pulling all kinds of emotional triggers that compelled me to ask questions of myself, and find renewed respect for Dickens extraordinary psychological acuity. This is a book and a character you can grow up with. I may have to read it again. What larks. The full series of 'My favourite Charles Dickens character' (running every day in February) will be: 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. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. Estella's Feelings for Pip Hi! I'm writing an essay on Estella's character development, and I want to know what other people think about an interaction between Estella and Pip.

Towards the end of Chapter 44 (XLIV), Pip and Estella share the following exchange: I know,ï¿½ said I, in answer to that action; ï¿½I know. I have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house.ï¿½ Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook her head again. ï¿½It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.ï¿½ I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.

ï¿½It seems,ï¿½ said Estella, very calmly, ï¿½that there are sentiments, fanciesï¿½I donï¿½t know how to call themï¿½which I am not able to comprehend. 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 donï¿½t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?ï¿½ I said in a miserable manner, ï¿½Yes.ï¿½ ï¿½Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean it. Now, did you not think so?ï¿½ ï¿½I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, and beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature.ï¿½ ï¿½It is in my nature,ï¿½ she returned. And then she added, with a stress upon the words, ï¿½It is in the nature formed within me.

I make a great difference between you and all other people when I say so much. I can do no more.ï¿½ ... ï¿½On whom should I fling myself away?ï¿½ she retorted, with a smile. ï¿½Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other.ï¿½ ï¿½Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!ï¿½ I urged in despair. ï¿½Donï¿½t be afraid of my being a blessing to him,ï¿½ said Estella; ï¿½I shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand.

Do we part on this, you visionary boyï¿½or man?ï¿½ ï¿½O Estella!ï¿½ I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand, do what I would to restrain them; ï¿½even if I remained in England and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you Drummleï¿½s wife?ï¿½ ï¿½Nonsense,ï¿½ she returned, ï¿½nonsense. This will pass in no time.ï¿½ ï¿½Never, Estella!ï¿½ ï¿½You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.ï¿½ I know Estella is a cold character and doesn't love Pip, but does this passage show she cares for him? Particularly in "'Nonsense,' she returned... in a week'", I think she does feel a little bad for Pip, and is almost trying to convince herself that Pip doesn't love her. Even more so in when she gives him her hand, Estella acts like she does care for Pip, just not romantically.

I'm not entirely sure if that's what Dickens intended for the takeaway to be, though, so I'd like to know what anyone else thinks! Also excuse my possibly confusing sentence structure; I'm writing an essay, and my brain is fried. Thank you!! Posted By hamleit at Sun 1 May 2016, 7:09 PM in Great Expectations || 1 Reply A bit of confusion I've just started reading Great Expectations, and so far am enjoying it. However, there is a particular sentence I'm having a terrible amount of trouble deciphering. Here's the particular passage, with the particular offending part underlined: "There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined" the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Fear, whistling to keep his courage up.

It was not with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of both gentlemen." What exactly was not "with him"? Posted By Murderous Moose at Thu 11 Feb 2016, 7:05 AM in Great Expectations || 3 Replies Finished reading it Hello everyone! 5 days ago I finished reading 'Great Expectations'. It was excellent. I liked the plot, the way it is written, the descriptions of the characters; in a word, I liked everything about it. One of the characters I really liked was Herbert. I liked it when he called Pip 'Handel,' besides he was very kind-hearted. What do you think of him? Do you like him? Posted By Carmilla at Thu 17 Dec 2015, 1:15 PM in Great Expectations || 10 Replies Hello everyone!! I'm reading 'Great Expectations', and I found the word 'warmint'. I was wondering if you could help me with its meaning. Does it mean 'varmint'? Help, please!

:) Posted By Carmilla at Wed 18 Nov 2015, 3:33 PM in Great Expectations || 6 Replies I was just wondering in what ways has Miss Havisham deceived herself about how she has chosen to live her life? Posted By jepense at Sun 12 Jul 2015, 10:06 PM in Great Expectations || 5 Replies An article into which Joe's destiny led him. In the following sentence in chapter 4 of Great Expectations, Dickens wrote : "Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen door-step to keep him out of the dust-panï¿½an article into which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment." Please explain what Dickens implied when he said the dust-pan was an article into which Joe's destiny always led him. Posted By noumenon52 at Mon 29 Jul 2013, 4:06 PM in Great Expectations || 3 Replies Some explanations needed.

In chapter 3 of Great Expectations, when Pip wondered that the convict didn't hear the cannon the previous night. The convict said: ï¿½Why, see now!ï¿½ said he. ï¿½When a man's alone on these flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ï¿½Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!ï¿½ and is laid hands onï¿½and there's nothin'! Why, if I see one pursuing party last nightï¿½coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, trampï¿½I see a hundred. And as to firing!

Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad dayï¿½But this man;ï¿½ he had said all the rest as if he had forgotten my being there; ï¿½did you notice anything in him?ï¿½ I don't quite understand what the convict tried to tell Pip. Did he just imagine what another convict might have heard and seen? Did he himself see the pursuing soldiers and hear the cannon? What did he mean when he said ".. and is laid hands onï¿½and there's nothin'! Why, if I see one pursuing party last nightï¿½coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, trampï¿½I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day---" ? Please explain.

Posted By noumenon52 at Sat 27 Jul 2013, 3:51 AM in Great Expectations || 2 Replies New perspective on Great Expectations In 1858 Dickens wrote six letters (five unpublished) to Patrick-Allan Fraser of Arbroath who wished to gift Hawkesbury Hall near Coventry to Dickens' Guild of Literature and Art. As writer-in-residence at Hospitalfield, I've just read the letters and have reflected on how Pip's Great Expectations may have been inspired (in part) by the author's, as the book was conceived around this time, though not written until 'All the Year Round' needed an injection of quality writing in 1860/61. Anyway, to read more about the research, the link is patisback.co.uk though you'll have to add the w bits as well. Let me know if it's of interest! Duncan McLaren Posted By duncanmclaren at Sat 6 Jul 2013, 6:14 PM in Great Expectations || 0 Replies Do character ages and timelines match? Do the ages and timelines of the characters in this book add up?

In the first chapter, Pip seems about eight years old. Then, according to the book, he first visits Miss Havisham a year later. Here he meets Estella, who Pip thinks is about his own age, although she seems older. The way she talks about the brewery and what 'satis' means makes her sound older than nine. Pip seems somewhat older too. For example, he uses the word melancholy instead of sad. I would say they were both at least eleven. In most films and TV series, the young Estella looks about thirteen. Reading the book I imagined her being prepubescent, although Pip does say that one of the reasons she appeared older was that she was a girl. I am sure the book says he only visited the house for about ten months before he was apprenticed to Joe. Apprenticeships usually started at about age fourteen, so some more years seem to have disappeared from Pip's childhood. Pip learns of his Great Expectations four years later, when he would be eighteen. This just about gives Magwitch time to be transported to Australia, serve his seven years forced labour and to start making lots of money. I also wondered about the ages of the older characters.

Magwitch was described as about sixty when he comes back to see Pip, and he is still quite an active man. That makes him about forty-five when he first terrorises Pip in the graveyard, which is plausible. He would have been thirty-seven when he fathered Estella with Molly, which is plausible too. I am pretty sure he said Compeyson was described as being a younger man than Magwitch. Compeyson was supposed to marry Miss Havisham, so presumably they are about the same age. If anything, Miss Havisham would probably be a bit younger. If Compeyson is five years younger than Magwitch, and Miss Havisham is one year younger than Compeyson, that makes her fifty-four when things come to a head, and only thirty-nine when she first meets Pip. That seems far too young. When Pip first meets her, she already seems like an old crone; she leans on his shoulder to exercise around her dining room. However, she does not seem to have aged any fifteen years later. In addition, Herbert tells Pip that Compeyson jilted Miss Havisham twenty-five years before they were born, which would make that forty-three years previously.

If Miss Havisham was twenty when she was jilted, that would make her between fifty-three and fifty-six when she first met Pip, and sixty-eight when she died. Jaggers usually appears quite old in the TV and film adaptions, but his defence of Molly was the case that made his name as a lawyer. Say he was twenty-five at the time. That would make him forty when he meets Pip in the Jolly Bargemen and forty-five when everything goes badly wrong. Posted By kev67 at Sun 20 May 2012, 3:18 PM in Great Expectations || 2 Replies Physical abuse Do you think there is a disturbing message in GE that domestic abuse made Estella a better person? Evidently, Estella was damaged by Miss Havisham, but that was by psychological abuse, not physical. Miss Havisham would never allow anyone else to chastise Estella; hence her impertinence to adults like Mr Pumblechook and Miss Camilla. Pip's male role model as a child was Joe. Joe never retaliates against his wife's beatings.Therefore Pip learns not retaliate when he is abused, either by his sister or Estella.

Pip does not believe even Bentley Drummle would be scoundrel enough to beat his wife, when Jaggers suggests it. Evidently, Estella's experience of Pip was not good preparation for a life with Drummle. In the last chapter, Estella says she has been bent and broken, but hopefully into better shape. That is not a very edifying message. Posted By kev67 at Mon 14 May 2012, 10:28 PM in Great Expectations || 0 Replies GREAT Expectations: Gillian Anderson leads an all-star cast in the BBC's festive adaptation of Charles Dickens classic | Daily Mail Online GREAT Expectations: Gillian Anderson leads an all-star cast in the BBC's festive adaptation of Charles Dickens classic comments As Agent Scully in The X Files, investigating paranormal activity was part of her day job. So it's ironic that Gillian Anderson looks like the walking dead in her latest role as the tormented Miss Havisham in the BBC's festive adaptation of Great Expectations. The American actress cuts a ghostly figure as the jilted bride in the Charles Dickens classic. She is sure to satisfy those hankering after a bit of Christmas costume drama.

The witch of the place: Gillian Anderson cuts a haunting figure to play the tormented Miss Havisham in the BBC's upcoming Great Expectations Regrets, she had a few: An older Pip, played by Douglas Booth receives a letter from a ghostly Miss Havisham The 43-year-old is no stranger to period drama or Dickens for that matter. She won acclaim for her role as Lady Dedlock in the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Bleak House. Ray Winstone, 54, also stars in the three-part drama due to be aired over Christmas, as the dastardly Abel Magwitch. David Suchet, 65, plays Miss Havisham's lawyer, Mr Jaggers. RELATED ARTICLES Share Mr Winstone said he was delighted to be a part of the programme. 'Great Expectations is my favourite novel, and I’m thrilled to be playing Magwitch. I’ve wanted to play him for ages,' he said.

Crumbling: A young Pip, played by Oscar Kennedy, stands in front of an eerie Satis House, the decaying mansion of Miss Havisham All-star cast: The villainous Abel Magwitch is played by Ray Winstone, left, while Miss Havisham's lawyer Mr Jaggers, is played by David Suchet, right The series also stars the rather dishy Douglas Booth, 19, as an adult Pip. Booth played Boy George in BBC2's Worried About the Boy last year. A young pip is played by Oscar Kennedy, while a young Estella is taken on by 15-year-old Izzy Meikle-Small. British actress Vanessa Kirby takes on the role later on. Both Mr Kennedy, 12, and Miss Meikle-Small are no strangers to playing child leads after he played a young Nigel Slater in last year's autobiographical drama Toast and she a young Kathy in 2010 film Never Let Me Go, alongside Carey Mulligan.

Young and old: Kennedy as the young Pip, left, while Booth steps into the role later on, right Aging well: A young Estella played by Izzy Meikle-Small, left, while Vanessa Kirby plays an older version of the character, right The adaptation is part of the BBC's 2012 bicentenary celebrations of Charles Dickens and promises to present 'the heart and grit of Charles Dickens at his very best.' Auntie's festive programming also includes a feature-length version of The Borrowers, starring Victoria Wood, Stephen Fry and Christopher Eccleston. Strictly Come Dancing, Rev, Doctor Who and Gardeners' World are also gearing up for their Christmas specials. And after a 20-year hiatus, much loved comedy Absolutely Fabulous, starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as the Bolli-swilling Eddy and Patsy, returns for two new episodes. Meanwhile ITV is hoping to win the festive ratings war with a special Christmas edition of Downton Abbey and the final of The X Factor. Shall we dance? Estella puts Pip through his paces on the dance floor, but it's only going to end in heartbreak

Question: Who is the lawyer in Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations"?
Answer: Jaggers