Pip (Philip Pirrip) is an orphan who lives with his sister, and her husband, Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith. He has never known his parents or his five dead brothers and has no images of them. He is in the churchyard looking at their graves an imagining them when he meets Magwitch, the escaped convict, who threatens to cut his throat and, after suspending him upside down, to eat him. Comedy when he asks Pip where his mother is and Pip replies ‘There’. He forces Pip to agree to bring him a file and wittles to the old Battery. If Pip fails in this a ‘young man’ who is hiding somewhere will find him out and cut out his heart and liver; Pip could never hope to be safe from this man. Pip agrees to bring them the following morning. The convict moves off shuddering and it’s as if he’s trying to avoid being pulled into the graves by the dead people. He moves on towards a gibbet which once held the body of a pirate — it is the only landmark on the marshes apart from a tower. “The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.” Pip rushes home.
It is Christmas Eve. Presentation of Mrs. Joe who has brought Pip up ‘by hand’. She always wears “a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all: or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her life.” There’s a certain complicity between Joe and Pip because both are abused by Mrs Joe. (“I always treated him as a larger species of child, and as no more than my equal.”) At the moment, she’s on the rampage, looking for Pip with Tickler — the cane. When she gets back, Pip is beaten but Joe protects in the corner of the fire. Pip is saving his hunk of bread-and-butter for the convict. An amusing scene when Joe thinks he has gulped down his food and is worried. Pip gets a dose of tar-water. He feels bad about having to rob Mrs Joe — but not Joe because he doesn’t think of the things as belonging to him. They hear the guns indicating that convicts have escaped from the Hulks. In the early morning, Pip steals food and some brandy from the pantry — he replaces the brandy with what he thinks is water in a jug. He then steals a file from Joe’s forge and heads for the misty marshes.
The cows on the marshes seem to be scandalised by Pip. He gets a bit lost and comes across the other convict whom he mistakes for the dangerous young man. The man runs off when disturbed. Pip comes across Magwitch and gives him the food and brandy. He has a click in his throat like a clock going to strike. Pip informs him about the other convict and indicates the direction he had gone off in. Magwitch uses the file on his leg irons and Pip slips off.
When he gets back Mrs Joe is cleaning the house for Christmas. He says he has been to hear carol-singing. He eats with Joe and they head off for the church. Pip reflects: “As to me, I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur Policemen had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.” Pip at church feels guilty when the banns are read and thinks he should denounce himself; but he’s afraid of the young man. They are to have certain guests to dinner: “Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do corn-chandler in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart.” Mr Wopsle: “Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it.” They dine in the kitchen and then repair to the parlour, which is only ever used on special occasions, for nuts, oranges and apples. Pip is very uncomfortably seated and is the subject of a lot of commentary on the part of the guests who regard him as ‘vicious’. They speak about swine and the prodigal son. Pip is compared to a swine. Mrs Joe offers Pumblechook some brandy (Pip is terrified because he’s sure he’ll be found out) which he drinks and rushes out in a fit. Pip had replaced the brandy for Magwitch with tar-water. When Mrs Joe announce the pork pie and goes to get it, Pip flees in terror but he runs into a party of soldiers with muskets; one of them is holding a pair of handcuffs.
They want Joe to fix the handcuffs. Pip had thought they were for him and is relieved to find that they’re for the escaped convicts. The pork pie is forgotten. Mrs Joe offers the soldiers the wine that Pumblechook had brought, but he gradually takes over, serving them wine as if it were still his. Joe, Pip and Mr Wopsle head off with the soldiers to the marshes. Pip is worried that the convict will think that he has betrayed him. They are heading for the Battery with Pip on Joe’s back when they hear a shout off in the east. They distinguish two voices, one calling ‘Murder!’ and the other ‘This way for the runaway convicts!’. They come upon them struggling in a ditch. Magwitch wants the sergeant to recognise that it was he who had lead them there, not because it would do him any good other than the satisfaction of getting the other convict caught: “I don’t expect it to do me any good. I don’t want it to do me more good than it does now,” said my convict, with a greedy laugh. “I took him. He knows it. That’s enough for me.” Magwitch had dragged the other to that point; he had not tried to murder him — if he had, he would have succeeded. He didn’t want the other to profit from his discovery of a way of escaping. He didn’t want to be made a tool of ‘again’. We learn that they had been tried together. The second convict is obviously terrified of Magwitch. Pip catches his eye and tries to make him understand that he had nothing to do with his capture: “I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me, that I might try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more attentive.” They head off with the convicts along the river to the Hulks. When they get to the landing and a hut, the convict confesses to having robbed the blacksmith’s. He tells Joe he’s sorry, when he learns that he’s the blacksmith, and Joe reassures him that he’s welcome: “God knows you’re welcome to it — so far as it was ever mine,” returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. “We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. — Would us, Pip?” Pip hears the click in the man’s throat again. Then he is taken by boat to the Hulk which is like ‘a wicked Noah’s ark’. “Then, the ends of the torches were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with him.”
Pip feels bad about having stolen Joe’s file and debates whether to tell him. “Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe’s confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney-corner at night staring drearily at my for ever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I never afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker, without thinking that he was meditating on it. ... In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of action for myself.” They get back home and Wopsle and Pumblechook debate how the convict had got into the pantry — the latter’s speculations prevail. Pip is reeling from his ride on Joe’s back and Mrs Joe thumps him. Wopsle is covered in mud from having had to sit down often. Pip is sent to bed.
Pip’s misunderstanding of ‘wife of the Above’, etc. We learn that Pip does odd-jobs in the forge and for the neighbours. Any money he earns is put in a box in the kitchen. He goes to Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt for evening lessons. Mr W, instead of examining them every so often, recites Mark Anthony’s oration, etc. She also has a shop in which Biddy, her granddaughter, works. She is neglected; like Pip, she’s an orphan. Thanks to Biddy, Pip learns to read and write. He discovers that Joe can’t read; he can only make out the J-O of his name. He asks Joe about his upbringing and discovers that his father had been a heavy drinker who beat his mother and him. But he didn’t beat his anvil much. This was “a drawback on my learning.” Joe maintains thought that his father had a good heart. Then Joe met Pip’s sister who was already bringing him up ‘by hand’. Joe doesn’t want Pip to tell his wife about his learning because since she’s given to ‘government’, it might be considered rebellion on her part. He doesn’t want to rebel because she’s a ‘master-mind’ and he isn’t; also, he’s afraid of turning out like his father. “Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.” Mrs Joe is out with Pumblechook at market because he’s a bachelor and doesn’t trust his domestic servant. When she gets back with him, she informs Pip that Miss Havisham wants him to go and play at her house. “I had heard of Miss Havisham up town — everybody for miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town — as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion.” She says that Pumblechook had learnt of the offer when he went to pay his rent to Miss Havisham. He is to go to Pumblechook’s that night and see Miss H the following morning. Mrs Joe gives him a severe washing and he sets off with Mr P.
Pumblechook’s premises; he’s a corn-chandler. Pip is not well fed (crumbs and watered-down milk) and has to put up with constant arithmetic problems. They set off for Miss Havisham’s; description of the house — Satis House and brewery. They meet Estella. Pumblechook is offended when not admitted. She leads Pip to Miss H’s door and leaves him alone in the dark. Description of her rooms. All the clocks have been stopped at twenty to nine. “I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play.” “I have a sick fancy that I want to see some play.” But Pip cannot. Miss H calls Estella to play cards with Pip. “With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!” I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer — only it seemed so unlikely — “Well? You can break his heart.” “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.” Miss H asks him what he thinks of Estella — she is proud and pretty. She beats him at cards. Estella brings him down, gives him something to eat and lets him roam about. He is ashamed of himself: “I determined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call those picture-cards, Jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too.” Estella gives him his food and beer contemptuously which brings tears to his eyes; this delights her. He reflects on the injustices he has to suffer from Mrs Joe; he sees this as the cause of his being “morally timid and very sensitive”. As he wanders around, he sees Estella in the garden and walking on casks in the brewery. He is terrified when he imagines he sees Miss H hanging from a beam there.
Back home he is questioned about Miss H’s house; he is hit on the nape of the neck and shoved against the kitchen wall. He is afraid of not being understood: “I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s as my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Not only that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.” He is confirmed in his reticence when Pumblechook comes over ‘preyed upon by a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and heard’. He stubbornly refuses to do Mr P’s arithmetic problems. Finally he says that Miss H is tall and dark; Mrs J asks P for confirmation and he winks letting Pip discover that he has never seen her. He continues inventing to deceive them. Finally Mr P is forced to admit that he has never seen Miss H when Mrs Joe asks for confirmation of certain details. He has to explain away his lie about having spoken to her by saying that he did so through a door that stood ajar. When Mrs Joe tells Joe about it, Pip feels penitent towards him. They debate what will come of the acquaintance: “They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do something” for me; their doubts related to the form that something would take. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade — say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the veal-cutlets.” Later Pip admits to Joe that he had been lying; Joe is shocked. “And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn’t been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook who were so rude to me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.” Joe ticks Pip off for having told lies and he tells him that he isn’t common — he’s an uncommon scholar. When Pip insists, Joe points out that one must be common before becoming uncommon: “The king upon his throne, with his crown upon his ‘ed, can’t sit and write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet”. In bed that night, Pip feels ashamed of Joe and Mrs Joe. “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
In order to overcome his commonness he turns to Biddy. She agrees to teach him all she knows. Description of Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt’s teaching method. It is in fact Biddy who teaches the pupils through some rough Bibles. After school, Pip goes to the Three Jolly Bargemen to pick up Joe. He is with Mr Wopsle and a stranger, ‘a secret-looking man’. He looks at Pip as if he were taking aim and rubs his leg in a very odd way. He asks Joe his name and buys drinks. He is interested in the marshes and wants to know if they sometimes me gypsies there. He asks Pip’s name. Mr W explains the relationship between Pip and Joe when Joe fails to answer the stranger’s questions on the subject without beating about the bush. He stirs his rum-and-water with a file, all the time staring at Pip with one eye; he does it so that no one else notices. Then they start talking about turnips. When Joe and Pip are going, the stranger offers him a shilling which he wraps up in some paper. When Mrs Joe examines the bright shilling at home, they discover that it’s wrapped in two one-pound notes. Joe hurries back to give them back to the stranger. Pip sleeps badly that night: “I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts — a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear.”
Second visit to Miss H’s. This time Estella brings him to the house that once had probably been the brewery manager’s. There are other people there — three ladies and one gentleman, Cousin Raymond. He is made to stand by the window until wanted. “Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.” The most talkative is called Camilla — she’s older than Mrs Joe and her features are very blunt. Sarah Pocket is also present. They make comments about Pip. Then Estella leads him out and into the corridors where she asks him questions about how he feels for her; when he won’t cry, she slaps his face. They meet a gentleman coming down the stairs [Mr Jaggers, as we learn later]. He takes Pip’s chin in his hand, examines him and tells him to behave himself, that he has a bad opinion of boys, in general; he bites his forefinger and frowns. He smells of scented soap. They go to Miss H’s room; this time she wants him to ‘work’ and sends him into another room with a big table in the middle. There are spiders running in and out of a centrepiece on it. There are mice behind the panels and beetles in the hearth. Miss H informs him that this is where she will be laid out when dead. She informs him that the centrepiece is her ‘bride-cake’. Pip has to walk her around the room. He has to call Estella; she comes with three of the ladies (Camilla, Sarah and the anonymous lady who speaks gravely) and Cousin Raymond. Sarah compliments Miss H on how well she looks and is rebuffed to Camilla’s satisfaction. Camilla is apparently unhappy because she’s all the time thinking about poor Miss H; the latter tells her to stop thinking about her. Camilla sheds tears. Raymond appears to be her husband. Pip now sees Sarah Pocket clearly — “a little dry brown corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a cat’s without the whiskers”. Camilla continues speaking of how she suffers from her feelings, unlike Matthew who never comes to see Miss H. The three exchange biting comments. Miss H stops and says that Matthew will come when she has dies; his place will be at the head of the table — she strikes the place with her stick. She points out their places; the grave lady seems to be called Georgiana. She then dismisses them. When they are gone, Miss H informs Pip that it’s her birthday [so she does keep track of the date in spite of her refusing to be told even the day of the week by Pip]: “On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay,” stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, “was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.” ... “When the ruin is complete,” said she, with a ghastly look, “and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table — which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him — so much the better if it is done on this day!” They return to the other room and Estella beggars Pip again. Miss H draws Pip’s attention to Estella’s beauty. Before leaving for home, he wanders about in the garden (which he had not entered the first time). He looks in at some windows and is surprised to find himself “exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.” [This is Herbert Pocket, we learn later.] He had been studying but comes out into the garden and soon invites Pip to fight him; to give him a reason, he pulls his hair and head-butts him in the stomach. They go off into a corner; and Herbert makes some preparations including taking off his jacket and shirt even. Pip is intimidated by his seriousness but upset at having been butted. He is much taller than Pip. So Pip is astonished when his first blow sends Herbert flying; he gets up and is knocked down again several times. “His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked down; but, he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in seconding himself according to form, and then came at me with an air and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for me at last.” Finally, he throws in the sponge. When he is leaving, Estella doesn’t ask him why he has kept her waiting but “there was a bright flush upon her face” and she says that he may kiss her. [Has she witnessed the fight?] “I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.”
Pip is worried about having beaten the pale young gentleman; village boys couldn’t go about ravaging attacking the studious youth of England. He is afraid he will be arrested; he worries how he will explain the blood on his trousers to a judge. He is terrified when he has to go back to Satis House [3rd visit (and after)]. But nothing happens and there’s no sign of the p.y.g. This time Pip has to push Miss H around the room on a garden-chair on wheels. Sometimes he spent up to three hours wheeling her about the rooms. “I insensibly fall into a general mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months.” During these visits Miss H asks him what he was going to be (an apprentice); hoping that she may help him, he points out that he wishes to extend his learning — but Miss H seems to prefer his remaining ignorant. She never gives him any money, only food. Estella never lets him kiss her again. “Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, but never told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly tolerate me; sometimes, she would condescend to me; sometimes, she would be quite familiar with me; sometimes, she would tell me energetically that she hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper, or when we were alone, ‘Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?’ And when I said yes (for indeed she did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we played at cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of Estella’s moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods were so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled what to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like ‘Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!’” One day, Miss H commands him to sing, so he sings the blacksmiths’ song ‘Old Clem’ and she even joins in ‘in a low brooding voice’. After that it becomes customary. Pip doesn’t tell Joe any of this, because he’s ashamed of having lied to him and is afraid he won’t be believed; but he tells it all to Biddy who listens attentively. Pumblechook continues his visits to discuss Pip’s ‘prospects’, for which he has to haul Pip before him; like Wopsle, he rumples Pip’s hair. Pip feels he could sabotage his chaise-cart by taking out the linchpin. “Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical speculations about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with me and for me, that I used to want — quite painfully — to burst into spiteful tears, fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these dialogues, my sister spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference; while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron, would sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes who thought himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.” Mrs Joe is enraged by Joe’s apparent opposition, manifested by his poking at the fire. One day Miss H stops while she is being walked about by Pip and remarks with ‘some displeasure’ that he is growing tall. She decides that he’d better be apprenticed at once, so she summons Joe with the indentures. When Mrs Joe hears this, she goes on the rampage — much more alarmingly than ever before. She is jealous.
Joe and Pip visit Miss H’s. Mrs Joe accompanies them as far as Pumblechook’s. She carries a basket and spare shawl as if they were marks of wealth in a procession like Cleopatra. Joe and Pip go to Miss H’s; Joe, hat in hand, walks on the tips of his feet and addresses all of his comments to Pip when Miss H speaks to him. He hands the indentures to Pip instead of Miss H. She gives him a ‘premium’ of twenty-five guineas — Joe thanks Pip! Pip is not to come anymore since Joe is now his master. When they get out of the grounds, Joe can only say ‘Astonishing!’. They head for Pumblechook’s; Joe and Pip lead Mrs Joe to believe that Miss H had sent her compliments. This mollifies her. She wants to know what Mrs H has given Pip. Joe says ‘Nothing’; what was given was given into the hands of ‘Mrs J. Gargery’. Pumblechook nods at the fire as if he had known all that beforehand. “It’s five-and-twenty pound, Mum,” echoed that basest of swindlers, Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her; “and it’s no more than your merits (as I said when my opinion was asked), and I wish you joy of the money!” Then he goes even further: “Now you see, Joseph and wife,” said Pumblechook, as he took me by the arm above the elbow, “I am one of them that always go right through with what they’ve begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That’s my way. Bound out of hand.” Pip is incensed. Mrs Joe is ‘deeply beholden’ to Pumblechook. He pushes Pip towards the Town Hall to have him bound by the magistrates; everyone on the route thinks that Pip has committed some offence. Then Mrs Joe decides that they will have dinner at the Blue Boar with the Hubbles and Mr Wopsle. It’s a melancholy day for Pip as he is regarded as ‘an excrescence on the entertainment’; Pumblechook actually takes the top of the table. Wopsle gives some recitals which leads some ‘commercials’ below to complain. Going to bed, Pip is wretched, convinced that he ‘should never like Joe’s trade’, unlike his feeling before.
Pip is miserable because he feels ashamed of home. “Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year, all this was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.” It is difficult to apportion the fault, the thing is done. He feels shut off from interest and romance, a ‘thick curtain has fallen’; now there’s nothing but endurance. His perspectives are as flat as those of the marshes. He is glad that he has never mentioned this to Joe: “all the merit of what I proceed to add was Joe’s. It was not because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well, that any good that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.” He doesn’t know what he wanted; but he knows that he dreads being seen in his condition by Estella.
His education at Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt’s ends. Mr W gives him a few lessons, but it doesn’t work out; he is ‘mauled’ by him in his ‘poetic fury’. He has learnt as much from Biddy as he can. He tries to pass on his learning to Joe: “I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella’s reproach.” For this, they go to the old Battery; but Joe never remembers the lessons from one week to the next. The ships in the distance remind Pip of Estella and Miss H. Pip suggests his visiting Miss H, but Joe advises against — she might think he was looking for money. They discuss a visit finally deciding that if he is not received with cordiality, he should not renew his visit. Dolge Orlick, Joe’s journeyman, is introduced: “He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. ...He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes, and on working days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and dangling on his back.” He doesn’t like Pip and is jealous of him, seeming to fear that Pip will some day replace him. He jokingly tried to persuade Pip when he was younger that “the Devil lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel”. He always beats his sparks in Pip’s direction. When Pip claims his half-holiday to go and see Miss H, Orlick demands one too; after much argument, Joe agrees. But Mrs Joe has overheard. When she criticises Joe, Orlick insults her. The begin insulting one another. Pip notices that, when Orlick calls her a shrew, she deliberately forces herself into a passion. She gradually becomes a ‘perfect Fury’. Joe is obliged to fight Orlick whom he knocks down easily. Mrs Joe has collapsed and Joe must lay her on her bed. Then he goes back to the forge and cleans up with Orlick. They share a ‘pot of beer’. Joe’s comment to Pip: “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip — such is Life!” Pip heads of to Miss H’s; he hesitates before entering. He is met by Sarah Pocket, not by Estella. She hesitates before leading him up to Miss H whose first remark is that Pip will ‘get nothing’. Pip thanks her; she suggests he come and visit her on his birthday. She informs him that Estella is abroad ‘educating for a lady’. She laughs malignantly as she asks him if he feels he has lost her. He is dismissed and feels even worse about his situation than ever. He meets Wopsle who is heading for Pumblechook’s with a ‘tragedy of George Barnwell’ that he has just bought; he seizes on Pip and drags him off with him. Pip complies because it would be miserable at home and W would be company for him. The recital is long and tedious; when Barnwell is sent to Newgate, both Wopsle and Pumblechook look indignantly at Pip. “At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever”. Then Wopsle and Pip head off towards the forge through the mist. They come across Orlick ‘slouching under the lee of the turnpike house’. He informs them that the guns at the Hulks are going again. As they pass the Three Jolly Bargemen, they notice a commotion and are informed that there’s ‘something wrong’ at Pip’s place. The place is crowded but “The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister — lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire — destined never to be on the Rampage again, while she was the wife of Joe.”
Under the influence of ‘George Barnwell’, Pip at first feels guilty. Mrs Joe had been hit from behind and a heavy object had been thrown down on her body; there is a filed convict’s leg-iron beside the body. Joe determines that it had been filed some time ago. People searching for the escaped convicts confirm that they hadn’t been wearing that kind of leg-iron. Pip concludes that it is his convict’s leg-iron, but he does not accuse him; he believes it was either Orlick or the stranger at the Three Jolly Bargemen. But Orlick had been seen around town; others besides him had had arguments with his sister. Mrs Joe would have been willing to give back the two one-pound notes to the stranger, and there had been no struggle anyway, so it probably was he. Pip feels guilty, since he had provided the file. But his still doesn’t want to tell Joe; it would alienate him or he might not believe him. However he is “resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of the assailant.” The constables and Bow Street men are inefficient. The effects on Mrs Joe: disturbed sight, impaired hearing and memory, unintelligible speech, trembling limbs, depression. She has to write on a slate but, since she was ‘a more than indifferent speller’ and her handwriting was poor, communication with her is very difficult: “The administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest of my own mistakes.” But she has become patient and her temper has improved. Biddy comes to take care of the house, Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt having ‘conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had fallen’. She helps Joe to overcome his upset and to ‘appreciate the greater quiet of his life’. Mrs Joe indicates that she wants to see Orlick. When he slouches in she is clearly pleased to see him and is anxious to be on good terms with him. Orlick doesn’t seem to know what to make of it.
On his birthday, Pip pays another visit to Miss H; Sarah Pocket meets him at the gate. He only sees Miss H for a few minutes; she gives him a guinea when he is going and tells him to come back on his next birthday. Time seems to have stood still in the house; Pip is still ashamed of his life. Biddy however has changed: she is better dressed and cleaner, she is not beautiful but ‘pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered’. He notices that her eyes are ‘curiously thoughtful and attentive ... eyes that were very pretty and very good’. Whereas Pip has to work hard and spend his money to acquire knowledge (about which he is becoming vain), Biddy seems to pick up as much without any visible effort — she may even have been a better blacksmith than he. “What could have put it in my head, but the glistening of a tear as it dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some people. I recalled the hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded in the miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy evening school, with that miserable old bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I reflected that even in those untoward times there must have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too reserved, and should have patronized her more (though I did not use that precise word in my meditations), with my confidence.” They go walking by the river on the marshes where he confides in her that he wants to be a gentleman; she replies “Oh, I wouldn’t, if I was you!” She thinks he may be happier as he is. Pip is impatient with her; he can never be anything other than miserable as he is now. She says that’s a pity which is what he had suspected also — she gives utterance to his own sentiments. He mentions that he has been made to feel ‘coarse and common’. Biddy is shocked that he has been made to feel that and wants to know who had told him that. He tells her about Estella: “she’s more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account.” According to Biddy, if he wants to spite Estella, he should care nothing for her words, and if he wants to ‘gain her over’, he should realise that she’s not worth it; this again reflects Pip’s thinking — “But how could I, a poor dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and wisest of men fall every day?” Pip is upset and Biddy tries to comfort him with her gestures while he cries. He compares being with Biddy in such beautiful surroundings with playing beggar my neighbour in a darkened room with Estella. He tells Biddy he wishes he could fall in love with her; she points out that he never will. They meet Orlick who wants to accompany them but Biddy persuades Pip to put him off. She explains later that she’s afraid that Orlick likes her. Pip is indignant. He cannot have Orlick dismissed because of Mrs Joe’s dependence on him.
It is the 4th year of Pip’s apprenticeship; they are in the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Satruday night listening to Wopsle reading from the paper about a ‘highly popular murder’. Pip becomes aware of a ‘strange gentleman’ listening to their conversation [Mr Jaggers]. He humiliates Mr Wopsle who has judged the guilty of the accused too hastily. The stranger has an air of undisputable authority and of knowing something about everyone that would enable him to undo them if he so chose. He asks which of them is the blacksmith and his apprentice. Pip recognises him as the man he had met on the stairs at Miss H’s; but the man does not recognise him. He wishes to speak in private to Pip, so they head back to the forge with Joe. Jaggers introduces himself once they are sitting down at home. He is the confidential agent of another whose business he doesn’t approve of. Jaggers announces, having first ascertained that Joe would ask for nothing in order to give up Pip, that Pip has ‘great expectations’. He will come into ‘a handsome property’ and will have to leave the forge and go off to be brought up as a gentleman. “My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.” There are two conditions: Pip must always call himself by that name; his benefactor’s identity is to remain secret until the person chooses to reveal it (“the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it” [note: Jaggers avoids the pronoun ‘he’]). Jaggers has money for Pip. He is to consider him his guardian. Jaggers will accept no thanks from Pip because he is not in favour of what he is doing. He suggests (but refuses to ‘recommend’, since he never does that) a tutor for Pip: Matthew Pocket [Herbert’s father] whom Pip has heard spoken of as the one to sit at the head of the table when Miss H is laid out. Jaggers says that Pip can meet his son first when he comes to London. [At this stage Pip doesn’t know that it’s Herbert.] Jaggers again asks Joe if he want some compensation for the loss of Pip; Joe replies that no money can compensate him, and refuses: ‘Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I have often thought him since, like the steam-hammer, that can crush a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness. “Pip is that hearty welcome,” said Joe, “to go free with his services, to honour and fortun’, as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child — what come to the forge — and ever the best of friends! —”’ Pip, the narrator, still remembers the trembling of Joe’s hand on his shoulder — he was ‘so ready to leave and so unthankful’. Jaggers considers Joe as a village idiot and Pip as his keeper. Jaggers insists on putting the question again and is “stopped by Joe’s suddenly working round him with every demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose.” When Pip steps in Joe points out that he is not going to be ‘bull-baited and badgered’ in his own place. Jaggers has slipped outside from where he informs Pip that he will send him his printed address and that day week he can take a hackney-coach for London. Pip runs after him to ask if Jaggers would have any objections to his taking leave of someone up-town; Jaggers doesn’t appear to understand, but has no objections. Back in the state parlour Joe informs Biddy at Pip’s request and both congratulate him with a touch of sadness which he resents. Mrs Joe doesn’t understand. Pip begins to feel gloomy: “Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself.” Alone in his room Pip reflects that it was “very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known.”
Pip is impatient to be off to London; he has an irrational fear that London may disappear. Joe and he burn his indentures in the best parlour. At church, he is struck by the reading about the rich man and the kingdom of Heaven. As he takes a walk later, he pities those who have to remain in the village; he promises to organise a dinner for them some time — with lots to eat and drink, including ‘a gallon of condescension’. He thinks of his shameful ‘companionship’ with the fugitive convict and is reassured to reflect that he had been transported and that “he was dead to me, and might be veritably dead into the bargain.” He takes leave of his surroundings, and the cattle seem more respectful towards him. He falls asleep at the old Battery wondering whether Miss H intends Estella for him. When he wakes up, Joe is beside him smoking. Pip is displeased that Joe should be so confident for him rather than showing emotion. He says he regrets they hadn’t got any farther in their lessons, but Joe seems resigned to being dull; he doesn’t understand that Pip had meant that he might otherwise have been able to do something for him — “it would have been much more agreeable if he had been better qualified for a rise in station.” Pip decides to broach the matter with Biddy; and he does so later after having condescendingly said that he would never forget her. The ‘favour’ he asks of her is not to omit any opportunity of ‘helping Joe on’ by improving ‘his learning and manners’. Biddy is visibly astonished. Joe’s manners wouldn’t ‘do him justice’ if Pip were to remove him ‘into a higher sphere’. Biddy asks him if he really doesn’t think that Joe realises that; Pip finds this provoking. Biddy wonders whether Pip has ever wondered whether Joe might not be proud. To Pip’s disdainfully repeating the word, she goes on: “He may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is: though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far better than I do.” Pip acts disappointed by Biddy’s being ‘envious’ and ‘grudging’ — “it’s a bad side of human nature” (which he repeats). Biddy is upset and points out that a gentleman should not be unjust. He repeats that it’s a bad sign of human nature and walks away on a ‘dejected stroll’ before supper. In the morning he feels better and “I extended my clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject.” He sets off in his best clothes for Mr Trabb, the tailor — a prosperous old bachelor. Trabb’s attitude changes when he learns of Pip’s fortune. Pip displays his ‘ready money’. Trabb’s boy, who was ‘the most audacious boy in all that countryside’, swept dust over him and made a lot of noise banging his brush. Trabb’s attitude to the boy is sever, and to Pip it is fawning: “my first decided experience of the stupendous power of money, was, that it had morally laid upon his back, Trabb’s boy.” He visits other outfitters. When he arrives at Pumblechook’s, he finds he has already been informed and is waiting impatiently: he greets him fawningly and shakes his hand many times. “To think ... that I should have been the humble instrument of leading up to this, is a proud reward.” Pumblechook ‘remembers’ how he always favoured Pip; and, although Pip could never believe this, “Yet for all that, I remember feeling convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a sensible practical good-hearted prime fellow.” He suggests indirectly that Pip, ‘a sleeping partner’, might like to invest in his business. On Friday, Pip goes to Pumblechook’s to get dressed and visit Miss H. Mr P is not there; he’s disappointed with his clothes and, as he heads off for Miss H’s, he fears “that I was at a personal disadvantage, something like Joe’s in his Sunday suit.” So he takes a circuitous route. When Sarah Pocket opens the gate to him, she is stunned — she “turned form brown to green and yellow”. He has to wait as he seems not to be expected. Pip is ‘careful’ about what he says; he just says that he’s off for London. Miss H (compared to a fairy godmother because of the way she waves her crutch towards him in his new clothes) has heard of his good fortune from Jaggers; she enjoys Sarah Pocket’s ‘jealous dismay’. Pip, on leaving her, goes down on one knee and kisses her hand; Miss H looks at SP ‘with triumph in her weird eyes’. Pip heads back to Mr P’s, takes off his clothes, and heads off home more relaxed. On the last evening, Pip dresses up for Biddy and Joe; they all feel sad. However, he decides to head off by himself in the morning because he is conscious of the contrast there would be between Joe and himself (dressed up). In the morning he heads off alone; Joe and Biddy throw an old shoe after him. He is relieved to think that it wouldn’t happen when he was on the coach; but he sobs on the way. On the coach, he thinks about getting down and going back to spend another evening with them; but he doesn’t do so.
After 5 hours, Pip arrives in London but is not impressed: “We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.” He takes a hackney-coach to Little Britain to Jaggers’s office. He has to wait in his dismal office (from which a client, Mike, is thrown out by the clerk [Wemmick]), with two ‘dreadful casts’ on a shelf. Description of office: J’s chair with brass nails like a coffin, greasy marks on the wall where clients back away. “I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to everybody else’s disadvantage, as his master had.” He can’t bear the place, so he goes out to visit Smithfield which is filthy; he moves on and sees the dome of St. Paul’s above Newgate Prison. The people smell of spirits and beer — the trials are on. An ‘exceedingly dirty and partially drunk minister of justice’ offers to sell him a place to see the Lord Chief Justice; he declines and is shown the yard of Newgate with its gallows, etc. Pip wants to get away; he is convinced that the man’s clothes have been brought from the executioner. He pays him a shilling. Back around Little Britain he observes people waiting for Jaggers. When he appears he is surrounded by them pleading their cases; he gets rid of them. At the office he deals with Mike, who has to arrange a witness; Pip observes how Jaggers deals with him without appearing to be implicated in anything not legal — he constantly warns Mike to be ‘careful’ what he tells him. Mike has to walk his ‘witness’ by the window; J tells his clerk to get Mike to get rid of the ‘witness’ who has a murderous looking head with a black eye. Back in the office J explains his arrangements to Pip: he is to stay with Mr [Herbert] Pocket at Barnard’s Inn; on Monday, he is to visit Pocket’s father to see how he likes his place. He is told his allowance and given the cards of tradesmen with whom he is to deal. In this way Jaggers can check his bills. “Of course you’ll go wrong somehow, but that’s no fault of mine.” Wemmick will walk with him to Barnard’s Inn.
Description of Wemmick. “You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But there are plenty of people anywhere, who’ll do that for you. ... there’s not much bad blood about. They’ll do it, if there’s anything to be got by it.” Pip learns that Matthew Pocket lives at Hammersmith; Wemmick mentions his name with an air of ‘depreciation’. He is disappointed by Barnard’s Inn, ‘this realization of the first of my great expectations’. Wemmick seems pleased that it reminds one of the country; he thinks Pip is satisfied. He is momentarily taken aback when Pip offers him his hand on parting — he at first thinks Pip wants something since he has just told him that he is to be in charge of the money. Waiting for Mr Pocket Junior to come back, Pip is almost beheaded by a window. He feels that London is ‘decidedly overrated’. Eventually a young man arrives dressed as ‘a member of society of about my own standing’. He has been out getting things for Pip. Pip realises that he’s the ‘pale young gentleman’.
They both burst out laughing. Herbert hopes Pip will forgive him for having ‘knocked you about so’. Herbert feels that Miss H did like him enough to provide for him and to have him affianced to Estella. She has been “brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex.” He tells Pip that Estella is Miss H’s adopted daughter. Herbert informs him that his father is Miss H’s cousin, but “he is a bad courtier and will not propitiate her.” Description of Herbert: “Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. I don’t know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what means.” Pip tells him his story and asks him to put him right ‘whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong’. Since they are so ‘harmonious’ together, and since Pip has been a blacksmith, Herbert proposes calling him ‘Handel’ since he composed the ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’. They enjoy a meal together — Pip being relieved that there is no one there to ruin it. Herbert gives Pip tactful tips now and again, such as not to put the knife into his mouth. Then he tells him Miss H’s story: she was a spoilt child brought up by her country gentleman father when her mother died; he was a brewer and very rich and proud. When her father married again she got a half-brother; he married privately because his second wife was a cook. She died and the son became part of the family; he lived a riotous life and was disinherited. But before dying he relented and left him a smaller portion of his wealth. He suspected his half-sister of having turned his father’s anger against him. Then a showy-man appeared on the scene (balls, etc.) and courted Miss H who fell passionately in love with him. He used this to his advantage to get great sums of money out of her and induced her to buy her brother’s share of the brewery at a greatly inflated price. Matthew Pocket is the only one to warn her, but she orders him out of the house accusing him, in front of her intended husband, of being disappointed for his own advancement; so he has never seen her since. The wedding date was fixed but on the day Miss H received a letter (at 8.40 AM); Herbert doesn’t know what was in the letter other than the breaking off of the marriage. Miss H ordered all the clocks to be stopped and has never looked upon the light of day since then. Herbert adds that it is supposed that there had been a conspiracy between the man and the half-brother and that they shared the profits. Why didn’t he marry her and get more? He may have been married already, or it may have been part of the half-brother’s revenge. The two men fell into ‘deeper shame and degradation’ and Herbert doesn’t know what became of them. They talk about Herbert and his ambitions: “I am looking about me.” At present, he is working in a counting-house but it doesn’t pay anything and he has to keep himself. But while there, he is looking about him. Next day, Herbert takes Pip around and about London, and Pip wishes Joe could shoe the horses. He is sometimes homesick. On Monday afternoon they go to Matthew Pocket’s house in Hammersmith. Description of Matthew Pocket’s family (snobby wife, six wild children, baby, two fussy nursemaids — Flopson and Millers). Pip meets Matthew Pocket: “a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression of face, and with his very grey hair disordered on his head, as if he didn’t quite see his way to putting anything straight.”
Presentation of Matthew Pocket: somewhat comic, he would be ludicrous but for his perception that his distraught way in nearly so. Discovers about Mrs Belinda Pocket’s origins. Pip is shown his room and introduced to the other two residents: Bentley Drummle (second in line to a baronetcy) and Startop. He discovers that it’s the servants who run the house. More about the Pockets and their ‘toady neighbour’ Mrs Coiler who always agrees with everyone. Mr Pocket’s strange behaviour when he discovers the beef is missing: “To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance that struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He laid down the carving-knife and fork — being engaged in carving, at the moment — put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he was about.” In the evening they go rowing on the Thames; Startop and Drummle both have boats, so Pip decides to have one too.
After a few days, Pip meets Matthew Pocket again: he is to teach him how to ‘hold his own’ with people in his circumstances rather than being educated for a profession. Pip would like to keep his rooms in B’s Inn as well so as to profit from Herbert’s help; Matthew P has no objection, so they ask Jaggers. Jaggers asks him how much he needs: £50 or £5? Then he goes through multiples with Pip settling for 4 x £5. Jaggers insists he specify how much that is, and Pip has to ask explicitly for £20. “This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way.” Wemmick later points out that it’s just J’s professional manner, and that J is as deep as Australia. He shows Pip around the offices. Pip asks about the two heads in J’s office and Wemmick informs him that they are casts of former clients of J’s that were executed. W tells Pip that the mourning rings on his fingers and watchchain have been given to him by former clients. It’s W’s philosophy to “Get hold of portable property”. Wemmick invites Pip to come to his place at Walworth. He advises him, if Jaggers invites him to dinner, to look at his housekeeper — he’ll see a wild beast tamed. Next Wemmick invites Pip to go and see Jaggers ‘at it’. Short description of Jaggers at it.
Description of Drummle and Startop. The former is a brooding sulky presence who is always dragging along behind them. Pip offers Herbert a half-share in his boat, which brings H down to Hammersmith, and has already a half-share in H’s chambers, which brings him up to London. After a month or two Camilla, Matthew’s sister, turns up with her husband. So does Georgiana. “These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them express.” Pip settles down to his education, but he acquires expensive habits. He contacts Wemmick and arranges to visit him in Walworth. Jaggers will invite him and his three friends the next day. He explains how feared Jaggers is and how he never locks his doors and windows at night. Presentation of Wemmick’s little cottage and land surrounded by a ‘chasm’ 4 feet wide. Description of the cottage (or ‘Castle’) and property. Wemmick has fashioned everything himself. He presents the Aged Parent. Pip must nod to him constantly. The AP is very proud of his son and thinks his works should be preserved after his time for the people’s enjoyment; “we sat down to our punch in the arbour; where Wemmick told me as he smoked a pipe that it had taken him a good many years to bring the property up to its present pitch of perfection.” Pip learn that Jaggers has never visited Walworth and has never met the AP. W doesn’t want Pip to mention it. W shows P his collection. There’s a little girl who takes care of the AP. They have an excellent supper after she leaves and Pip sleeps in the turret. In the morning they walk back to Little Britain; as they get nearer to London W gets ‘dryer and harder’ and ‘his mouth tightened into a post-office again’.
Pip is invited to Jaggers’s with his friends. Description of Jaggers washing his hands, etc. He lives in Gerrard Street, Soho. J serves from a dumb-waiter. He takes principal interest in Drummle whom he calls ‘the Spider’ to Pip. The housekeeper enters: “She was a woman of about forty, I supposed — but I may have thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches’ caldron.” She disappears quickly. “Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own striking appearance and by Wemmick’s preparation, I observed that whenever she was in the room, she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say. I fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and a purpose of always holding her in suspense.” During dinner, J doesn’t say much; but Pip notices that the guests tend to talk about what concerns them while he listens: “I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my lips.” This is especially true of Drummle. He boasts of his strength; J seizes the housekeeper’s wrist and points out its uncommon strength. One wrist is deeply scarred. He calls her Molly. Pip and Drummle argue about money; Herbert has lent him money. When Startop tries to calm them down with a little joke, Drummle is prevented from throwing a glass at his head by J’s intervention.
Biddy’s letter: Joe is coming to London with Wopsle and will call to see him at Barnard’s. Pip’s reaction: “Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was, that he was coming to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle’s way. I had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.” Pip has greatly improved the look of his apartments and has hired a ‘boy in boots’ whom he calls Pepper (or the Avenger) to whom he feels in bondage since he has to clothe and feed him as well as to find him things to do. He is to be on duty in the hall for Joe’s visit; Herbert suggests things for Joe’s breakfast. Joe arrives and Pip hears him coming up the stairs laboriously in his big boots and stopping at all the doors to spell the names; he wipes his feet a lot before coming in after being announced by Pepper. Joe won’t be separated from his hat. Wopsle has left the Church and gone into ‘playacting’; he gives Pip a playbill for W’s performance as Hamlet. Joe describes the performance. He seems intimidated by Herbert, refusing his hand; he wouldn’t keep a pig to fatten in Barnard’s Inn. He addresses Pip as ‘sir’ and perches his hat on the chimney-piece from which it continually falls. He is nervous during the conversation, coughing a lot behind his hand. He is disappointed in London: the Blacking Warehouse, which appears on bills at shop doors, isn’t nearly like its representation. Eventually Herbert leaves for the city. “I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.” Joe informs him that he has only come there to be useful to Pip. Pumblechook had informed him that Miss H wanted to see him (Joe); she tells him that Estella is home and wishes to see Pip. Biddy felt that it was best to deliver the message by word of mouth so that he could see him too, it being holiday-time. Joe heads off; he will not wait for dinner. On leaving, their eyes meet and Joe calls him ‘Pip’: “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!” Pip is impressed by Joe’s ‘simple dignity’; when he comes to himself, Joe has disappeared.
Pip therefore has to go to the village; he invents excuses for not staying at Joe’s but at the Blue Boar — thus he fools himself. He doesn’t bring the Avenger with him because, among other reasons, he’s afraid he’ll get into discussions with Trabb’s boy. The coach that takes him is also taking two convicts one of whom Pip recognises as the stranger who gave him the shilling wrapped up in two banknotes. He doesn’t recognise Pip but is seated behind him in the coach, and since the two cower forward to escape the wind, Pip can hear their conversation. They talk about the money how someone had arranged in the Dockyard for him to deliver them. “Would I find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did.” He mentions that the man was retried for prison breaking ‘and got made a Lifer’. Pip is appalled by this coincidental meeting and fearing another coincidence that might betray him, arranges to get down as soon as they reached the town. “I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition, made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.” At the Blue Boar, Pip is treated very differently from the last time when the ‘commercials’ had complained. He reads a newspaper article in which Pumblechook is praised as Pip’s benefactor.
Pip reflects that Miss H had adopted Estella and could not fail to adopt him and bring them together. “She reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin — in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess.” Regarding Estella he reflects that “though she had taken such strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her with any attributes save those she possessed.” This is a clue which will permit one to follow Pip into the ‘labyrinth’: “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” He arranges to arrive at his usual time; he his met by Orlick. He has been hired because of the convicts’ escaping. He sounds his bell to warn of Pip’s arrival. In the passage Pip meets Sarah Pocket ‘who appeared to have now become constitutionally green and yellow by reason of me’. He goes up alone to Miss H’s room. There’s an elegant lady there whom he thinks he has never seen, but she raises her head and it’s Estella and looks archly at him. She’s more beautiful and womanly — “I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again”. She seems distant and inaccessible. Miss H asks ‘greedily’ if she has changed much. She’s come from France and is going to London. “Proud and wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature — or I thought so — to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood — from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe — from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.” They walk in the garden. She reveals that she had hidden to watch his fight with Herbert; Pip mentions her reward [the kiss] and she feigns to have forgotten remarking only that Herbert had pestered her with his company. He mentions that he is now friends with Herbert and she remarks that a change of friends was necessary (his older friends would not be fit) — then Pip’s intention of going to see Joe is definitively put aside. Estella’s air of superiority doesn’t get to him: “It would have rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her.” She pretends to have forgotten everything, even having made him cry — and he cries again inwardly. “You must know ... that I have no heart — if that has anything to do with my memory.” When Pip quibbles she specifies: “Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,” said Estella, “and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no — sympathy — sentiment — nonsense.” He notices something strange about Estella [1st time]; there is a ‘tinge of resemblance’ to Miss H which “may often be noticed to have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they have been much associated and secluded”. But he cannot trace it to Miss H and then the suggestion was gone. Estella insists that she is incapable of tenderness. Again in the brewery, as E points to the gallery from which she had observed Pip standing scared below, Pip sees (with an involuntary start) her white hand and has the same ‘dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp’ [2nd time]. Back at the house, Pip learns that Jaggers will be to dinner. Pip walks Miss H as before; when E leaves to prepare for dinner “Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful.” Then she asks Pip about his feelings; she draws his head close to hers and says “Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces — and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper — love her, love her, love her!” “Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!” Love, in her mouth, sounds like a curse. She speaks about the utter submission of love (such as hers) and gives a wild cry. Jaggers enters. Description of his pocket-handkerchief. Like everyone else, Miss H is afraid of him. Jaggers tells Pip he will never see Miss H eating. Pip asks him about E’s family name: it’s Havisham. At dinner are SP, E, J and Pip. During dinner J never looks at E but listens; she watches him keenly. J torments SP by talking about Pip’s expectations. On leaving, it is arranged that Pip is to be forewarned of Estella’s coming to London and should meet her at the coach. That night at the Blue Boar Pip wonders when he will be able to waken Estella’s heart.
Pip tells Jaggers of his doubts about Orlick and Jaggers goes off to have him fired. Pip arranges to get on the coach outside the village — that way he can avoid Pumblechook. The villagers are curious about Pip as he passes by. He meets Trabb’s boy who affects to be afraid of him thereby attracting everyone’s attention. He meets him again, and it happens again. The third time he mimics Pip — “Don’t know yah!” Pip leaves town in disgrace; he can do nothing but write a letter of protest to Trabb the next day. When he arrives in London, he sends Joe a codfish and barrel of oysters as reparation. Back at Barnard’s Inn he has to send the Avenger off to a play to get rid of him. He tells Herbert that he adores Estella, but he already knows that. Herbert thinks that it’s lucky that you are picked out for her and allotted to her.” Pip says how ‘dependent and uncertain’ he feels with regard to his expectations. Herbert reminds him that Jaggers had told him that he didn’t just have expectations. Pip will soon be twenty-one and maybe he’ll be enlightened then. Herbert points out, disagreeably he fears, that Pip may not be destined to marry Estella since Jaggers has never mentioned it or even hinted at it. So can’t Pip detach himself from her. He encourages him to think of Estella’s upbringing: “This may lead to miserable things.” But Pip feels it impossible to detach himself. Herbert then speaks of his own unsatisfactory affairs; his father’s establishment is not being well kept. He also wishes to be married and confides in Pip that he has a fiancée named Clara who lives in London and whose father was a purser but is now an invalid and lives in a room over Clara’s and is very demanding on her. He is very meek when he speaks about her. You can’t marry when you’re ‘looking about you’; he needs capital. Pip finds the playbill in his pocket and, discovering that the play’s tonight, they head off for the theatre to hear Wopsle.
Wopsle’s performance. He calls himself Mr Waldengarver now. They meet him after the disastrous performance. They invite him home to dinner.
Pip receives a note from Estella saying that she is coming to London the day after tomorrow. Pip immediately loses his appetite. On the day, he arrives much too early; he meets Wemmick who informs him that the AP will soon be eighty-two. He is off to Newgate to meet a client and offers to show Pip around. Conditions at he prison are quite relaxed and neglected (unlike at the time of writing) and there are men going around selling beer, a depressing scene. Wemmick is like a gardener among his plants. They meet a coiner, the Colonel, who is destined to be hanged. W is on good terms with both the prisoners and the turnkeys. Pip returns to wait for Estella; during the three hours wait he reflects “how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it; that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement.” The contrast between the jail and Estella is abhorrent to him and he regrets having gone with Wemmick. Again, when he sees Estella in the coach, a ‘nameless shadow’ passes [3rd time].
Estella seems more beautiful than ever. She wants Pip to take her to Richmond in Surrey. They go for tea. At Richmond, Estella will stay with a lady who will introduce her to people. She seems quite indifferent: “You speak of yourself as if you were some one else.” He learns from her that the Pockets have been speaking and writing to Miss Havisham ‘with reports and insinuations to your disadvantage’. He is ‘the torment and the occupation of their lives’. They hate him. She laughs when he points out that they do him no harm; she points out that she laughs because they fail — they undergo tortures at the hands of Miss H. But her laughter seems excessive: she explains that she had grown up with their intriguing against her masked as sympathy and pity. She’s not laughing as she explains this. She reassures him that they will never succeed with Miss H and that she, Estella, is grateful to him for their being ‘so busy and so mean in vain’. She offers him her hand on it and he kisses it; she asks him if he does so in the same spirit as she once kissed him — “A spirit of contempt for the fawners and plotters.” She lets him kiss her again but then becomes businesslike again as if they were ‘mere puppets’. Pip is in pain because “Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it always was.” Afterwards, as they pass Newgate, Estella asks what place it is and Pip feels ashamed; she comments ‘Wretches!’. They discuss Jaggers in this connection. Pip would have gone on to talk about his dinner in Gerrard Street but they come into a glare of gas and Estella changes the subject; but Pip has the inexplicable feeling he had before [4th time]. She doesn’t know London; apart from France, she doesn’t know anywhere but Miss H’s neighbourhood. Estella is making an effort to be attractive: “It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to attract me; that she made herself winning; and would have won me even if the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier, for, even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it would have wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away.” Since Richmond is near Hammersmith, she hopes Pip will come and see her. She calls him ‘Pip’ for the first time. They arrive at the ‘staid old house’ which seems to be in decline. She leaves him: “And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.” Back at Hammersmith, he finds that Matthew Pocket is out giving a lecture on domestic economy — “his treatises on the management of children and servants were considered the very best text-books on those themes.” Pip considers discussing his heartache with him, but when he sees Mrs Pocket, he changes his mind.
Pip recognises the effects of his expectations both on himself and on others. He is uneasy about his behaviour to Joe and is uncomfortable about Biddy; he thinks, like Camilla (he thinks), that he would have been better if he had never met Miss H but had grown up in the forge. But he is not sure to what extent he would have been unhappy because of Estella even if he had no expectations. Regarding others: his expectations are not beneficial to anybody, above all to Herbert. On the contrary, Pip’s lavish lifestyle leads Herbert into trouble: “My lavish habits led his easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and regrets.” He is not worried about the effect on the other Pockets because if it weren’t him it would have been someone else — due to their littleness. He is getting into debt and so is Herbert. At Startop’s suggestion, they put their names down for election to The Finches of the Grove where they must dine expensively fortnightly (but first he must come of age). Drummle is also a member. “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.” Herbert is getting nowhere, and is not likely to given the nature of his occupation. They decide to look into their affairs; they each make a memorandum of their debts. But they just run into new debts. One day a letter arrives from Trabb & Co. informing them that Mrs Joe has died and that they must go to the interment on Monday.
It is the first grave that has opened in Pip’s life; he is haunted by his sister. He is shocked by her death even though there hadn’t been any tenderness; he is indignant towards her assailant. He writes to Joe. He goes to the village and alights at the Blue Boar. When he arrives, he notices that Trabb & Co. have taken care of the house. There are two sable warders at the door — both dubious characters known to Pip and to the village. Trabb is presiding over the ceremony in the best parlour where Joe is the chief mourner. Pumblechook in a black cloak is at the refreshment table helping himself to food and drink. The funeral procession, which Pip finds ridiculous, is much admired by the neighbours — they are all but cheered as the villagers pursue them. The ‘abject’ Pumblechook fusses about Pip’s hatband and cloak, and Mr and Mrs Hubble are conceited to be part of so distinguished a procession. Mrs Joe is buried in the same churchyard as Pip’s parents. After the ceremony Pumblechook drinks all the rest of the sherry, and Mr Hubble, the port. Then they go off to the Three Jolly Bargemen. Pip, Joe and Biddy dine in the best parlour. After that, Joe smokes his pipe with Pip outside the forge. “He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my own little room, and I was pleased too; for, I felt that I had done rather a great thing in making the request.” Later Pip speaks to Biddy and wonders why he hadn’t been informed of Mrs Joe’s situation. She has made arrangements to go to Mrs Hubble. She is going to try for the position of mistress in the new school. She describes Mrs Joe’s death and her asking pardon of Joe and Pip. Her attacker has never been found. Orlick hangs around the forge sometimes although he appears to be working in the quarries. He assures her that he will be down often from now on, he will not leave Joe alone. When Biddy doesn’t respond, he becomes indignant and moreso when she calls him ‘Mr Pip’. It’s in ‘bad taste’. She speaks timidly and he in ‘a virtuously self-asserting manner’. But he gives up. When she asks him if he really will come to see Joe more often, he claims that ‘a very bad side of human nature’ and that he is shocked. He remains distant towards her and in bed sleepless, he reflects on her injustice, unkindness and injury. He takes leave of Joe in the morning assuring him that he will be down oftener. To Biddy, he says that he is not angry but hurt.
Pip and Herbert’s debts worsen. Pip comes of age; H had eight months before. Herbert didn’t come into anything, but Pip anticipates a lot including a revelation from his guardian. Wemmick summons him to meet Jaggers. He is greet as ‘Mr Pip’ but J’s attitude in looking down at his own boots puts him in mind of the time the convict put him upon the tombstone. J permits him to ask a question; his benefactor will not be revealed just yet. He points out that Pip is in debt. He gives him a banknote for five hindered pounds; he is to live at that rate per annum from now on until the donor appears. He must manage his own affairs. Jaggers points out that he is not at all in favour of any of this — his instructions are ‘injudicious’. Pip tries to offer thanks but J stops him, remarking that he is not paid to convey his words to anyone. In response to Pip’s questions, he points out that it may be years before his benefactor appears. He cannot say when, an answer would ‘compromise’ him; more, “When that person discloses, my part in this business will cease and determine. When that person discloses, it will not be necessary for me to know anything about it. And that’s all I have got to say.” From this, Pip concludes “that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken him into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella; that he resented this, and felt a jealousy about it; or that he really did object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it.” Pip invites J to dinner with him and Herbert; Pip waits to walk home with him because J doesn’t want him to go to any expense for him. The £500 make Pip think of being Herbert’s benefactor, he questions Wemmick on this project while waiting. W points out that there are six London bridges from which he can pitch his money. One should never invest ‘portable property’ in a friend unless he wants to get rid of him. Such is his opinion ‘in this office’. If Pip wants his ‘Walworth sentiments’, he will have to come to Walworth. Pip regrets that Jaggers doesn’t have some equivalent of Walworth. At dinner, Jaggers makes both him and Herbert feel dejected and guilty.
On Sunday, Pip sets out for Walworth. He talks to the AP waiting for W, soon he sees a flap with ‘John’ on it tumble open. W salutes Pip from across the moat (although they could have shaken hands); he’s with Miss Skiffins who is of a wooden appearance like W. Pip discovers that there’s a flap for her too. W and Pip take a walk around the property to see how it is in the winter; they discuss Herbert: “I alluded to the advantages I had derived in my first rawness and ignorance from his society, and I confessed that I feared I had but ill repaid them, and that he might have done better without me and my expectations. Keeping Miss Havisham in the background at a great distance, I still hinted at the possibility of my having competed with him in his prospects, and at the certainty of his possessing a generous soul, and being far above any mean distrusts, retaliations, or designs. For all these reasons (I told Wemmick), and because he was my young companion and friend, and I had a great affection for him, I wished my own good fortune to reflect some rays upon him”. He would like to settle £100 a year on him. W promises to ‘put on my considering-cap’; he’ll consult Miss Siffins’s brother who is an accountant. They have a big tea together. Then the AP reads the news to them. W tries to put his arm around Miss Skiffins but she undoes it every time apparently mechanically. About a week later, Pip is called to Walworth. There are many other meetings there and in the City. Eventually Pip signs a deal with a ‘worthy young merchant or shipping-broker’ (Clarriker) who has recently started business and, after some investments have been made, will eventually want a partner. Pip makes and arranges various payments through Miss S’s brother, never explicitly Wemmick. Pip is happy when Herbert comes unsuspectingly to tell him of his good fortune — happy “to think that my expectations had done some good to somebody.”
Estella is staying at Richmond with Mrs Brandley, a widow with a daughter several years older than E. The mother looks young and frivolous, the daughter old and theological. Mrs Brandley had been a friend of Miss H’s. Mrs B and E understand that they are necessary to each other even though there is little community of feeling between them. Pip suffers “suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me.” He is on terms of familiarity but not of favour; she uses him to tease other admirers. He seems far from his hopes. “I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.” Her attitude is usually that their association has been forced upon her; sometimes she pities him. He feels he should not press himself on her (and thus plead his case) because he feels that she cannot choose but to obey Miss H: “My dread always was, that this knowledge on her part laid me under a heavy disadvantage with her pride, and made me the subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom.” She wishes him to take her to Satis House. When they go, Miss H is “even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been when I last saw them together; I repeat the word advisedly, for there was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks and embraces.” She hangs on her words and gestures as if she were devouring her. Then she would probe Pip’s wounds with ‘witch-like eagerness’. Before the fire she has Estella recount the roll of her admirers mentioned in her letters, all the time glaring at Pip like a ‘spectre’. What Pip sees in this at this stage: “I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense of dependence and even of degradation that it awakened — I saw in this, that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham’s revenge on men, and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified it for a term. I saw in this, a reason for her being beforehand assigned to me. Sending her out to attract and torment and do mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this, that I, too, was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize was reserved for me. I saw in this, the reason for my being staved off so long, and the reason for my late guardian’s declining to commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word, I saw in this, Miss Havisham as I had her then and there before my eyes, and always had had her before my eyes; and I saw in this, the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which her life was hidden from the sun.” Looking around at the darkened room and imagining the room across the hall, Pip “saw in everything the construction that my mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me.” During this visit, for the first time Pip witnesses harsh words between E and Miss H. They are sitting before the fire, when Estella withdraws her arm, to which Miss H reacts by asking whether E is tired of her. Estella regards her ‘with perfect composure’: “Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other, that was almost cruel.” Miss H: “You stock and stone! ... You cold, cold heart!” E replies that she is what the other has made her. Miss H is bitter with E ‘so hard and thankless’. But E asserts that she never had a choice being too young at her adoption; she admits however that Miss H has been very good to her and that she owes her everything — what does she want? Miss H wants love and insists against E that she doesn’t have it. Estella replies, ‘never yielding either to anger or tenderness’, that she has nothing but what Miss H has given her: “And if you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.” Miss H protests turning wildly to Pip: “Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me!” But E remembers sitting by Miss H’s side learning lessons and looking up into her face that was strange and frightening. She has never been false to Miss H’s teaching; she has never admitted sentiments that the other had ‘excluded’. It is Miss H who has taught her to be proud and hard. Miss H shrieks but E’s attitude is one of calm wonder: “if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her; — if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry?” Miss H does not answer; she is now sitting on the floor among the bridal relics with which it is strewn, her grey hair ‘all adrift upon the ground’. Pip leaves the room and walks in the grounds. When he goes back to the room, E is repairing some of Miss H clothes; they play cards together. His first night in Satis House, in the part across the courtyard, he cannot sleep but is haunted by Miss H; so he gets up and heads for the front courtyard. He spies Miss H wandering and moaning in the passage. He puts out his candle. Miss H wanders between the two rooms moaning in a ghostly manner. In the dark, Pip cannot find his way back to his room and so must wait for some streaks of dawn. The next day, the difference is not brought up again; it never is in the four similar occasions in Pip’s future experience. But Miss H’s attitude towards Estella seems to be more fearful. One night at the club with the Finches, Drummle toasts ‘Estella’. Pip takes exception to this and challenges him. The Finches decide that, if Drummle can bring a proof of his acquaintance with E, then Pip must express his regret for “having been betrayed into a warmth which”. The next day Drummle produces a note from E saying that she had danced with him several times; so Pip must apologize and repudiate the idea that he was to be found anywhere. Pip discovers that E permits D to pursue her; he, a Spider, is used to putting up and waiting. At a ball, Pip takes the opportunity to confront E about her seeing D. He tells her he is wretched that she should encourage someone so despised as Drummle is: “You know he is as ungainly within, as without. A deficient, illtempered, lowering, stupid fellow.” He accuses her of smiling at D but not at him, to which she replies by asking him angrily if he would rather that she ‘deceive and entrap’ him. At that, Mrs Brandley arrives and they must stop discussing.
Pip is twenty-three (a week ago); they are now living in the Temple with chambers at Garden Court (Garden-court) down by the river. They left Barnard’s Inn a year ago. He is no longer being instructed by Matthew Pocket. Herbert is on business in Marseilles. Pip is unable to settle on anything; he is still hoping for a revelation to ‘clear my way’. There are violent storms and there’s mud everywhere. They live at the top of the last house and so bear the full brunt of the winds; it’s like being in a lighthouse. The stairs are dark as the lamps have blown out, in the courtyard too. The bells of London strike eleven. Hearing a footstep on the stairs, he thinks of his sister. He takes his reading-lamp to the top of the staircase. He calls out to see if someone is there; a man is looking for Mr Pip and he comes up. “Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea. That he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his hands to me.” Pip resentfully asks him in. When he takes of his hat “I saw that his head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew only on its sides.” Pip is puzzled by the way the man holds out his hands to him. But before the man aids him in discovering his identity, Pip recognises him: “No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to me; no need to take the handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head; no need to hug himself with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across the room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before, I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.” Now he accepts the hands that the man offers him. “You acted noble, my boy,” said he. “Noble, Pip! And I have never forgot it!” But Pip repulses him as the man makes to embrace him: “Stay!” said I. “Keep off! If you are grateful to me for what I did when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was not necessary. Still, however you have found me out, there must be something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will not repulse you; but surely you must understand that — I-” He cannot renew their intercourse under their changed circumstances. Pip offers him something to drink before he goes, and the man accepts. Pip tremblingly prepares him some rum-and-water and notices that the man’s eyes are full of tears and he, Pip, is softened. The man informs him that he has been a “sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in the new world”. Pip asks him if he has seen the messenger he once sent to him with two one-pound notes; but no he hasn’t. He points out that he too has done well and offers him the money for some other poor boy’s use; the man burns them. As the man questions him on his success, Pip begins to tremble. As the man reveals details of Pip’s fortune Pip can feel “my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action”. Then: “All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.” The man explains: “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.” Pip feels abhorrence, dread and repugnance. The man claims to be his ‘second father’; Pip is more to him than any son. Tending sheep, the only presence to the man had been Pip’s; he swore to make him a gentleman. Pip is relieved that the man does not notice his horror. He delights in Pip’s possessions (watch, ring, linen, books) while Pip recoils from his touch as from that of a serpent. The man draws his sleeve over his eyes and forehead, there’s the click in his throat — “he was all the more horrible to me that he was so much in earnest”. Pip asks him if there is no one else but he and Jaggers responsible for his expectations; he thinks despairingly of Estella when the man replies that there isn’t. He continues his story: his master whose sheep he was shepherding died and left him money which he used to get his liberty and set up on his own. He became famous for his success and devoted everything to Pip: “It was the money left me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers — all for you — when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter.” (Again Pip wishes he had never left the forge.) The man’s ‘recompense’ was to know that he was making a better gentleman than those in the colony whose horses covered him in dust as they passed by. He ‘owns’ a London gentleman. As he puts his hand on Pip’s shoulder, Pip shudders to think that it may by ‘stained with blood’. In spite of the difficulty and danger, the man left the colony. He wants to know where Pip will put him; he will put him in Herbert’s room. The man emphasises the necessity of caution; he would be hanged for coming back — “the wretched man, after loading wretched me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked his life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping!” Pip closes the shutters and secures the apartment; the man asks for some of his linen and goes to bed. On his own Pip realises that Estella is 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.” But worst of all, he had deserted Joe for a convict. He cannot return to them now he feels so worthless; he can never undo what he has done. He begins to imagine sounds and that he has had presentiments of the man’s approach: “I began either to imagine or recall that I had had mysterious warnings of this man’s approach.” He recalls the convict’s violence towards the other man and feels unsafe, but the man is sleeping. Pip locks him in.
Pip’s having to take precautions prevents him from having to confront other thoughts. Even though Pip no longer has the Avenger, he cannot keep the man in his apartment; it wouldn’t be safe. He is looked after by two inquisitive women whose only reliable quality is larceny; he will tell them his uncle has come from the country. He comes across another man in the stairwell [Orlick], but he man disappears. The watchman has seen no unknown strangers except a man who asked for Pip — Magwitch. But there was a person with him, a working man: “to the best of his belief, he had a dust-coloured kind of clothes on, under a dark coat.” Pip wanders about his rooms in a confused state. Eventually the man gets up; he informs Pip that on board he had taken the name of Provis, but his real name is Abel Magwitch and he was brought up to be a ‘varmint’. He doesn’t know anything about the other man who was with him; previously he had only been known in the provinces — but he was tried in London and defended by Jaggers. He has paid for what he did. Then he eats ravenously with missing teeth obliging him to chew where there are some left; Pip is disgusted. Then he smokes his pipe. Pip begins to settle down with the realisation of ‘what I was chained to’. He tosses Pip a pocket-book ‘bursting with papers’; it contains ‘something worth spending’ and it’s all Pip’s — “blast you every one, from the judge in his wig, to the colonist a stirring up the dust, I’ll show a better gentleman than the whole kit on you put together!” Pip wants to discuss the practical aspects of Magwitch’s presence — his projects and how to keep him out of danger. But first Magwitch apologises for his outburst which was ‘low’. Pip is moved to a ‘fretful laugh’ by his sense of ‘the grimly-ludicrous’. Magwitch doesn’t feel in danger since only Pip, J and W know he’s there. He’s left Botany Bay for good. He can disguise himself. Pip proposes moving Provis somewhere when Herbert comes back; but Provis wants to make Herbert swear on a little black ‘Testament’ he carries with him; he doesn’t seem to have any other use for it. Pip remembers swearing fidelity to him in the churchyard. Pip persuades him to dress like a prosperous farmer and to cut his hair close. Pip goes out and rents a room in Essex Street not far off; he then buys the disguise. He sets off for Little Britain; when Jaggers meets him, his first remark is to be careful what Pip tells him. He confirms that the man in New South Wales is Pip’s only benefactor. He is not responsible for Pip’s believing that it was Miss H: “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.” No matter how Pip dresses Magwitch, he seems to look more and more like a convict, even dragging his leg as if there were a weight on it. All his behaviour betrays the convict. At one stage, Pip is on the point of fleeing to enlist as a private soldier in India. Magwitch is worse than a ghost because he could be hanged on Pip’s account. Echo of Frankenstein: “The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me.” After five days, Herbert comes back from France.
Pip tells the story to Herbert and sees his own feelings reflected in his face. Provis in no way suspects their feelings. He assures them he will not give way to ‘lowness’ but will remain ‘muzzled’. Later, when Provis has gone to Essex Street, H (who at first sits in Provis’s chair before disgustedly jumping out of it, thereby letting Pip know he shares his feelings) and Pip discuss Pip’s situation: he cannot go on accepting money from Provis and yet he’s heavily in debt. He is fit for nothing except soldiering. But Herbert points out that if he did that he could still never pay back Provis; he has risked his life for Pip, so it would be unwise to cut the ground from under his feet. Pip is struck with horror by the idea that he could become Provis’s ‘murderer’. He reflects and realises that if ever Provis were taken he would feel personally responsible. Herbert suggests that the first thing to do is to get him out of England. They need a pretext to get him out of England; for this they need to know more about him. So at breakfast, they ask him about himself and the other convict.
Provis tells his story. In short, it’s ‘in jail and out of jail’. He’s been punished in every possible way. He doesn’t know where he was born; the first thing he remembers is a tinker running away and he thieving turnips for a living. He got a reputation as a hardened criminal. A deserting soldier taught him how to read, and a travelling giant how to write; he is locked up less frequently. Twenty years ago he met Compeyson at Epsom races; he’s kill him if he could — he’s the other convict. He had been to boarding-school, had learning and was handsome and younger than Magwitch. Compeyson takes him on as a partner in swindling, forging, etc. He was ‘as cold as death’. There was another man with them whose surname was Arthur. He was dying; he and Compeyson “had been in a bad thing with a rich lady [Miss Havisham] some years afore, and they’d made a pot of money by it”. But C was a gambler and all the money was spent. Only C’s wife, Sally, takes care of him. Arthur is delirious and one night he has a vision [of Miss H?]: “he says to Compeyson’s wife, ‘Sally, she really is upstairs alonger me, now, and I can’t get rid of her. She’s all in white,’ he says, ‘wi’ white flowers in her hair, and she’s awful mad, and she’s got a shroud hanging over her arm, and she says she’ll put it on me at five in the morning.’” C points out that it’s not possible since ‘she’s got a living body’. They bring him back to bed but he dies imagining the ghost putting a shroud on him. For C it was good riddance. Magwitch is exploited by C and is always in his debt. The association lasted ‘four or five years’. Finally they are both arrested for ‘putting stolen notes in circulation’ and C insists on ‘separate defences’; Magwitch sells all he can and hires Jaggers. In court, C plays the gentleman that he is by birth whereas Magwitch looks like a wretch; he realises how everything that they had done together had been done in such a way that he seemed principally responsible. C is younger, well brought up and has no record except as a suspect. At the end of the trial, C is treated with mercy because of these factors and because he has informed on Magwitch; but M is found guilty. C gets seven years, M fourteen. M swears to smash his face in revenge, but in the prison ship he cannot get near him. Trying to do so, he is put in the black hole from which he escapes. It is Pip who informs him that the other had escaped, so he hunts him down and smashes his face; he’s determined to drag him back to the prison ship. When they are caught, C gets of lightly, but M is put in irons and deported for life. He has never heard of Compeyson since then. Herbert slips Pip a note informing him that Miss Havisham’s brother’s name was Arthur and that Compeyson was her lover.
Pip reflects that it is the thought of Estella that makes Magwitch so abhorrent to him — there is “the abyss between Estella in her pride and beauty, and the returned transport whom I harboured”. He is also afraid that Compeyson will appear and do away with Magwitch. Before going abroad he wants to see Estella and Miss H; so next day he goes to Richmond only to find out that, unusually, Estella has gone to Satis House without him and apparently she isn’t expected back very soon. When he gets to the village, the first person he meets is Drummle; they pretend not to notice one another and later they shoulder each other before the fire. Drummle lets him know indirectly, by addressing the waiter, that he’s to dine with a ‘lady’. Pip is tempted to take him and put him sitting on the fire. Drummle provokes him regarding the scene at the club: Pip shouldn’t have lost his temper, hadn’t he lost enough without that? Neither will give way to the other, so they only leave the fire when three farmers approach it and they have to give way. D calls for a light for his cigar, and it is someone whose back reminds Pip of Orlick who appears to do it, but he is too out of sorts to check.
At Satis House, he finds E and Miss H in her room; the look they give him shows that he has changed. Miss H appears confused and E appears to realise on the spot that Pip has discovered his benefactor. He informs Miss H that “I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant me to be.” He has found out who his ‘patron’ is: “It is not a fortunate discovery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune, anything. There are reasons why I must say no more of that. It is not my secret, but another’s.” She tells him that as a boy he was really just employed to play. Pip mentions Jaggers but she points out that it was just a coincidence that he was also the lawyer of his patron. [How does she know this?] She admits that she let him believe that she was his patron. It was not kind he says, but who was she to be kind, she replies. In doing so, she punished her self-seeing relations. They and Pip made their own snares. He says that she has wronged Matthew and Herbert Pocket. What does he want for them? He does not want them to be confounded with the others. He wants her to help Herbert without his knowledge. She wants to know why: he explains how he became Herbert’s benefactor and that, but not why, he cannot continue so. What else? He turns to Estella and reminds her that he has always loved her. She is unmoved; he explains he would have declared himself earlier but he thought that Miss H had destined them for each other. Estella shakes her head and Pip admits that he knows that she will never be his. “It 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.” Miss H looks from one to the other with her hand on her heart. Estella explains that there are ‘sentiments, fancies’ that she is 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 don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?” He admits it. Although it’s not in Nature, she says, it’s in her nature; but she does make a difference between him and other people. He mentions Drummle and she refers to him with contempt admitting that she encourages him and rides out with him; she’s going to marry him. Pip is shocked but controls himself; he notices a ‘ghastly’ look on Miss H’s face; he entreats Estella not to carry out Miss H’s will to hurt all the many good men who love E, but to marry any one of them. “My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would have been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me at all intelligible to her own mind.” E insists that it is ‘my own act’; she has made her decision and she and her husband will do well enough. She says that Miss H wanted her to wait. But why such ‘a mean brute’? She will not be a blessing to him. Pip is crying freely but Estella insists that “This will pass in no time.” His response: “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. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. 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!” Pip leaves her and will always recall “the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.” He walks back to London for he cannot face Drummle at the inn or sit in a coach and be spoken to. When he is about to go into his dwelling, the porter gives him a note addressed to Philip Pip, Esquire. The note says: Don’t go home.
So Pip goes to stay in a hotel in Covent Garden where he spends an uncomfortable night. In the morning he heads off early to have Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments before he goes to Little Britain. Wemmick asks him about the note; he will go an collect the notes left at the other gates later so as not to leave evidence — a principle of his. He tells him in a roundabout way that he has heard that Magwitch is back; he has also learnt that Pip is being observed in Garden Court. Pip toasts a sausage for the AP. Pip questons W about Compeyson and finds out that he is in London. Wemmick had gone to Herbert to advise him indirectly that he should get Magwitch out of the way; so H brought Magwitch to Clara’s house by the river-side between Limehouse and Greenwich. There was an empty room at the top of the house. The situation is ideal: the house is out of the way, Herbert can keep an eye on things without being suspected since his fiancée lives there, and it would be easy to get Magwitch away from there by boat if that were ever necessary. Herbert feigned a trip to Dover and brought Magwitch there. Wemmick didn’t want Pip to go home so as not to draw attention to this. Pip can go and visit him so long as he doesn’t go from home. W advises him to get his hands on M’s portable property so that nothing may happen to it. Pip knows that there’s no use telling W what he feels about this. W recommends that a day with the AP would do Pip good. Pip does this and heads off for Magwitch when it is dark.
He arrives at the Mrs Whimple’s house on Old Green Copper Rope-Walk (Mill Pond, Chinks’s Basin) where Magwitch is staying. He is met by Herbert. They hear Clara’s father, Mr Barley, growling overhead; he is suffereing from gout, drinks rum and has hurt his hand cutting cheese. They call him ‘old Gruffandgrim’. The place is clean and well-kept, and Mrs Wimple is motherly towards Clara. Mr Barley keeps all the provisions in his room and dole out rations every day to Clara. Pip admires her. Provis has two cabin rooms at the top of the house. He seems ‘softened’ but Pip cannot explain how. He decides not to tell him about Compeyson. He tells him about his plans to get him abroad and that he will go with him; but since he is not clear on what is to happen afterwards, he doesn’t mention that. Provis is trusting. Herbert suggests that he and Pip take Provis down the river themselves, so it would be a good idea if Pip kept a boat at Temple Stairs and got into the habit of rowing up and down the river. Pip and Provis agree. Provis is to lower the blind as they pass if everything is all right. Pip’s heart is heavy and anxious as he leaves Provis that night — a contrast with the situation when he first met him of which he is reminded when Provis holds a light over the stairs as he descends just as he Pip had done for Provis at their first meeting. Herbert will go between them. Provis is now known as Mr Campbell and is consigned to Herbert, Pip not pretending to any interest in him. Pip contrasts his own situation with that between Herbert and Clara, encouraged by Mrs Wimple. Back at the Temple, Herbert and Pip notice that all is quiet. Next day Pip gets the boat and begins practicing on the river — sometimes with Herbert. He cannot get rid of the idea of being watched and suspects everyone.
Weeks pass but there is no sign from Wemmick. Pip is getting into debt and has to sell things but he doesn’t want to profit from Provis’s generosity. He is convinced that Estella is married but deliberately doesn’t read the papers and asks Herbert not to mention her. His life is unhappy and anxious: he often starts out of bed, listens to H’s steps to detect any sign of trouble — “Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could.” Sometimes he cannot get back with the boat to Temple Stairs and must land elsewhere which occasions two meetings. The first meeting: he goes to see Mr Wopsle performing in a theatre near the river: “I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline.” During the performance he is aware that at one moment Wopsle is looking at him. During the second play, Wopsle, who doesn’t have much to do, spends much of his time “staring in my direction as if he were lost in amazement”. He seems confused. After the play he runs into Wopsle and finds out that somebody had been sitting behind him. Since Pip is suspicious of Wopsle (as he is of everyone else) he is afraid of being entrapped into some admission and so says nothing. Wopsle says he was aware that Pip didn’t know that the other was there. The man was the convict who had been mauled by the other in the marshes. Pip lets on not to be very impressed by this information but to find it curious but he is very worried, especially given all the precautions he had taken. He writes about this to Wemmick since he doesn’t want to compromise him by going to Walworth too often. Herbert and he decide to be extra careful; so Pip stays away from Chink’s Basin except to row by and only look at Mill Pond Bank.
The second meeting: about a week later, Pip leaves his boat below Bridge and strolls into Cheapside when he is overtaken by Jaggers. He invites him to lunch and Pip doesn’t refuse when he hears that Wemmick will be there. So they head for Little Britain before going on to Gerrard Street with W. At dinner, J asks W whether he has sent on a note from Miss H to Pip; he hasn’t but gives it to him now. She wants to see him about the business he mentioned to her last time. From Jaggers’s attitude, he deduces that the affair is pressing and decides to go tomorrow. Jaggers mentions that Drummle has ‘played his cards right’ but that “but he may not have it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to be found out first.” The Spider may beat her: “If he should turn to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side; if it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not.” For Jaggers, it’s a ‘toss-up’ since someone like him either beats or cringes. “So, here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,” said Mr. Jaggers, taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for each of us and for himself, “and may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady’s satisfaction! To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman, it never will be.” He then reproaches Molly with being slow today. Moving back she moves her fingers in a manner that arrests Pip’s attention: “The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free to go, or whether he had more to say to her and would call her back if she did go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion very lately!” Finally Pip realises why he had been taken aback in Estella’s presence: “He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she remained before me, as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair; and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of, and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and a stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes of the housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that had come over me [1st time:] when I last walked — not alone — in the ruined garden, and through the deserted brewery. I thought how the same feeling had come back [2nd time:] when I saw a face looking at me, and a hand waving to me, from a stage-coach window; and how it had come back again and had flashed about me like Lightning, [3rd time:] when I had passed in a carriage — not alone — through a sudden glare of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association had helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link, wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when I had passed by a chance swift from Estella’s name to the fingers with their knitting action, and the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella’s mother.” Jaggers notices but just serves wine. Wemmick continues being the ‘wrong twin’ and only seems to pay attention to his ‘principal’, Jaggers. As they head towards Walworth later, the right twin reappears. Pip reminds Wemmick that he had qualified Molly as a ‘wild beast tamed’ and wants to know how Jaggers did it; so W will tell him what he knows of Molly. About twenty years ago, she was tried for murder at the Old Bailey and acquitted. She was very handsome and had some gipsy blood. She was defended by Jaggers and it was a case that made him. Molly had killed a much older and bigger woman out of jealousy. They were both tramps; Molly had married a tramp ‘over the broomstick’ (thus not legally). The dead woman was found ‘bruised and scratched and torn’ and finaly choked. Jaggers rested his case on the improbability of such a slight creature as Molly’s being able to do that. Jaggers had dressed her to look even slighter. The scratches on the backs of her hands are explained away by brambles which, upon investigation, are seen to have been broken through. She is suspected of jealousy on account of having supposedly done away with a three-year-old child she had had by this tramp. But Jaggers points out that it would be reasonable to ask whether the child being murdered had not done that, and if so why isn’t Molly being tried for murding the child. Since he has shown the brambles there is no reason to retain the idea of jealousy this latter account. Wemmick tells Pip that the child was a girl and that he got his letter and destroyed it. They say Good Night.
The next day, Pip heads down to see Miss Havisham. Passing by the ruins at the close of day where monks lie buried, he hears the sad chimes of bells and the funereal sound of the organ in the cathedral. The old monastery is in ruin and the ruins are used as sheds. Rooks circle about the tower and he remembers that Estella is no longer there. An old woman lets him in to Satis House. Miss H is sitting in the big room by an ashy fire with an air of ‘utter loneliness’. Seeing Pip, she says ‘Is it real?’ As he sits down, he notices that Miss H appears to be afraid of him. She stretches out her hand towards him but takes it back before he can interpret what it means. She asks him what she can do for the friend he spoke about. He tells her about the partnership — everything but what he must keep secret. She wants to know if he would keep her gift a secret. She asks him if he is very unhappy ‘in an unwonted tone of sympathy’. He tells her he is, and for other reasons too which must remain secret too. In response to her question, he assures her that there is nothing she can do for him. She writes something on ‘a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished gold’. It is a note to Jaggers to pay £900. She hopes one day he will write ‘I forgive her’ under her name which is on the first leaf. He replies: “O Miss Havisham,” said I, “I can do it now. There have been sore mistakes; and my life has been a blind and thankless one; and I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with you.” To Pip’s amazement and horror she drops to her knees at his feet and weeps. Miss H confirms that Estella is married. “What have I done!” Pip reflects on Miss H’s guilt: “I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride, found vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker; I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?” She tells him that during his last visit he was a looking-glass that showed her what she once felt — then she realised what she had done. Pip tells her that she “may dismiss me from your mind and conscience” but that she must try and undo what she has done to Estella ‘in keeping a part of her right nature away from her’ rather than moan for a hundred years. Miss H tells him that in the beginning her intention was to keep Estella from a similar fate to her own but as the girl grew older she stole her heart away with her teachings and her jewels and her praises and replanced it with ice. She says that he would have compassion for her if he knew her story; so he informs her that he does know it and that he comiserates with her. He asks her whose child Estella is? But she doesn’t know. After a long period alone, she told Jaggers that she wanted a little girl to rear and love and save from her own fate. She had read about him in the papers before she and the world ‘parted’. He searcehd for an orphan and Miss H called her ‘Estella’; she was two or three. Now Pip is sure that Molly is the mother. Having done all he can he parts. Before going he takes what he feels will be his last walk about the place and “I felt that the dying light was suited to my last view of it.” Again in the brewery he imagines he sees Miss H hanging from a beam. Before going he checks to see that Miss H is all right. She is sitting by the fire and, as he is about to leave, a great flame springs up. She runs towards him “shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high.” Pip throws two coats and the tablecloth over her which causes the rotten cake to collapse and creatures to run in all directions. The servants run in. Miss H struggles for a while and then loses consciousness; when the surgeon comes, Pip lets go and discovers that his hands have been burnt. Miss H’s wounds are judged not to be hopeless, but the nervous shock may be dangerous. When he sees her later, she is laid out on the great table as she had predicted. Although the bridal dress has been burnt, she is covered with cotton-wool which has the same appearance as she lies there. The servants inform him that Estella is in Paris; the surgeon will inform her. Pip will inform the Pockets through Herbert. He does so the next day. That evening Miss H repeats three sentences over and over again: “What have I done!” “When she first came, I meant to save her from misery like mine.” “Take the pencil and write under my name, ‘I forgive her!’” Pip leaves at about six in the morning because he’s anxious about Provis.
Pip is badly burnt; he is haunted by Miss H’s cries. Herbert takes care of him. It is important to get better quickly in order to be able to go by boat. Herbert mentions that Provis ‘improves’; Pip concurs — ”“I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him.” Herbert mention that Provis had told him more of his story relating to the woman — she was young, jealous and revengeful to the last degree, i.e. murder. She was tried for it and defended by Jaggers. This made his name known to Provis. She had throttled another, stronger woman, in a barn; but she was acquitted. She had a child with Provis. On the evening of the night she throttled the other woman, she told Provis that she would destroy the child and then she vanished. Provis believes the woman kept her oath. Provis had however lived for four or five years with the woman and didn’t want to have to testify against her, so he hid himself. At the trial he is vaguely mentioned as ‘Abel’, the man who aroused the women’s jealousy. After the acquital, she disappeared — so Provis lost her and the child. Compeyson takes advantage of his knowledge of this to keep Provis poorer and to work him harder which ‘barbed the point of Provis’s animosity’. All this happened about a score of years ago, thus about three or four years before Pip met him in the churchyard at the age of seven. Pip had reminded Provis of the girl since he was about her age. Pip concludes that Magwitch is Estella’s father.
Pip feels he must speak to Jaggers to ‘hunt the matter down’: ”. I really do not know whether I felt that I did this for Estella’s sake, or whether I was glad to transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned, some rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded her. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to the truth.” The next day, he heads off to Little Britain where Jaggers and Wemmick are doing the books. Pip has to explain about his burns, and this makes Jaggers to be ‘less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before’. They watch him, as do the two heads. He gets the £900 for Herbet; Jaggers thinks Pip was foolish not to ask Miss H for something for himself, and W seems to agree — “Every man’s business ... is portable property.” Pip mentions that he had asked Miss H all she knew about her adopted daughter. He points out that he now knows more about Estella than Miss H does since he knows the mother. He even knows the father. Pip realises that Jaggers does not know this fact because of ‘A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner’. Pip had suspected this because of Provis’s telling Herbert that he had kept himself ‘dark’ and because he only became Jaggers’s client some four years later when there would be no reason to claim his identity. Jaggers is staggered when Pip tells him that it’s Provis from New South Wales. Pip then tells him all he knows — but lets him infer that he knows from Miss H those of the facts he has found out from Wemmick. Jaggers affects to go on with the bookkeeping so Pip appeals with him to be frank because what concerns Estella is nearer and dearer to him than anything else in the world even though he has lost her. Jaggers hesitates and Pip appeals to Wemmick revealing that he has appreciated his pleasant home and old father. This is a relelation to Jaggers and Pip is afraid that he will be dismissed. J says to Pip that W must be ‘the most cunning impostor in all London’; W says that J is another. Finally Jaggers gets back to the matter and puts ‘a case’ to Pip without admitting anything. J knew that Molly had concealed her child; he also knew that Miss H was seeking to adopt one. Further: “Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children, was, their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. 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, bedevilled somehow. ... Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the heap, who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and dared make no stir about; as to whom, over the mother, the legal adviser had this power: ‘I know what you did, and how you did it. You came so and so, this was your manner of attack and this the manner of resistance, you went so and so, you did such and such things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring you off. If you are saved, your child is saved too; if you are lost, your child is still saved.’ Put the case that this was done, and that the woman was cleared.” The woman’s intellect had been shaken and she went to J to be sheltered; he took her in and tamed her violent nature. The child grew up and married for money. For whose sake would Pip reveal the secret? Magwitch would not be better off to meet the mother again. Molly is better off as she is — “she would be safer where she was”. The daughter would be disgraced before her husband. Pip and Wemmick put a finger to their lips and Jaggers goes on with the bookkeeping. Watching J and W, Pip is aware that they seem somewhat distrustful of one another: “each of them seemed suspicious, not to say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they were now inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever there was the smallest point in abeyance for a moment. I had never seen them on such ill terms; for generally they got on very well indeed together.” Appearances are saved when their frequent client Mike comes in; he is tearful because his daughter has been arrested for shop-lifting. Wemmick attacks him ‘snivelling’ to which the man replies that one cannot help one’s feelings. The word sets W off and J throws Mike out: “Get out of this office. I’ll have no feelings here. Get out.” “It serves you right,” said Wemmick, “Get out.” W and J appear to have ‘re-established their good understanding’.
With Miss Skiffins’s brother (the accountant) and Clarriker, Pip concludes the arrangements vis-à-vis Herbert (with the £900). Herbert will be Clarriker’s partner in the East and will thus have to leave England. It is now the month of March and Pip’s left arm is still bad but he can use his right arm. He receives a message from Wemmick: “Early in the week, or say Wednesday, you might do what you know of, if you felt disposed to try it.” He is to burn the letter. Since Pip cannot row, Herbert suggests Startop. They will tell him as little as possible. They will row down the river below Gravesend (a critical point if there is an investigation under foot) and wait for a foreign steamer to come from London. The discover that a steamer for Hamburg would suit them. Pip sees to the passports and Herbert fetches Startop who will row with H while Pip steers. H will bring Provis to the boat on Wednesday. Entering his chambers, Pip finds a very dirty letter addressed to him: “If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or tomorrow night at Nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the limekiln, you had better come. If you want information regarding your uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell no one and lose no time. You must come alone. Bring this with you.” He has to hurry off to get a coach — even if he had had more time to consider, he would have gone. It is the reference to his ‘Uncle Provis’ and the fact of having received a letter from Wemmick that decide him. He leaves a note telling Herbert that he has gone to see Miss H. He lodges in a minor inn and sets out to Satis House where he finds out that Miss H is still very ill. The landlord at the inn does not know Pip and Pip does not reveal himself: they discuss Pip and his benefactor Pumblechook. When Pip comes to the village, he is cold to Pumblechook who ‘done everything for him.’ (“It would turn a man’s blood to white wine winegar to hear him tell of it, sir,” said the landlord.) Pip inwardly contrasts Pumblechook’s falseness with Joe’s being true and noble. Heading out of the inn, he cannot find the anonymous letter.
Pip makes his way in the moonlight through the dismal marshes to the limekiln where workmen have left lime burning. There is a light in the sluicehouse. The choking vapour of the kiln ‘crept in a ghostly way towards me’. No one answers his knock. When he enters and examines the wick of a candle on the table he is “caught in a strong running noose, thrown over my head from behind.” This causes him great pain because of his burns. When the man relights the candle, Pip recognises Orlick whom he hadn’t expected at all. He sits at a table looking at Pip with malignity; he has a gun with a brassbound stock. He asks Pip if he recognises it and he does — from Miss H’s. Orlick points out that Pip cost him that place. He also came between him and a young woman he liked [=Biddy]. Pip replies that he couldn’t have done Orlick any harm if Orlick hadn’t done himself harm. Orlick repeats Pip’s words to Biddy that he would take any pains and spend any money to drive Orlick out of the country [see Chapter 35]. Orlick is going to have his life and put his body in the kiln. He has always been in ‘Old Orlick’s way’. Pip is terrified: “My mind, with inconceivable rapidity, followed out all the consequences of such a death. Estella’s father would believe I had deserted him, would be taken, would die accusing me; even Herbert would doubt me, when he compared the letter I had left for him, with the fact that I had called at Miss Havisham’s gate for only a moment; Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been that night; none would ever know what I had suffered, how true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed through. The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations — Estella’s children, and their children — while the wretch’s words were yet on his lips.” Orlick addresses him as ‘wolf’, ‘you enemy’. He has been drinking from a ‘tin bottle’ hanging around his neck. He blames Pip for Mrs Joe’s death. Although Orlick hit her from behind and would have disposed of her in a limekiln, it was Pip who killed her because he was ‘favoured’ while Orlick was ‘bullied and beat’. Pip realises that Orlick is drinking himself into a state to be able to kill him; the bottle is almost empty. Orlick also tells him that it was he who had been on the stairs at the Temple and whom Pip fell over. Everything he says, conjures up unusually vivid images for Pip. At Mrs Joe’s funeral, Orlick had firmly decided to take Pip’s life and when he looks for him, he finds Provis. He warns him that there are those who won’t have Provis alive in the same land with them. Compeyson had had Magwitch watched in New South Wales in case he left it. Pip is sure he’s done for since Orlick wouldn’t have told him what he has unless he really meant to kill him. He picks up ‘a stone-hammer with a long heavy handle’. Pip struggles violently and shouts out. Figures rush in and intervene; but Orlick escapes. Lying on his back, the first person Pip notices is Trabb’s boy! It is Herbert who is supporting his head. On the way out, H expains how he found Orlick’s note and noticed the inconsistency between it and the one Pip had left him. He came to the Blue Boar with Startop in a post-chaise. They met Trabb’s boy who informed them that he had seen Pip heading to his dining-place. He shows them to the sluice-house. He didn’t rush in at once because the meeting might have been serious. Then he heard Pip shouting. They haven’t got time to go before the magistrate, so they minimise matters for the sake of Trabb’s boy: “For the present, under the circumstances, we deemed it prudent to make rather light of the matter to Trabb’s boy; who I am convinced would have been much affected by disappointment, if he had known that his intervention saved me from the limekiln. Not that Trabb’s boy was of a malignant nature, but that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it was in his constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody’s expense. When we parted, I presented him with two guineas (which seemed to meet his views), and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an ill opinion of him (which made no impression on him at all).” They take a post-chaise back to the Temple. Pip stays in bed all day Tuesday; he has suffered a lot of physical and mental pain. Finally Wednesday morning arrives.
Wednesday is cold and sunny; they set out at 8.30 A.M. Pip only brings one bag with him; he doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s going to do. From 9 A.M. until 3 P.M. the tide would be with them. They would then row on against it until after dark when they would be below Gravesend between Kent and Essex ‘where the river is broad and solitary’. They could choose a public house for a resting-place for the night. On Thursday, the steamers for Rotterdam and Hamburg wold set off at 9 A.M. They would hail one. At Mill Pond Bank, Provis comes on board. Pip is certain they are not being followed. Provis is dressed in a boat-cloak and looks like a river pilot. He is less anxious than anyone else. He is glad not to be between four walls and to be free. “It occurred to me as inconsistent, that for any mastering idea, he should have endangered his freedom and even his life. But I reflected that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart from all the habit of his existence to be to him what it would be to another man.” He is philosophical: “we can no more see to the bottom of the next few hours, than we can see to the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it’s run through my fingers and gone, you see!” He responds in a docile way to Pip’s direction — for example, not to leave the boat when they have to go ashore to get some bottles of beer. When they are just off Gravesend, the tide turns, so they keep to the shore to let other ships get up to the Pool. They are now between muddy banks and must be careful of shallows and mudbanks. They go ashore and eat. The area is like Pip’s marsh country. By now all of the ships are out of sight. There are just some ship laying low in the mud and various objects (stakes, stones, a squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles) sticking out of the mud. All about is ‘stagnation and mud’. They set off again; the rowing is harder but the river has risen a little so they can see the banks. It gets dark, the moon not having risen. They search for a tavern. There are little creeks here and there in the banks. The tide beats against the banks from time to time startling them; they are on the lookout for boats hiding in the creeks. Finally they come across a stone causeway and a public house. It is dirty but the only peple present are the landlord, his wife and a ‘slimy and smeary’ Jack who helps them get their things ashore. Startop shares a room with Herbert; Pip is with Provis. They make a good meal. The Jack, who is wearing clothes he has taken from corpses, asks them if they have seen a four-oared galley with two sitters going up with the tide. They came ashore for beer; the Jack didn’t like them because he thought they were from the Custom House. They feel uneasy; Pip feels caged. They dedide to wait just an hour before the appearance of the steamer at one o’clock the following day and to get out in its track. Pip wakes up after a few hours. When he goes out, he sees two men peering into their boat before heading out across the marsh to the Nore. He goes back to bed. He tells the others in the morning, but Provis thinks the men were probably just from the Custom House. Pip proposes that he and Provis walk to a distant point and their join S and H in the boat at about noon. As they set out, ironically it is Provis who reassures Pip. The get on board the boat and head out into the track of the steamer. At about 1.30 the steamer appears; they get ready and say goodbye to S and H. Then they see the four-oared galley shooting out from the bank into the same track. The steamer is around a bend but visible. The galley passes them and lets them catch up. It then keeps alongside. One sitter and all the rowers keep their eyes on them; the other sitter is wrapped up. The first steamer, from Hamburg, approaches. Then the galley hails them and orders Magwitch to surrender and the others to assist. It runs abroad of them and get hold of their gunwhale. The steersman of the galley grabs Magwitch who reaches across and pull the cloak from the neck of the other sitter, Compeyson, who rears back in terror. Both men go overboard just as the steamer bears down on Pip’s boat which sinks. He is hauled aboard the galley where he finds S and H. Soon they see Magwitch swimming towards them with difficulty; he is pulled aboard and manacled hand and foot. Both the steamers pass by. They return to the tavern with Magwitch, no longer Provis, who has wounds to the chest and head. The boat capsized because Compeyson had wrenched him back with him in his terror whereas the steersman had endeavoured to keep him in. They had gone down together, struggled; he had struck out, swum away and only he had surfaced. The steersman gave the same account. He seizes everything that Magwitch has, including his pocketbook. Only Pip is allowed to accompany him to London. The Jack is given details on where the body is likely to surface. Pip’s attidude to Magwitch is changed: “For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe.” He is not sorry though that M is badly hurt since it is better for him that he die — there are surely people who can identify him and he has no hope of leniency — “He who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his arrest.” As they return, the sun is setting and ‘the stream of our hopes seemed all running back’. Magwitch is however content: he knows that Pip can be a gentleman without him. Pip though knows that M’s possessions will be forfeit to the Crown. Magwitch only asks that Pip come and see him as he is being tried. Pip promises never to stir from his side and to be as true to him as he has been to Pip. He hears the click in M’s throat, but softened now. He need never know that his dreams of enriching Pip have perished.
Pip visits Jaggers who assures him that there’s nothing to be done. He angrily recognises that M’s wealth is forfeit to the Crown; Pip has let it slip through his fingers. Pip decides not to claim the money. Compeyson’s body is found horribly disfigured. A witness is sent for to attest to M’s identity; his trial will be in a month. Herbert announces that he has to leave for Cairo. H talks to him about his, Pip’s, future. They need a clerk! But Pip cannot yet make up his mind; he needs a few months. Herbert will set off in a week; Clara must stay with her father — but he can’t last long. After seeing Herbert off, Pip meets Wemmick. They talk about the events. W is going to take a ‘holiday’ and he wants Pip to take a ‘walk’ with him. Since Pip is grateful to him, he accepts and arranges to meet him on Monday morning at the Castle. W is well dressed but brings a fishing-rod with him. They head off for Camberwell Green and go into a church there. W marries Miss Skiffins. The go to a tavern. Miss Skiffins allows W to embrace her now. Pip understands that he is not to mention any of this at Little Britain.
Magwitch is very ill in prison and is removed to the infirmary, thus Pip can be with him more often. He seems ‘tired out’ but also ‘humble and contrite’. The trial is short and M is found guilty. On the last day thirty-two people appear in court to be condemned to death. Pip and M hold hands throughout the proceedings. Pip makes various petitions. Before M dies, Pip informs him that his daughter is living, that she is a very beautiful lady with powerful friends and that he loves her. M kisses Pip’s hand and dies. Pip prays like one of the men in the Temple: “O Lord, be merciful to him, a sinner!”
Pip leaves his rooms at the Temple; he is seriously in debt. The illness due to stress that he has been putting off finally catches up on him. He is delirious. Joe tends to him as he can just about recognise through his hallucinations. Biddy had sent him there. Joe writes her a letter to inform her; Pip is touched to see that she has taught him to write. There is a comic description of Joe writing a letter. He learns from Joe that Miss H is dead. Most of her property has been left to Estella, but ‘a cool four thousand’ has been left to Matthew Pocket. “This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thing I had done.” Sarah has £25 per annum ‘to buy pills, on account of being bilious’; Georgiana has £20 down; Camilla has £5 to buy rushlights ‘to put her in spirits when she wake up in the night.’ Orlick has been caught breaking into Pumblechook’s house: “and they took his till, and they took his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of his wittles, and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, and they tied him up to his bedpust, and they giv’ him a dozen, and they stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to prewent his crying out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlick’s in the county jail.” Gradually Pip gets better thanks to Joe’s care: “For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my need, that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk to me in the old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in the old unassertive protecting way, so that I would half believe that all my life since the days of the old kitchen was one of the mental troubles of the fever that was gone.” He even dismisses the woman who took care of Pip, after discovering her stealing feathers from the bed (etc.), and hires a ‘very decent woman’. Finally they drive off into the country one Sunday in summer. They lie on the grass at the Battery. Back in London, Pip wonders how much Joe knows. He knows that Pip’s benefactor is dead; although, as in the case of Pip’s asking whether Miss H were dead, he is reluctant to say it directly — “I think ... as I did hear tell that how he were something or another in a general way in that direction.” Pip offers to explain how it happened but Joe insists that it isn’t necessary between friends. They remember Mrs Joe and her rampages. He attempts to justify not having intervened more for Pip — it would have made Mrs J hit Joe himself and hit Pip harder. Pip doesn’t know whether Joe knows how poor he is or “how my great expectations had all dissolved, like our own marsh mists before the sun”. He notices that as he gets better, Joe becomes less easy with him. He the cause of this; it’s his ‘fault’. “Ah! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and to think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast him off? Had I given Joe’s innocent heart no cause to feel instinctively that as I got stronger, his hold upon me would be weaker, and that he had better loosen it in time and let me go, before I plucked myself away?” Pip doesn’t know how to prevent this; if he tells Joe about his lost expectations, Joe will feel obliged to use his savings. He resolves however to talk to Joe about ‘this change’ the following Monday. Now Joe sometimes addresses him as ‘Pip’ and sometimes as ‘sir’. On Sunday evening when Joe comes into his room, he assures him that he’s getting better. In the morning, he looks for Joe to explain his situation, but he has gone leaving a letter saying that he doesn’t wish to intrude now that Pip is better. He also leaves a receipt for Pip’s debt which he has paid. Pip had thought that the creditors had withdrawn or suspended proceedings until he should be better. He resolves to follow Joe to the forge to make his disclosure and to have ‘a pentitent remonstrance with him’. He would also show Biddy ‘how humbled and repentant I came back’ [Prodigal Son]. He will ask her to marry him and let her decide whether he may work with Joe in the forge or whether he should work somewhere else in the country or go abroad. After three days, he leaves for the country.
The village is aware of Pip’s fortunes; he is received coldly at the Blue Boar. At Satis House there are bills up announcing the auction of household furnniture and effects. The house is to be sold as old building material and pulled down. Back at the Blue Boar for breakfast, he meets Pumblechook with the landlord. “Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what else could be expected!” Pip is too broken by illness to react to his ‘magnificently forgiving air’. He reacts angrily when P asks him where he is going and this give the other his chance who speaks loud enough to be heard by the landlord and waiter. He reacts to Pip’s forbidding him to touch the teapot: “I forgit myself when I take such an interest in your breakfast, as to wish your frame, exhausted by the debilitating effects of prodigygality, to be stimilated by the ‘olesome nourishment of your forefathers. And yet ... this is him as I ever sported with in his days of happy infancy!” The two men murmur. [We learn that Mrs Joe’s name was, after her mother, Georgiana Maria.] He is to tell Joe that he has met his ‘earliest benefactor’ and the ‘founder’ of his fortune. Pip swears that he does not see such a person. He is to tell Joe that Pumblechook bears Pip no malice but that Pip is deficient in gratitude. He is to tell Joe that Pumblechook saw the finger of Providence in his being brought low but does not regret his benevolence. Pip retorts that it would be a pity if such a person as said that didn’t say exactly what Pumblechook had done and would do again [i.e. nothing?]. Pumblechook, ‘the Impostor’, leaves and when Pip passes him later he is given dirty looks by a group to whom Pumblechook is speaking in the High Street. Pip is happy to move on to Biddy and Joe “whose great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that could be, contrasted with this brazen pretender.” He has “a sense of leaving arrogance and untruthfulness further and further behind.” It is a sunny June day and Pip imagines how his life will be. He passes by the schoolhouse to meet Biddy, but it is a holiday and B’s house is closed. So he goes to the forge but does not hear Joe’s hammer (although he has imagined it from afar). The forge is closed. Joe and Biddy are in the best parlour whose windows are gay with flowers. Joe and Biddy are there arm in arm. Biddy announces that it’s her wedding day; she’s married to Joe. He is relieved not to have said anything to Joe. Pip congratulates them and announces that he’s going abroad. He will repay the money Joe used to settle his debt. He hopes they will have a child to remind them of him. “I hope you will have children to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney corner of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone out of it for ever. Don’t tell him, Joe, that I was thankless; don’t tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust; only tell him that I honoured you both, because you were both so good and true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to grow up a much better man than I did.” Joe will never tell him that. Pip asks them to forgive him, which they do. He leaves England after selling everything. He becomes clerk to Clarriker and Co. Mr Barley dies and Herbert marries Clara; so Pip is in charge of the Eastern Branch. After a year, he becomes a partner. He lives happily and corresponds regularly with Joe and Biddy. Then Clarriker ‘betrays’ him to Herbert. The firm does well but they don’t become rich.
Eleven years pass before Pip goes back to England. It is December when Pip goes back to Joe’s. He walks in and discovers Joe smoking his pipe with his son in the kitchen — “there, fenced into the corner with Joe’s leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, was — I again!” His name too is Pip; Pip doesn’t rumple his hair. He shows him the Pirrip tombstone in the churchyard. They have a daughter too. Biddy thinks Pip should marry but Pip feels he’s ‘already quite an old bachelor’. He hasn’t forgotten Estella but that dream is all gone by. But he revisits the site of Satis House for her sake. “I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice, brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse. This release had befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew, she was married again.” It is evening when he gets there. The buildings are just ‘mounds of ruin’ with ivy growing on them. On the desolate garden walk, he meets Estella. “The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attractions in it, I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was the saddened softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had never felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible hand.” They sit together; it is the first time she has come. They sit in the moonlight. Estella sheds tears as she remarks on the ‘poor old place’. The ground belongs to her; it is to be built on and she has come to take leave of it. She has often thought of him: “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me, the remembrance, of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.” She is glad to part from him in taking leave of Satis House, but for him it is painful. Suffering has taught her “to understand what your heart used to be.” He tells her, when she asks, that they are friends and she adds: “And will continue friends apart”. They leave the ruins hand in hand and in the mists that rise, as they did when he left the forge, and he sees “no shadow of another parting from her.”