Professional Documents
Culture Documents
GUIDES
Charles Dickenss
Great
Expectations
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
1984
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
All the Pretty Horses
Beloved
Brave New World
The Chosen
The Crucible
Cry, the Beloved Country
Death of a Salesman
The Grapes of Wrath
Great Expectations
Hamlet
The Handmaids Tale
The House on Mango Street
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Iliad
Lord of the Flies
Macbeth
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
The Member of the Wedding
Pride and Prejudice
Ragtime
Romeo and Juliet
The Scarlet Letter
Snow Falling on Cedars
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Things They Carried
To Kill a Mockingbird
Blooms
GUIDES
Charles Dickenss
Great
Expectations
www.chelseahouse.com
Contributing editor: Sarah Robbins
Cover design by Takeshi Takahashi
Layout by EJB Publishing Services
Introduction 2005 by Harold Bloom.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written
permission of the publisher.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
First Printing
135798642
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Great expectations / [edited by] Harold Bloom.
p. cm. -- (Bloom's guides)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7910-8168-0 (alk. paper)
1. Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Great expectations. I. Bloom, Harold.
II. Series.
PR4560.G687 2004
823'.8--dc22
2004015305
Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material and
secure copyright permission. Articles appearing in this volume generally
appear much as they did in their original publication with little to no
editorial changes. Those interested in locating the original source will find
bibliographic information in the bibliography and acknowledgments
sections of this volume.
Contents
Introduction
Biographical Sketch
The Story Behind the Story
List of Characters
Summary and Analysis
Critical Views
George Bernard Shaw on the Unamiable Estella
and Pip as Function of Class Snobbery
George Orwell on Magwitch and the Pantomime
of the Wicked Uncle
Peter Brooks on the Beginning and Ending:
Pip Before Plot and Beyond Plot
Dorothy Van Ghent on the Century of Progress,
Dickenss Use of the Pathetic Fallacy, and
Pips Identity of Things
Julian Moynahan on Pips Aggressive Ambition
and the Dark Doubles Orlick and Drummle
Goldie Morgentaler on Darwin and Money
as Determinant
Christopher D. Morris on Narration and
Pips Moral Bad Faith
Joseph A. Hynes on Star, Garden, and Firelight Imagery
Ann B. Dobie on Surrealism and Stream-of-Consciousness
Nina Auerbach on Dickens and the Evolution
of the Eighteenth-Century Orphan
Stephen Newman on Jaggers and Wemmick:
Two Windows on Little Britain
Jay Clayton on Great Expectations as a Foreshadowing
of Postmodernism
Edward W. Said on Australia, British Imperialism,
and Dickenss Victorian Businessmen
7
9
12
15
19
47
47
51
54
59
65
72
76
80
84
88
92
97
100
104
105
110
113
115
Introduction
HAROLD BLOOM
Charles Dickens reread his autobiographical novel, David
Copperfield, before he began to write Great Expectations. He
hoped thus not to repeat himself, and his hope was fulfilled:
David and Pip are very different personages. Yet Dickenss
anxiety was justified; both of these first-person narrators are
versions of Dickens himself, and only acute self-awareness on
the novelists part kept Pip from becoming as autobiographical
a figure as David had been. Still, one can wonder whether Pip
is not a better representation of Dickenss innermost being than
David is. Compared to Pips incessant and excessive sense of
guilt, Davids consciousness seems much freer, or at least works
in a more unimpeded fashion to liberate itself, in part, from the
personal past. Pip does not become a novelist, as David and
Dickens do, and Pip also does not submit to sentimentality, as
David does. We are asked to believe that David Copperfield
concludes the novel as a fully matured being, but we are left
with considerable doubts. Pip, perhaps because he is more
distanced from Dickens, seems more worthy of Dickenss
respect and is endowed by the novelist with a more powerful
imagination than the novelist David Copperfield enjoys.
Why does Pip have so pervasive a sense of guilt? Several
critics have remarked that, in Pip, love always emanates from
guilt, whether the love be for the father-substitutes Joe and
Magwitch, or the overwhelming passion for the beautiful,
mocking, and unattainable Estella. Dickenss best biographer,
Edgar Johnson, relates this erotic aspiration to the novelists
love affair with Ellen Ternan, an actress quite young enough to
have been his daughter.
Since Estella actually is Magwitchs daughter, and Magwitch
has adopted Pip as a son, pragmatically speaking, there is
something of an incest barrier between Pip and Estella, though
Pip consciously cannot be aware of this. And yet he is conscious
that she is part of my existence, part of myself: there is as
7
Biographical Sketch
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Landport, Portsea,
near Portsmouth, England, on February 7, 1812, the second of
eight children of John and Elizabeth Barrow Dickens. The
family moved to London in 1814, to Chatham in 1817, and
then back to London in 1822. By 1824 increasing financial
difficulties caused Dickenss father to be briefly imprisoned for
debt; Dickens himself was put to work for a few months at a
shoe-blacking warehouse. Memories of this painful period in
his life were to influence much of his later writing, in particular
the early chapters of David Copperfield.
After studying at the Wellington House Academy in London
(182427), Dickens worked as a solicitors clerk (182728), then
worked for various newspapers, first the True Sun (183234)
and later as a political reporter for the Morning Chronicle
(183436). In 1833 Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell,
but her family opposed any contemplated marriage. Dickens
never forgot Maria, and she served as the model for Dora in
David Copperfield.
In 1836 a collection of articles contributed to various
periodicals appeared in two volumes as Sketches by Boz,
Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. This was
followed by the enormously popular Posthumous Papers of the
Pickwick Club (183637). Like many of Dickenss later novels,
the Pickwick Papers first appeared in a series of monthly
chapbooks or parts. Other novels were serialized in
magazines before appearing in book form. In 1836 Dickens
married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he had ten children
before their separation in 1858. At the beginning of his
marriage, Catherines sixteen-year-old sister Mary lived with
them, but she died after a few months. The shock of this loss
affected Dickens permanently, and Mary would be the model
for many of the pure, saintly heroines in his novelssuch as
Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shopwho die at an early age.
Between 1837 and 1839 Dickens published a second novel,
Oliver Twist, in monthly installments in Bentleys Miscellany, a
9
11
14
List of Characters
Pip, the protagonist of the novel, is an orphan living with Mr.
and Mrs. Joe Gargery, his sister and brother-in-law. Realizing
with disgust his commonness once he encounters Miss
Havisham and Estella, he is delighted when he learns he has a
secret benefactor who wishes to make him a gentleman.
Estella, the adopted charge of Miss Havisham, has been raised
with the intention of enacting her guardians revenge on men.
Upon encountering Pip after she has been educated for a
lady, she tells him that I have no heart...no softness there,
nosympathysentimentnonsense. (237). She endures an
unhappy marriage to Bentley Drummle, who dies eleven years
later.
An heiress and the owner of Satis house, Miss Havisham
employs young Pip and delights in watching him play with
Estella. Soon she decides that Pip will suffer the wrongs that
she herself endured when her marriage was called off only
minutes before the ceremony.
Abel Magwitch, a convict who worked with and was later
betrayed by Compeyson, first encounters young Pip in the
marshes and then, threatening the boy, begs for food and a file.
When Pip reminds him of a young daughter he lost, Magwitch
aims to earn a fortune to repay the boy by making him a
gentleman through secret contribution.
An educated, gentlemanly criminal and former associate of
Magwitch, Compeyson uses his looks and his manners to shift
blame to Magwitch during a trial, sparking an eternal feud. He
also uses his wiles to attract Miss Havisham and eventually to
jilt her. Compeyson is responsible for Magwitchs capture at the
end of the novel.
15
Joe Gargery is an honest, earnest blacksmith and Pips brotherin-law, who endures marriage to a shrill woman without
complaint. Later, his pride and love for Pip supersede Pips
callous shunning of his former social status.
Mrs. Joe is Pips sister, more than twenty years his elder, who
never loses a chance to remind her charge that she brought
him up by hand. This effort is often conducted with the help
of a cane she calls Tickler. Dissatisfied with her station in life,
and often shrill, jealous, and confrontational, she is silenced
when Orlick strikes her in the back of the head.
Pips dark shadow throughout the book, Orlick first works as a
day laborer in Joes forge and later works as a porter at Satis
house. He is responsible for the attack on Mrs. Joe, and he
never forgives Pip for ruining his chances of wooing Biddy. He
develops an association with Compeyson; baiting Pip with
mention of Magwitch, Orlick lures Pip to a sluice-house in the
marshes and attempts to kill him.
Jaggers is an intimidating and prominent criminal lawyer in
London who assumes the role of Pips legal guardian once
Magwitch decides to support him in secret. Jaggerss
association with Miss Havisham leads Pip to believe that she is
in fact his benefactor. Cold and cruel with his clients and frugal
with his emotions and lifestyle, Jaggers is involved with the
dirty business of being an Old Bailey attorneytherefore he
frequently washes his hands with scented soap. He brings
Estella to be adopted by Miss Havisham.
Pip first encounters Herbert Pocketthe son of Miss
Havishams cousin, Matthew Pocketas a pale young
gentleman lurking in the courtyard at Satis house. Once Pip is
informed of his intentions to be made a gentleman, he lives
with Herbert; the two become close companions and Herbert
nicknames Pip Handel. Herbert wants to make a fortune as a
merchant so that he can marry Clara Bailey.
16
18
hour or for a day, I could not have remembered his face even
afterwards, as having been more attentive. (38) After an hour
of travel, the convict apologizes to Joe for taking food from his
home; Joe promptly forgives him. Critics make much of this
exchange, noting both Joes genuine humanity and the
foundation of Pips kindness toward the convict. Noting a
bizarre clicking the convicts throat, Pip watches intently as the
two men are loaded back onto the ship. On the way home, Joe
carries his exhausted young charge back, and they deliver news
of the convicts confession to the awaiting visitors.
One evening, Pip, who is being taught to write by Mr.
Wopsles great aunt, practices his script by writing Joe a letter.
Joe says that he has never been to school; that he lived in the
house until he met Pips sister, whom he describes as a fine
figure of a woman, in part for her efforts raising Pip. Joe
allows, however, that his lack of formal schooling could be
attributed to his wifes disinterest in education. Pip declares
that from that moment forward, he saw Joe as his equal.
During a market day shortly thereafter, Pumblechook
announces that Pip is to play at the home of Miss Havisham, a
woman known throughout town for being an immensely rich
and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded
against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion. (51) So the
next morning, a scrubbed and linen-bedecked Pip is delivered
to Pumblechooks shop. They arrive at Miss Havishams
together, and a window is raised; Pumblechook responds to a
prompt that Pip indeed stands downstairs, learns that he is
unwanted on the premises, and leaves Pip in the hands of a
young lady who meets him at the gate.
Pips young escort informs him that the name of the house is
Satisor enoughand leads him to a dressing room, where a
lady dressed in full wedding regalia awaits. Pip soon notices
that everything meant to be white is faded and that the
womans skin seems to hang off her bones. Miss Havisham
commands Pip to play, and when his response is a confused
stare, turns her eyes to her reflection in the looking glass and
bids Pip to call the girl, Estella. At Miss Havishams behest Pip
plays beggar my neighbour with Estella, who labels him a
21
that Pip always bears the name Pip and that the name of the
person who is his benefactor may not be revealed until a time
of his benefactors choosing. Next the details of arrangement
are laid out, including the money set aside for Pips lodging and
education and the fact that Jaggers should be considered Pips
guardian. Matthew Pocketthe man, Pip remembers, Miss
Havisham said should be at the head of the table when she is
laid to restshould be his tutor, and twenty guineas shall be
laid aside for Pips work-clothes. Additionally, Jaggers says Joe
is to be compensated for the loss of Pips services, while Joe
protests, insisting that no monetary compensation could suffice
for the loss of a child.
Biddy attempts to explain the news to Mrs. Joe, and Pip feels
sheepish when he hears Biddy and Joe discuss his pending
absence. He suggests that the tailor send his new clothes to
Pumblechooks so he is not made into a spectacle. Biddy and Joe
insist that theyas well as Wopsle and the Hubblesmight like
to see Pips new gen-teel figure. Joe burns Pips documents of
indenture, and after an early dinner, strolls out to meet him in
the marshes. Later Pip speaks to Biddy, and when she makes
him uncomfortable by suggesting that Joe was not simply
backward and confused but proud, Pip accuses her of being
envious of his good fortune. Visiting the tailor, Mr. Trabb, Pip
delivers the news of his good fortune; Mr. Trabbs reaction
convinces Pip of the power of money. Once hats, boots, and
stockings have been ordered, Pip approaches Pumblechook,
who receives him festively. They eat and drink to Pips sisters
health, and Pumblechook pledges to keep Joe up to the mark.
On Friday Pip puts on his new clothes and pays a visit to Miss
Havisham, who says she has heard from Jaggers that Pip has
been adopted by an unnamed rich person. As she bids him
goodbye, she encourages him to always keep the name of Pip.
As their time together dwindles, Pip grows more appreciative of
Joe and Biddys company. On his last night, he dresses himself
in his new clothes and feels melancholy despite their attempts to
seem festive. Early the next morning Pip dresses, eats a hurried
breakfast, and walks away. He lays his hand down on the finger
post of the village and says goodbye.
27
Volume Two
Pip makes the five-hour journey to London and discovers a
dirty city full of narrow streets. He takes a coach to Little
Britain, just outside Smithfield, and arrives at Jaggerss office
only to find his guardian still in court. Mike, a one-eyed client,
is asked to leave so that Pip can sit inside the office. While Pip
waits, he stares around the office, wondering about the odd
objects inside, such as a pistol, a sword, and two casts of faces.
He sits until he cannot bear the heat and the menacing looks of
the two casts; then, informing the clerk that hed like to take a
walk, enters Smithfield, asmear with filth and fat and blood
and foam. (165) Beyond he enters Newgate Prison and sees
the Debtors door, where a drunk minister of justice informs
him four people are scheduled to be hung the following day.
Checking back in at Jaggerss office and finding him still gone,
Pip heads toward a square in the opposite direction. There he
finds a group of people also awaiting Jaggerss arrival. Jaggers
appears and addresses all of the people, including a group of
poor Jews, and eventually rebukes or casts them aside so that he
and Pip can return to the office. Jaggerss purpose in life,
according to Steven Newman, is to extort the worst in
everybody. In this first glimpse of his typical day at work, it is
obvious that the man is incapable of discussing or considering.
Like the objects in his office, the man himself seems an
amalgam of mystery and violence.
Finally, Jaggers brings Pip into his office and, while
lunching, informs him that he is to stay at Barnards Inn with
young Mr. Pocket until Monday, at which point he should
accompany young Mr. Pocket to his father Matthews house.
After receiving details of his credit and allowance, Pip makes his
way toward Barnards Inn with Jaggerss clerk, Wemmick.
Barnards Inn is a shabby group of buildings, and Wemmick
leads Pip up a flight of stairs which appeared to be slowly
collapsing into sawdust. (173) Bidding him farewell, Wemmick
is surprised when Pip commits the social error of inviting a
superior to shake his hand. After more than half an hour, young
Mr. Pocket emerges with an apology and a cone-shaped wicker
28
The next day Pip sets off for his Satis house, thinking first
with remorse that he should stay with Joe, but eventually
deciding to stay at the Blue Boar. Leaving by the afternoon
coach, Pip realizes that he was traveling with his convict, who is
shackled to another. Though their eyes meet, the convict
doesnt recognize Pip; as they continue toward London, a
feeling of coincidence tingles in the base of Pips spine. As he
sits in the Blue Boars empty coffee-room, he picks up a local
newspaper that includes an article about him, attributing his
earliest fortunes to Pumblechook.
Brooks argues that this return home from London is the first
in a series of repetitionsof attempted reparations for Joe, of
knowledge seeking at Satis house. It seems, in fact, to be a
harbinger of repressed thoughts and actions when the convict
is seated on Pips coach. Immediately before falling asleep on
the coach, Pip considers whether he should return the twopound notes to the convict. When he awakens, the first words
he hears are Two-pound notes. Its as though hopes of Pips
progress are subverted by the reappearance of the convict. He
hopes that he will never be able to go home again. These
thoughts, Morgenthaler contends, suggest that Pip represents
the evolution of the human species away from its primitive
origins. Pip feels great guilt about his own developing
prejudices and the excuses he gives himself for being unable to
stay with Joe. All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to
the self-swindlers.... that I should innocently take a bad halfcrown of somebody elses manufacture is reasonable enough;
but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my
own make, as good money! (225)
When Pip arrives at Miss Havishams the next morning, he
is shocked when Orlick opens the door. Commenting
insolently that he has left the forge, Orlick leads Pip into the
hall. Pip then meets Miss Sarah Pocket, who brings him to
Miss Havisham and an elegant lady. Pip realizes that the lady is
Estella, and each proclaims the other to be much changed.
When they are left alone in the garden, Estella discloses that
she saw the fight break out between Herbert and Pip long
before, and that she was gratified by it. Discussing their
32
after her return from the Continent, Estella insists that its
simply part of the plan. After dropping her off in Richmond,
Pip returns to Hammersmith with a heavy heart, considering
airing his woes to Mr. Pocket, and soon deciding against it.
As he has grown accustomed to London, Pip has become
used to an extravagant lifestyle which includes the employment
of a servant (called the Avenger) and inclusion in a club called
The Finches of the Grove, whose members dine expensively
once every two weeks and quarrel among themselves. When
Pip and Herbert realize they have plummeted deeply into debt,
they sit down at the table and calculate their affairs. These
efforts, for Pip, include the act of leaving a Margin, (276) to
round the amount of their debt up to the nearest whole
number. Pip is enjoying his busywork one evening when a
letter, signed Trabb & Co., arrives bearing the news of his
sisters death. Pip returns home, realizing with great shock that
Mrs. Joes is the first death through which he has lived. When
he arrives, he finds the funeral an ostentatious affair and Joe
crippled with grief. Biddy is very helpful, and Trabb conducts
the entire ceremony with a pomp that pains Joe, who says he
would have preferred to carry his wife to the church himself.
Pumblechook and the Hubbles seem to relish the parade to the
churchyard. When everyone finally leaves, Pip and Biddy
discuss her prospects now that she is no longer saddled with
the responsibility of Mrs. Joe. Biddy suggests that she might
enjoy taking a teaching job. When Pip asks about the specifics
of his sisters final hours, Biddy tells him that her last words
were Joe, then Pardon, and then Pip. Biddy admits that
she is still being pursued by Orlick, and Pip is disturbed by this
notion as well as the realization that Biddy has acquired a habit
of repeating everything he says. Pip asks to spend the night in
his childhood room, and the next morning he sets off early,
promising that hell visit soon.
When Pips twenty-first birthday arrives, Jaggers summons
him to his office, calls him Mr. Pip, and inquires after his lack
of financial stability. When Pip asks whether his benefactor will
be revealed to him on this day, Jaggers says no. He does,
however, present Pip with a 500-pound note, with the news
35
Volume Three
Pip is troubled by the thought of an unexpected visitor lurking
outside on the stairs, and the task of keeping his benefactor
away from the prying eyes of his old neighbor woman and her
niece seems arduous. He informs the watchman that the man
who asked for him was his uncle and inquires after other
unknown visitors. The watchman says that he thought another
person was with his unclea working person, wearing dustcolored clothes. As the clock strikes six in the morning Pip
lights the fire; shortly thereafter, he tells the old woman and
her niece to modify breakfast, as his uncle had arrived during
the night. When the convict awakens, he tells Pip that his real
name is Abel Magwitch, but that he came to call himself Provis
during his travels. He said that he hopes he is not known in
London, though he was tried there most recently, and that he
would not advertise the fact that he had returned from
Australia. Pip concludes that he must offer the man lodging
and that hell have to confide in Herbert, although Provis
insists upon studying Herberts physiognomy before disclosure.
Pip secures a lodging house for his so-called uncle, and then
goes to see Jaggers, who, after confirming that his benefactor
was indeed Abel Magwitch of New South Wales, says that he
38
doesnt want to hear any more about the situation. Jaggers says
that when Magwitch gave a distant hint of wanting to return to
England, he was discouraged and told that he would unlikely
be granted a pardon. Then he allows that Wemmick received a
letter from a colonist named Provis interested in Pips address.
After that disclosure, the conversation is terminated. This
admission, says Morgenthaler, is the revelation of the fairy tale
turns inside outthe happy ending is provided by a member of
low society, proving, perhaps, Darwins idea of interdependence
of all things. With Pips revelation and Jaggerss confirmation,
moral distinctions between categories are forever blurred.
Since Wemmick is out, Pip returns home to find Magwitch
drinking rum. Even after his clothes are replaced, the convict
still seems untamed and mysterious, and Pip is haunted by the
fact that the man can be hanged on his account. Herbert
returns and is halted by the sight of Magwitch; the three men
sit by the fire as Pip explains the entire situation. Magwitch
assures the two young men that hell always have a gen-teel
muzzle on. (341) Herbert and Pip discuss the situation, and
Herbert says that although he understands Pips impulse to
separate himself from Magwitchs funding and friendship, he
sees danger in Pips renunciation of this stubborn and
passionate man who for so long has had such a fixed idea to
help him. They decide that the only thing to do is to convince
Magwitch to leave England.
Magwitch sits down to tell the boys the story of his life,
including mention of the other convict Pip encountered in the
marshes, a man named Compeyson. This man, whom
Magwitch met twenty years earlier, was good-looking and
educated, and he soon took in Magwitch to be his partner in
swindling. Compeysons other partner was a dying man named
Arthur who lived upstairs; one evening Arthur, who was
perpetually haunted by the image of a mad woman dressed all
in white, saw the woman coming toward him with a shroud,
and promptly died. During his employment with Compeyson
Magwitch was tried and convicted of misdemeanor; soon after
the two men were together tried for felony. At the trial,
Compeysons character was celebrated, while Magwitch was
39
implicated. For this, after a series of trials and escapes, the two
men became mortal enemies. As Magwitch stands smoking by
the fire, Herbert pencils in the cover of a book, Young
Havishams name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man who
professed to be Miss Havishams lover. Fearful and vowing
not to mention Estella to Provis, Pip sets off to find Estella the
next day. He is told he can find her at Satis house, and as he
passes the Blue Boar for breakfast and to clean up, he sees
Bentley Drummle. They meet and exchange tense pleasantries
until a waiter informs Drummle that the lady will not ride.
Before Pip leaves he thinks he spots Orlick.
Miss Havisham and Estella are surprised to greet Pip, and he
tells them that hes discovered the secret of his patronage. In
response to Pips query, Miss Havisham says that she brought
him to Satis house as she might have any other chance boy, and
that her association with Jaggers has nothing to do with Pips
expectations. Pip expresses disdain that she has misled Herbert
and Matthew Pocket as well as himself, and begs Miss
Havisham do the lasting service for Herbert that he himself
began. He then professes his love for Estella, who replies in
kind that she doesnt understand such a thing. She admits that
she is to be married to Bentley Drummle. Pip begs her to
bestow herself at the very least on someone more worthy, and
explains that she will never leave his heart. He moves through
the gate and toward London and finds a note from Wemmick
awaiting him at the Temple, urging him not to go home.
After spending the night at a rooming house in Covent
Garden, Pip sets off for Walworth. Wemmick tells Pip that
Compeyson is living in London. Herbert, instructed by
Wemmick to hide Magwitch until a plan can be constructed for
his safe escape, has brought the convict to live with the father
of his intended, Clara. Pip leaves Wemmicknoting from the
tea service the imminent arrival of Miss Skiffinsand finds
Herbert at the house Wemmick indicated. Herbert says that
the housekeeper is happy to have the company of Magwitch
upstairs from Claras father, the surly, noisy, drunk Mr. Barley.
Herbert, Pip, and Magwitch construct a planthey will take
Magwitch down the river by boat, when the time is right.
40
forgive her. (398) Pip insists that he has forgiven her, and Miss
Havisham cries despairingly and repeatedly, What have I
done! Pip asks after Estella, and Miss Havisham says that she
doesnt know whose child she was but that Jaggers brought her
when she was two or three. They part, and Pip walks through
the brewery, taking stock of the places where he felt such
childish hope and pain. As he looks into the window, he seems
Miss Havisham throw herself onto the fire. He rushes in and
attempting to smother the flames with his coat and his hands,
he burns himself. A surgeon arrives and pronounces her
wounds serious and her shock potentially more fatal. The
surgeon promises to write to Estella, who is in Paris. Pip sets
off to notify the family personally.
Back at Barleys house, Herbert dresses Pips wounds and
speaks of a discussion he had with Magwitch in which
Magwitch mentions a woman with whom he had a child and
many struggles. Magwitch told Herbert that the woman was
vengeful to the point of murder, and that though she was
acquitted, the woman swore that she would destroy the child.
Fearful that he would be the cause of the childs death,
Magwitch hid himself. Herbert says that when Pip was seven
and ran into Magwitch in the churchyard, Magwitch was
reminded of the little girl. Pip asks Herbert to confirm that he
has no feverthat he is in the right frame of mindand then
explains patiently that the man they have in hiding is Estellas
father.
Pip goes to Little Britain and makes the arrangements with
Jaggers and Wemmick for Herberts future. Pip mentions that
he engaged Miss Havisham in a discussion of Estellas origins,
saying later that he, unlike Miss Havisham, knew Estellas
mother. Jaggers is startled, and Pip says he has seen Estellas
mother in the past three days, and that he knows her father:
Provis, from New South Wales. Then Pip discloses all that he
knows, leaving Jaggers to infer that some information was
imparted by Miss Havisham rather than by Wemmick. Jaggers
abruptly changes the subject, and Pip implores Wemmick
invoking his pleasant home and aging fatherto urge his
superior to be more forthright. Jaggers maps out the story for
42
Pip and asks for whose benefit the secret should be revealed.
When Pip fails to provide an answer, Jaggers returns once
again to his work. When a client appears, sniveling, shortly
thereafter, Jaggers dismisses him, insisting Ill have no feelings
here. (415)
Pip settles Herberts affairs, and Herbert tells Pip that his
career is progressing such that he might establish a branchhouse in Cairo, where he and Clara hope to live. A few days
later, they receive a post from Walworth which tells them the
escape should be plotted for Wednesday. Herbert suggests they
engage Startop in the plan, and they begin to construct a
detailed scheme which provides for Pips injured hands. Pip
receives an anonymous note which summons him to the old
marshes in order to receive information about his uncle Provis.
Pip leaves immediately, stopping at Satis house to inquire after
Miss Havisham, and then taking dinner in an inn. He engages
the landlord in a unwitting conversation about his own history,
with Pumblechook cited as his earliest benefactor. As Pip
listens, he realizes how much of an impostor Pumblechook was,
and how good, honest, and uncomplaining Joe was.
Pip walks through the marshes and seeing a light in the old
sluice house, walks in. He calls out to see if anyone is nearby,
and is captured, he realizes, by Orlick. Orlick says that he is
going to kill Pipas he did his sisterand that he knows about
Provis and Pips plans to smuggle him away. Stopping first to
drink, he picks up a hammer. Pip shouts and struggles with all
his might, hears voices, and sees Orlick emerge from the
struggle and run into the night. It is Herbert and Startop come
to his rescue, and they assure Pip that he has the next day to
rest before the journey. They say that in Pips haste he dropped
the letter, and so they tried to find him at Miss Havishams.
Finding Pip nowhere they retired to the Blue Boar, which Pip
had often mentioned, and heard from Trabbs boy that Pip had
been seen going in the direction of the sluice house. It is
Orlick, Moynahan argues, not Magwitch, who represents the
true criminal in Great Expectations, for his origins are
mysterious and he has no regret for any of his actions. They
work side by side, and in some ways, Orlick represents the
43
his lonely home and finds Wemmick on the stairs, looking for
him. He asks if Pip will meet him at the Castle on Monday
morning, and when he does, the two take a little walk and find,
inside a church, Miss Skiffins and a wedding party. The two are
married, and Pip promises not to mention a word of the
festivities in Little Britain.
Pip goes to visits the ailing Magwitch in prison. Though
Jaggers put in an application for a trial postponement given
the state of his client, Magwitch is found guilty and sentenced
to death. In response, Magwitch says, I have received my
sentence of Death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours.
(458) As the days wear on, Pip knows the end is near. When
words fail his benefactor, Pip tells him, immediately before
death, that he knows of Magwitchs child, that she was still
alive, and that he loves her. Brooks argues that Magwitchs
statement before the court is Dickens way of contrasting
human plots, such as the law, with the laws of the universe,
which render futile both actions and attempts at
interpretation. The shaft of light that falls onto all the courts
attendants eliminates the distinction between the judge and
the judged and the guilty and the innocent. Pips evolution is
apparent in his observation of the broad shaft of light ...
linking both together, and perhaps reminding some among
the audience, how both were passing on, with absolute
equality, to the greater Judgment that knoweth all things and
cannot err. (458)
Pip falls ill himself after Magwitchs death, and his debt is so
great that he is arrested and carried off to prison. In his abject
state he begins hallucinating, seeing Miss Havisham and Orlick
and finally Joe. Pip finally snaps out of his feverish haze and
realizes that Joe actually is sitting at his bedside, having come
to nurse him back to health. When Joe composes a note to
Biddy, telling of Pips recovery, Pip realizes that Biddy has
taught Joe to write. Joe says that Miss Havisham died about a
week after Pip took ill, and that she distributed her wealth
among the Pockets, including four thousand pounds to
Matthew. He also tells Pip Orlick was arrested and thrown into
the county jail for robbing Pumblechook. One Sunday, the
45
still-weak Pip and Joe go for an outing, and Pip tries to tell Joe
the story of MagwitchJoe, however, is not interested in
revisiting painful memories. Upon rising the next morning, Pip
realizes that Joe is gone. He has left only a note and a receipt
indicating that he had paid all of Pips debt.
In some ways, Pips emergence from brainfever finds him a
child againin the care of Joe, absolved of all his mistakes.
Still, innocence is lost, and Pip must address his lost innocence
head on. He returns to find Satis House in a state of disarray,
readying for an auction. Stopping at the Blue Boar, Pip
encounters Pumblechook, who is very rude to him. Finally, he
goes back to his old home, discovering, upon meeting Joe and
Biddy, that he arrived on their wedding day. Pip is surprised
as his own slight hopes of a happy marriage with Biddy are
dashedyet he expresses nothing but happiness for the couple.
Returning to London, Pip sells his few possessions and takes a
partnership with Herbert. Eleven years later he returns to Joe
and Biddy, and finds a young childthat theyve named Pip
sitting before the hearth. Biddy insists that Pip must marry, but
Pip tells her that hes already an old bachelor.
After admitting to Biddy that he has not forgotten Estella,
Pip goes to revisit the site of Satis house one last time. He
walks through the overgrown garden in the mist and thinks of
Estella, about her unhappy life and the news that her cruel
husband, Bentley Drummle, died two years earlier. As he
continues to stroll pensively, Estellas figure appears in the
distance. She declares herself greatly changed and admits that
excluding the grounds, she has lost everything, little by little.
She says she has often thought of Pip and that she never
imagined that in taking leave of Satis house that shed also take
leave of him. She says that she has been bent and broken, but
that she is, she hopes, in better shape. They take hands and
walk out of the ruins together.
Work Cited
Mitchell, Charlotte, ed. Great Expectations. Penguin Classics, 1996.
46
Critical Views
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ON THE UNAMIABLE
ESTELLA AND PIP AS FUNCTION OF CLASS SNOBBERY
Estella is a curious addition to the gallery of unamiable women
painted by Dickens. In my youth it was commonly said that
Dickens could not draw women. The people who said this
were thinking of Agnes Wickfield and Esther Summerson, of
Little Dorrit and Florence Dombey, and thinking of them as
ridiculous idealizations of their sex.1 Gissing put a stop to that
by asking whether shrews like Mrs. Raddle, Mrs. Macstinger,
Mrs. Gargery, fools like Mrs. Nickleby and Flora Finching,
warped spinsters like Rosa Dartle and Miss Wade, were not
masterpieces of woman drawing.2 And they are all unamiable.
* * * Of course Dickens with his imagination could invent
amiable women by the dozen; but somehow he could not or
would not bring them to life as he brought the others. We
doubt whether he ever knew a little Dorrit; but Fanny Dorrit3
is from the life unmistakably. So is Estella. She is a much more
elaborate study than Fanny, and, I should guess, a recent one.
Dickens, when he let himself go in Great Expectations, was
separated from his wife and free to make more intimate
acquaintances with women than a domesticated man can. * * *
It is not necessary to suggest a love affair; for Dickens could get
from a passing glance a hint which he could expand into a fullgrown character. The point concerns us here only because it is
the point on which the ending of Great Expectations turns:
namely, that Estella is a born tormentor. She deliberately
torments Pip all through for the fun of it; and in the little we
hear of her intercourse with others there is no suggestion of a
moment of kindness: in fact her tormenting of Pip is almost
affectionate in contrast to the cold disdain of her attitude
towards the people who were not worth tormenting. It is not
surprising that the unfortunate Bentley Drummle, whom she
marries in the stupidity of sheer perversity, is obliged to defend
himself from her clever malice with his fists: a consolation to us
47
for Pips broken heart, but not altogether a credible one; for
the real Estellas can usually intimidate the real Bentley
Drummles. At all events the final sugary suggestion of Estella
redeemed by Bentleys thrashings and waste of her money, and
living happily with Pip for ever after, provoked even Dickenss
eldest son to rebel against it, most justly.4
Apart from this the story is the most perfect of Dickenss
works. In it he does not muddle himself with the ridiculous
plots that appear like vestiges of the stone age in many of his
books, from Oliver Twist to the end. The story is built round a
single and simple catastrophe: the revelation to Pip of the
source of his great expectations. There is, it is true, a trace of
the old plot superstition in Estella turning out to be
Magwitchs daughter; but it provides a touchingly happy
ending for that heroic Warmint. Who could have the heart to
grudge it to him?
As our social conscience expands and makes the intense class
snobbery of the nineteenth century seem less natural to us, the
tragedy of Great Expectations will lose some of its appeal. I have
already wondered whether Dickens himself ever came to see
that his agonizing sensitiveness about the blacking bottles and
his resentment of his mothers opposition to his escape from
them was not too snobbish to deserve all the sympathy he
claimed for it. Compare the case of H.G. Wells, our nearest to
a twentieth-century Dickens. Wells hated being a drapers
assistant as much as Dickens hated being a warehouse boy; but
he was not in the least ashamed of it, and did not blame his
mother for regarding it as the summit of her ambition for
him.5 Fate having imposed on that engaging cricketer Mr.
Wellss father an incongruous means of livelihood in the shape
of a small shop, shopkeeping did not present itself to the young
Wells as beneath him, whereas to the genteel Dickens being a
warehouse boy was an unbearable comedown. Still, I cannot
help speculating on whether if Dickens had not killed himself
prematurely to pile up money for that excessive family of his,
he might not have reached a stage at which he could have got
as much fun out of the blacking bottles as Mr. Wells got out of
his abhorred drapers counter.
48
Notes
1. Dickenss sentimental heroines: Agnes Wickfield: daughter of the
Canterbury solicitor with whom David Copperfield boards while at
school, Davids tutelary angel and second wifeOrwell calls her the real
legless angel of Victorian romance. Little Dorrit: the self-sacrificing
heroine of the novel named for her, who is born and raised in debtors
prison and continues to hover as ministering angel over her family after
their release. Florence Dombey: the humiliated daughter of the purseproud Dombey clan, whose father, in prosperity, spurns her for not being
a male and, in adversity, comes to depend on her samaritan surveillance.
2. Assorted shrews, termagants, and hysterics. Mrs. Raddle: vitriolic
landlady in Pickwick Papers. Mrs. Macstinger: imperious widow in Dombey
and Son, hell-bent on a second marriage. Mrs. Nickleby: the heros
mother, given to nonstop twaddle. Rosa Dartle: the repressed and
masochistic house-companion in David Copperfield, in love with the
voluptuary son of the house. Miss Wade: a head-strong young woman in
Little Dorrit, whose History of a Self-Tormentor (book 2, chapter 21) is
often cited as evidence of Dickenss grasp of abnormal types.
3. Little Dorrits go-getting older sister, who marries into the Merdle
plutocracy.
4. In his introduction to the novel in the Macmillan Edition (1904).
For his judgment on the conclusion of Great Expectations, see also p. 500
in the original text.
5. H.G. Wells (18661946), the prolific author of science fiction,
popular histories, and novels about lower-middle-class life (Kipps, Tono
Bungay, Mr. Polly), began life as a drapers apprentice at thirteen, after his
father, a shopkeeper and part-time professional cricketer, was crippled in
an accident and his mother had to abandon the Wellss failing china shop
to work as a housekeeper. As Shaw suggests, Mrs. Wells free-associated
drapery with the tuxedos and tailcoats of the very rich who passed in front
of the shop; per Wells himself, Almost as unquestioning as her belief in
Our Father and Our Saviour was her belief in drapers. As Shaw also
suggests, Wellsno Trabbs boyloathed his job and ran away at sixteen
to become an ushera teaching assistant.
50
( ... )
Significantly, Dickenss most successful books (not his best
books) are The Pickwick Papers, which is not a novel, and Hard
Times and A Tale of Two Cities, which are not funny. As a
novelist his natural fertility greatly hampers him, because the
burlesque which he is never able to resist is constantly breaking
into what ought to be serious situations. There is a good
example of this in the opening chapter of Great Expectations.
The escaped convict, Magwitch, has just captured the six-yearold Pip in the churchyard. The scene starts terrifyingly
enough, from Pips point of view. The convict, smothered in
mud and with his chain trailing from his leg, suddenly starts up
among the tombs, grabs the child, turns him upside down and
robs his pockets. Then he begins terrorising him into bringing
food and a file:
He held me by the arms in an upright position on the
top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:
You bring me, tomorrow morning early, that file and
them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery
over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word
or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such
a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be
let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any
partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and
liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I aint alone,
as you may think I am. Theres a young man hid with me,
in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That
young man hears the words I speak. That young man has
a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and
at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to
attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may
lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up,
may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself
comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly
creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am
keeping that young man from harming you at the present
52
Note
3. Chapter 4: the appalling sums Murdstone forces him to learn.
[Editor.]
53
these words, that I secretly intended to revisit the site of the old
house that evening alone, for her sake. Yes, even so. For
Estellas sake (chapter 59). Are we to understand that the
experience of Satis House has never really been mastered? Is its
nightmare energy still present in the text as well? The original
end may have an advantage in denying to Pips text the
possibility of any reflux of energy, any new aspirations, the
undoing of anything already done, the unbinding of energy
that has been bound and led to discharge.
As at the start of the novel we had the impression of a life
not yet subject to plota life in search of the sense of plot that
would only gradually begin to precipitate around itso at the
end we have the impression of a life that has outlived plot,
renounced plot, been cured of it: life that is left over. What
follows the recognition of Magwitch is left over, and any
renewal of expectation and plottingsuch as a revived romance
with Estellawould have to belong to another story. It is with
the image of a life bereft of plot, of movement and desire, that
the novel most appropriately leaves us.
Notes
1. Andr Gide (18691951) preached and practiced the subversion of
conventional plot constructions and character definitions in nearly all of
his later works, most famously in The Counterfeiters (1925). For Gide the
behaviour and function of the characters reveal themselves by trial and
error, often by chance or in answer to questions Gide himself puts to
thempretty much in the way scientists come by their information in
conducting their research. In the central chapter of The Counterfeiters to
which Brooks refers, Edouard Explains His Theory of the Novel (part
2, chapter 3), Gides alter ego expresses his opinionby now, thanks
largely to Gide, a commonplacethat of all literary genres, the novel
remains the freest, the most lawless (Gide uses the English word).
[Editor.]
2. On the theme of reading in the novel, see Max Byrd, Reading in
Great Expectations, PMLA 91, no. 2 (1976), 25965.
3. I think (Latin). By hitching an English (or any other modern)
noun, pronoun, or article to the verb, the writer arrives at some such
meaning as awareness or the cognate cogitation. [Editor.]
8. Literally, things said in passing. [Editor.]
58
Notes
4. Coverlets draped over the backs of chairs and sofas to keep them
from soilure, specifically a protection against hair oil (imported from the
Indonesian seaport Makassar).
5. See esp. book 1, chapter 25, section 5, in which Marx, citing the
Public Health Reports for 186566, attacks the appalling living conditions
of English workingmen.
6. As a formal term in literary criticism, the phrase first appears in
John Ruskins Modern Painters, volume 3, part 4, chapter 12 (1856), in
which he imputes the fallacy to writers who are over-dazzled by
emotion without sufficient mental powers to control their feelings: the
state of mind which attributes the characters of a living creature to [nonhuman phenomena] is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief or
by any other sensation that ends by falsifying the object.
lies about him until his mouth is stuffed with flowers. Estella
treats his affections with cold contempt until her icy pride is
broken by a brutal husband. In this series Orlick and Drummle
behave far more like instruments of vengeance than like threedimensional characters with understandable grudges of their
own. In terms of my complete argument, they enact an
aggressive potential that the novel defines, through patterns of
analogy and linked resemblances, as belonging in the end to
Pip and to his unconscionably ambitious hopes.
When Miss Havisham bursts into flames, there is no Orlick
or Drummle in the vicinity to be accused of having set a match
to her. In the long series of violence which runs through Great
Expectations from the beginning to end, this is one climax of
violence that can be construed as nothing more than accidental.
And yet it is an accident which Pip, on two occasions, has
foreseen. Before Miss Havisham burns under the eye of the
horror-struck hero, she has already come to a violent end twice
in his hallucinated fantasiesin Pips visionary experiences in
the abandoned brewery, where he sees Miss Havisham hanging
by the neck from a beam. He has this vision once as a child, on
the occasion of his first visit to Satis House, and once as an
adult, on the occasion of his last visit, just a few minutes before
Miss Havishams accident occurs. What are we to make, if
anything, of these peculiar hallucinatory presentiments and of
the coincidence by which they come true? * * *
How do these hallucinations, the second followed
immediately by Miss Havishams fatal accident, add to the
burden of the heros guilt? The answer is obvious. Because Pips
destructive fantasy comes true in reality, he experiences the
equivalent of a murderers guilt. As though he had the evil eye,
or as though there were more than a psychological truth in the
old clich, if looks could kill, Pip moves from the brewery,
where he has seen Miss Havisham hanging, to the door of her
room, where he gives her one long, last lookuntil she is
consumed by fire. But here the psychological truth suffices to
establish imaginative proof that Pip can no more escape
untainted from his relationship to the former patroness than he
can escape untainted from any of his relationships to characters
70
who have held and used the power to destroy or hamper his
ambitious struggles. In all these relationships the hero becomes
implicated in violence. With Estella, Pumblechook, and Mrs.
Joe, the aggressive drive is enacted by surrogates linked to the
hero himself by ties of analogy. With Miss Havisham the
surrogate is missing. Miss Havisham falls victim to the purely
accidental. But the impurity of Pips motivation, as it is
revealed through the device of the recurrent hallucination,
suggests an analogy between that part of Pip which wants Miss
Havisham at least punished, at most removed from this earth for
which she is so profoundly unfit, and the destroying fire itself.
* * *
[Moynahan briefly discusses Pips brainfever as a reflection
of his destructive impulses and his helplessness.]
When Pip wakes up from his delirium he finds himself a
child again, safe in the arms of the angelic Joe Gargery. But the
guilt of great expectations remains inexpiable, and the cruelly
beautiful original ending of the novel remains the only possible
true ending. Estella and Pip face each other across the
insurmountable barrier of lost innocence. The novel dramatises
the loss of innocence, and does not glibly present the hope of a
redemptory second birth for either its guilty hero or the guilty
society which shaped him. I have already said that Pips fantasy
of superabundant love brings him at last to a point of alienation
from the real world. And similarly Pips fantasy of power brings
him finally to a point where withdrawal is the only positive
moral response left to him.
The brick is taken down from its giddy place, a part of the
engine is hammered off. Pip cannot redeem his world. In no
conceivable sense a leader, he can only lead himself into a sort
of exile from his societys power centres. Living abroad as the
partner of a small, unambitious firm, he is to devote his
remaining life to doing the least possible harm to the smallest
number of people, so earning a visitors privileges in the lost
paradise where Biddy and Joe, the genuine innocents of the
novel, flourish in thoughtless content.
71
75
Notes
11. All references to Dickenss novels are to the Penguin editions and
will be cited parenthetically in the text.
12. Aristotles condemnation of usury in his Politics as unnatural
breeding because the offspring resembles the parent, quoted in Bernard
Grebanier, The Truth About Shylock (New York: Random House, 1962), p.
79, is probably the most famous and influential conflation of biological
notions with financial ones. Another example of this kind of conflation
can be found in the Victorian euphemism for orgasm, spending.
13. Beer, p. 63.
I
Pips relation with all characters is self-serving, even when he
claims to be acting altruistically, and in his narration he
occasionally covers this seemingly irreducible egotism with a
veneer of disingenuous contrition. One example is his relation
with Joe. As narrator, Pip claims to have developed a solicitude
for Joe, but that claim is everywhere contradicted by his
actions. After learning the selfless rationale for Joes
acquiesence in Mrs. Joes government, Pip writes:
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.
(7, 52)3
But nowhere afterwards are they equals. On the contrary, at
the end of the novel, Pip still condescends to Joe even as he
benefits from his ransoming, even as he egocentrically worries
what little Pip, his only posterity, will think of him. Similarly
distorted appraisals of his past conduct surface in his
comments on Biddy, Estella, Pumblechook, and Magwitch.
The pervasive pattern of Pips distortions raises the question of
whether there might be some inherent discontinuity between
the narrating and the narrated self. Peter Brooks hints at such
a contradiction when he cites Sartres remark that all
autobiographies are obituaries, excluding the margins of
experience. 4 But Pips bad faith runs deeper than that
phenomenological mauvaise foi described by Sartre: it is not
that Pip distorts by reifying the For-Itself in language. Instead,
as we will see, there never was an original self apart from
language to suffer such distortion. Selfhood has always already
been the narrators fictive construct, and Pips moral bad faith
serves to varnish that fact.
This deeper contradiction within the process of narration is
discernible in other retrospective judgments. After concluding
77
the account of his first visit to Satis House and his new
perception of Joes thick boots and coarse hands, Pip writes:
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.
(9, 76)
The admonitory tone of the passage makes it resemble an
epitaph on a tombstone: narration itself may be only the
substitution of a new set of dead letters for old. But in this
paragraph, too, Pip struggles to articulate the determinative
value of this first exposure to class, to wealth, to humiliation.
In retrospect Pip speaks as a developmental psychologist, a
Piaget, who believes in formative events and irrevocable stages
of development. (We may note in passing that the metaphor of
the chain also serves to exculpate Pip: after this point, he is no
longer responsible for his actions.) Yet even more important
than the passages self-serving function are its contradictory
metaphors for life. The chain is the privileged metaphor here,
implying absolute continuity, formative events, historical
determinism and a narration that could transparently trace
these. And yet a life is also a course, a movement through
time, that lacks the capacity to bind. The problem is not
simply one of mixed metaphors. Instead, language seems
incapable of articulating both diachrony and synchrony
simultaneously. Words mark the conversion of the synchronic
into the diachronic; to articulate is to be caught in a signifying
chain; what Pip struggles to express cannot be expressed: the
act of narration already excludes it. It is against this
background that we should understand the novels famous
opening, in which Pip reads his name from the dead letters of
the tombstones.
78
Notes
An early version of this paper was read at the Eleventh Annual
Colloquium on Literature and Film, sponsored by the Department of
Foreign Languages, West Virginia University, September 2527, 1986.
1. Julian Moynahan, in The Heros Guilt: The Case of Great
Expectations, Essays in Criticism 10 (1960): 6079, analyzed the
ambivalence of Pips troubled relations with all characters. Moynahans
study was one of the first thoroughgoing accounts of Pips persistent bad
faith: he sees Pip as implicated in violence and brought, finally, to a
point of alienation from the real world (77, 78). More recently, Colin
Manlove, in Neither Here Nor There: Uneasiness in Great Expectations,
Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 6170, cautioned that any simple view of
Pips career in terms only of spiritual amelioration and the finding of his
selfhood may require considerable qualification (69). Judith Weissman
and Steven Cohan, in Dickenss Great Expectations: Pips Arrested
Development, American Imago 38 (1981): 10526, hold that Pips
delusions persist through the last chapter because he does not confront
the sorrow and emptiness that make him need to lie (124). In 1984, two
studies of the novel saw Pips bad faith as rooted in the conditions of
narrative itself: Michael Ginsburgs Dickens and the Uncanny:
Repression and Displacement in Great Expectations, Dickens Studies
Annual 13 (1984): 11524, a Freudian reading, argued that the very
possibility of Pips storytelling is dependent on a repression which
manifests itself as something other than itself (123). Fiction-making is
therefore inherent in the guilt and desire of existence. Peter Brookss
study in Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in the Narrative (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), also fundamentally psychoanalytic, argues
that repression causes Pip to misread the plot of his life (130) and that
the return of Magwitch, the repressed, dramatizes Freuds dynamic
tension between eros and thanatos (139). Taken together with the recent
deconstructive readings of Dickens by Dianne F. Sadoff (Storytelling and
the Figure of the Father in Little Dorrit, PMLA 95 [1980]: 23445) and
Alistair M. Duckworth, (Little Dorrit and the Question of Closure,
Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 [1978]: 11030), this critical tradition which
calls into question the status of Pips self seems well established;
however, an alternative tradition, which sees the novel as finally valorizing
the self, continues. See note 7.
2. J. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading: Vast Gaps and Parting
Hours, in American Criticism in the Poststructuralist Age, ed. Ira
Konigsberg (Ann Arbor: Michigan Studies in the Humanities, 1981), 34.
3. All references to Great Expectations are from the Oxford Edition
(London: Oxford University Press, 1953). Chapter and page numbers are
given in parentheses.
4. Brooks, 114.
79
the mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not
dark; Estellas once proud eyes manifested a saddened
softened light; and as the morning mists had risen long ago
when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising
now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed
to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her (pp. 491,
493). This last use of stars, though different from the
consistent use of stars throughout the book, is not in violation
of the characters experiences or of the star symbol elsewhere.
Further, the stars here support, rather than oppose, Dickens
decision to accept Bulwer-Lyttons suggestion for the ending:
i.e., throughout the book, stars have symbolized illusion; quite
appropriately, then, stars here symbolize the very illusions
which Pip and Estella have healthfully dropped, as well as the
cooler, more tranquil, but very real promise left to them after
they have shed all misleading glamour. In my opinion, then,
Dickens choice of endings is both psychologically and
symbolically valid.
This paradoxical but perfectly accurate use of symbol
appears also in the way gardens are treated. Like stars, gardens
here are almost always associated with the illusory, the
inhuman, the destructive, the unnatural. Miss Havishams is a
rank garden (p. 63) wherein one looks upon a rank ruin of
cabbage-stalks, and one box tree that had been clipped round
long ago, like a pudding, and had a new growth at the top of it,
out of shape and of a different colour, as if that part of the
pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got burnt (p. 80; see
also p. 90). Pip the man sees ugliness and unnaturalness for
what they are, even as he was earlier appalled by the city
Wemmicks walking calmly through a garden full of plants,
shoots, and other growths in his Newgate greenhouse (pp.
264266) as distinct from his strolling about the little garden of
natural growths in Walworth (pp. 208211). But Pip the dupe
misses the symbolic similarity between himself as unnatural
plant raised by others manipulations, and these ugly growths
in Newgate and in Miss Havishams yard. This same confusion
turns up again as Estella tries to tell Pip that his devotion to
her is based upon illusion. Significantly, since they are walking
82
upon his mother, he is notably poking and stirring the fire all
the while, and therebyas I hope to establishletting us know
that such selflessness is the moral burden of the novel (pp.
4549). Again, after Pip has delivered himself of some splendid
lies in describing his first visit to Satis House, he refers to the
fire in a way that appears quite gratuitous except as symbol:
Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should like to tell you
something (p. 69). And when he has told Joe that he lied, Pip
penitently sits down in the ashes at [Joes] feet (p. 70). Joe is
hereby made into a sort of smithy-confessor, the center and
symbol of truth.
and tries to find his place in it. Dickens does strive to maintain
a degree of narrative coherence while depicting the images and
associations of Pips mind, but the qualities of rambling
thought, discontinuity, and private associations are strongly
evident. For example, the book begins not with the depiction
of some grand action, but with a young boy staring at five
graves and indulging in two aspects of mental activity: memory
and imagination.
My most vivid and broad impression of the identity of
things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable
raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found
out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with
nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of
this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were
dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew,
Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, the infant children of the
aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark
flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with
dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding
on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line
beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from
which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the
small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and
beginning to cry, was Pip.20
A short time later the convict forces the reader upside down
along with Pip:
When the church came to itselffor he was so sudden
and strong that he made it go head over heels before me,
and I saw the steeple under my feetwhen the church
came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone,
trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously. (2)
In both excerpts there is a freedom and fluidity of syntax which
correspond to the darting impressions within the frightened
childs mind.
86
show, too, why the myth of the orphanwhich at its high point
practically constituted orphan-worshipwas losing its efficacy
as the century drew to a close.
( ... )
Pips story repeats rather mechanically the paradigm of the
orphan-myth established in the 1840s.17 Like Jane Eyre, Pip
brings down by fire the great house he enters as a kind of
servant, destroying and purging it of the banked embers of its
past. The power Pip acquires over Miss Havisham is not Janes
quasi-supernatural spell over Rochester, but the power of his
sincere emotion, which to Dickens is always magical. In a key
scene, Miss Havisham kneels to him: Until you spoke to her
the other day, and until I saw in you a looking-glass that
showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I had
done. What have I done! What have I done! And so again,
twenty, fifty times over, What had she done! (GE, p. 411).
Miss Havishams yielding to the power of Pips emotion seems
somehow to ignite the fire that destroys her and Satis House, a
destruction that Pip, like Jane again, has foreseen in odd
premonitory visions. So the vision of the orphan passing
through a great house which his influence destroys and
restores retains its potency. But we do not think of this as we
read the novel.
For one thing, its point of view makes us aware not of Pips
power over his world, but of the power of his world over him.
His early perspectivethat of the small bundle of shivers
growing afraid of it all and beginning to cryis never really
lost. His adult life is still pervaded by his childhood terrors, so
that he does not convey to us his powers even when he
commands them. Of course, Dickens specialty is the wormseye perspective of a monstrous world looming large over a
helpless child, but in Great Expectations the terror is not simply
a trick of camera angle, as it sometimes is in Dickens. It is
inherent in Pips situation: he really is alone. For the first time
in the novels we have looked at, the orphans parents are
implacably dead, equated only with their tombstones. Father
89
103
104
Annotated Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter, Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
This thousand-plus page study delves into both Dickenss
public and private lives. Ackroyd contends that Dickens was
the first to introduce the language of the Romantic poets
into the novel. He also says that his dramatic readings
revolutionized the art form.
Brook, G.L. The Language of Dickens. London: Andre Deutsch,
1970.
This book concerns the speech of Dickenss characters,
including Joe Gargerys, in sections such as Substandard
Grammar and Substandard Vocabulary.
Cary, John, The Violent Effigy: A Study of Dickenss Imagination.
London, Faber & Faber, 1973.
Using concrete examples from Dickenss work in each of the
seven chaptersbroken down into topics such as Dickens
and Violence and Dickens and Sexthis work illustrates
how the writers imagination created interesting and
sometimes unexpected juxtapositions. It also discusses
Dickens tendency to break his characters into fragments,
and describes how a characters approach to inanimate
objects reveals their conflicts or mindsets
Carlisle, Janice, ed., Charles Dickens: Great Expectations. Case
Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford Books of
St. Martins Press, 1996.
This work contains an authoritative text of Great
Expectations, biographical as well as historical contexts, and
essays that cover a broad spectrum of current theoretical
approaches, including feminist, psychoanalytic, gender, and
deconstructionist critiques.
Ford, George, Dickens and His Readers: Aspects of Novel Criticism
Since 1836. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.
105
106
107
108
109
Contributors
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale
University. He is the author of over 20 books, including
Shelleys Mythmaking (1959), The Visionary Company (1961),
Blakes Apocalypse (1963), Yeats (1970), A Map of Misreading
(1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Agon: Toward a Theory of
Revisionism (1982), The American Religion (1992), The Western
Canon (1994), and Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels,
Dreams, and Resurrection (1996). The Anxiety of Influence (1973)
sets forth Professor Blooms provocative theory of the literary
relationships between the great writers and their predecessors.
His most recent books include Shakespeare: The Invention of the
Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist, How to
Read and Why (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred
Exemplary Creative Minds (2002), and Hamlet: Poem Unlimited
(2003). In 1999, Professor Bloom received the prestigious
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for
Criticism, and in 2002 he received the Catalonia International
Prize.
Sarah Robbins has an MFA in fiction writing from New School
University. She is a New York City-based writer and editor.
Her nonfiction has appeared in publications including the
American Book Review, ArtNews, Glamour, and Newsday, and she
is currently at work on a novel.
George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic, first
revolutionized the Victorian stage and later became concerned
with dramas of ideas. He is the author of many plays, among
them Man and Superman (1903), Pygmalion (1913), and Saint
Joan (1923). He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
George Orwell is best known for his satirical and political
writings. This British essayist and novelist is the author of
Homage to Catalonia (1938), Animal Farm (1946), and Nineteen
Eighty-Four (1949).
110
112
Acknowledgments
"Introduction to Great Expectations" by Bernard Shaw. From
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations by Edgar Rosenberg (ed).
Pp. 632-641. 1999 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors, on
behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate.
"Charles Dickens" by George Orwell. From Charles Dickens:
Great Expectations ed. Edgar Rosenberg. Pp. 641-644. 1940
by George Orwell. Reprinted by permission of Bill Hamilton
as the Literary Executor of the Estate of the Late Sonia
Brownell Orwell, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.
"Repetition, Repression, and Return: The Plotting of Great
Expectations" by Peter Brooks. From Charles Dickens: Great
Expectations ed. Edgar Rosenberg. Pp. 679-689. 1999
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
"On Great Expectations" by Dorothy Van Ghent. From
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations ed. Edgar Rosenberg. Pp.
648-654. 1999 Thomson Learning. Reprinted by
permission.
"The Hero's Guilt: The Case of Great Expectations" by Julian
Moynahan. From Charles Dickens: Great Expectations ed.
Edgar Rosenberg. Pp. 654-663. 1999 W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
"Meditating on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great
Expectations" by Goldie Morgentaler. Pp. 707-721.
Reprinted with permission from Studies in English Literature
1500-1900 38, 4 (Autumn 1998). by Rice University.
"The Bad Faith of Pip's Bad Faith: Deconstructing Great
Expectations" by Christopher D. Morris. From ELH 54: 4
(1987). Pp. 941-955. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University
Press.
"Early Stream-of-Consciousness Writing: Great Expectations"
by Ann B. Dobie. From Nineteenth-Century Fiction (25), No.
113
114
Index
characters are alphabetized by their first
names
A
Abel Magwitch in Great Expectations,
69, 77, 80, 83
capture, 15, 17, 44, 56, 101
clockwork throat, 61
convict, 15, 1922, 25, 32, 3739,
43, 5152, 61, 6265, 7273,
75, 8687, 91, 1001,103
daughter, 7, 15, 18, 42, 45, 48, 81
death, 45, 57, 62, 101
escape, 4041, 44
Pips father-substitute, 78, 55,
64, 72, 7475, 90, 101
as secret benefactor, 1517,
3839, 46, 49, 56, 58, 9091,
95, 1012
speech, 24, 5253
Acceptance of loss theme, 8
innocence, 12, 50, 71
and Joe, 2627
and Pip, 25, 37, 46
Adaptation theme in Great
Expectations, 72, 74
All the Year Round (periodical), 10,
13
Ambition theme in Great
Expectations, 6571
American Notes, 10, 104
Auerbach, Nina
on the orphan theme in Great
Expectations, 8892
B
Barnaby Rudge, 10, 104
Barzilai, Shuli, 8
Battle of Life, The, 10, 104
Beer, Gillian
on Great Expectations, 72
C
Carey, Peter, 102
Carlyle, Thomas, 49
Carter, Paul
The Road to Botany Bay, 1012
Chimes, The, 10, 104
Christmas Carol, A, 10, 104
Clara Bailey in Great Expectations, 16
Clayton, Jay
on postmodernism in Great
Expectations, 97100
Compeyson in Great Expectations, 18
betrayal of Magwitch, 15, 3941,
44, 69
death of, 57, 62
and Miss Havisham, 15
and Orlick, 16
115
D
Darwin, Charles
Origin of Species, The, 12, 19, 39,
7276
David Copperfield, 10, 104
autobiographical content, 79
Dora in, 9
Mr. Micawber in, 10, 101
narrative of, 7
David Copperfield in David
Copperfield, 49, 53
consciousness of, 7
Days Ride, A (Lever), 13
Decipherment theme in Great
Expectations, 55
Demonic symbolism in Great
Expectations
exaggerated character features, 61
graveyard, 62
Jaggers office, 60, 93
Newgate prison, 62
the river, 62
Smithfield, 62
Dickens, Catherine Hogarth, 9
Dickens, Charles
affairs of, 7, 14, 47
biography, 911
birth, 9
critics, 78, 1112
death, 11
imagination, 4749, 53, 85
inconsistent characters, 5153
public readings, 11
theatrical productions, 1011
use of pathetic fallacy, 5965
works by, 104
Dobie, Ann B.
on the stream of consciousness in
Great Expectations, 8488
Dombey and Son, 10, 104
E
Eliot, George, 13
116
F
Fatal Shore, The (Hughes), 1012
Freud, Sigmund, 8, 88, 93
G
Great Expectations, 10, 104
autobiographical content, 78, 13
character list, 1518
coincidences in, 34, 38, 63, 70
critical views, 14, 1920, 22,
2425, 28, 3132, 34, 3839,
4345, 47103
historical aspects of, 1003
human discordance in, 5965
language, 24
The Origin of Species influence on,
12, 19, 39, 7276
plot of, 13, 19, 45, 48, 5358,
7273, 75
postmodernism in, 97100
self-delusion of, 100
story behind, 1214
stream of consciousness in, 8488
structure of, 13
summary analysis, 1946
two endings of, 8, 14, 5658, 71,
82
violence in, 7071
writing of, 7, 12, 14
Guilt and atonement theme in Great
Expectations, 61
H
Hard Times, 10, 52, 104
Haunted Man and the Ghosts Bargain,
The, 10, 104
Havisham, Miss in Great
Expectations, 17, 80
death, 45, 67, 7071, 89
and Estella, 18, 21, 2426, 31, 37,
91
revenge on men, 15, 2425, 29,
34, 36
and Satis house, 15, 2122,
3233, 36, 4043, 46, 49,
5859, 70, 78, 81, 84, 8990
sufferings of, 1516, 23, 27, 40,
49, 74, 8183
Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations
desires of, 16, 3334, 44
help to Magwitch, 17, 3844, 91,
103
and Pip, 2838, 4243, 46, 90
Historical novels, 13
Hogarth, Mary
model for heroines, 9
Household Words (periodical), 10
Hughes, Robert
The Fatal Shore, 1012
Hugo, Victor, 49
Humor, 11, 52
Hynes, Joseph A.
on imagery in Great Expectations,
8084
I
Illustrative of Every-day Life and
Every-day People, 9
Imagery in Great Expectations
firelight, 8081, 8384
garden, 8283
star, 8083
J
Jaggers in Great Expectations, 17, 60,
98, 100
dirty business of, 16, 26, 2831,
6869, 9196
forefinger, 61
housekeeper, 18
mannerisms, 9297
as Pips counsel, 2730, 3336,
3845, 72
Joe Gargery, Mr. in Great
Expectations, 15, 35, 67, 78, 81
and Biddy, 46, 71, 91
honesty and warmth, 16, 21, 43,
71, 73, 80, 8384, 95, 9798
Pips father-substitute, 78, 16,
1920, 22, 24, 2627, 3233,
45, 51, 64, 7475, 77, 90
pride of, 27, 31
speech of, 2425
Joe Gargery, Mrs. in Great
Expectations, 15, 49, 83
attack on, 1617, 2527, 31, 43,
64, 6769
death, 35
disinterest in education, 21
jealousy of, 16, 1920, 22, 24, 67,
75, 77, 80
Johnson, Edgar, 7
Joyce, James, 84
Jung, Carl, 88
L
Lever, Charles
A Days Ride, 13
Little Dorrit, 10, 104
M
Malouf, David, 102
Martin Chuzzlewit, 10, 104
Marx, Karl, 59, 98
Master Humphreys Clock (weekly), 10
Matthew Pocket in Great
Expectations
117
N
Narrative, Great Expectations
direct monologue, 8788
first person, 7, 12, 66
indirect monologue, 85, 87
Pips, 54, 7679, 8588
stream of consciousness, 8485,
8788
third person, 87
Newgate prison in Great
Expectations, 13, 28, 34
Newman, Steven
on Great Expectations, 28, 31
on Jaggers and Wemmick in
Great Expectations, 9297
Nicholas Nickleby, 10, 104
O
Old Curiosity Shop, The, 10, 104
Little Nell in, 9
Oliver Twist, 9, 48, 7273, 104
The Origin of Species (Darwin)
118
P
Paroissien, David, 12
Pickwick Papers, 910, 52, 104
Pictures of Italy, 10, 104
Pip in Great Expectations
ambition of, 6571
authentic maturity, 8
and commonness, 15, 22, 24, 51
consciousness, 8589
dark doubles of, 6571
education, 21, 24, 2627, 3031,
37
father-substitutes of, 78, 19,
3133, 46, 5556, 64, 72,
7475, 77, 8990, 101
identity of things, 5965, 73,
8284, 90, 9397
imagination and hallucinations, 7,
56, 7071, 86
injuries, 4345
looking back of, 1213, 19, 44, 57
loss, 12, 25, 37, 50
and Magwitch, 17, 1922, 25, 32,
34, 3746, 5152, 56, 62, 81,
8687, 9091, 1013
T
Tale of Two Cities, A, 10, 52, 75, 104
Ternan, Ellen, 7, 14
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 13
Time theme in Great Expectations, 72
and metaphor of chain, 75, 78,
103
Trollope, Anthony, 13
V
R
Realism
domestic, 13
Road to Botany Bay, The (Carter),
1012
S
Said, Edward W.
on the historical aspects of Great
Expectations, 1003
Sarah Pocket in Great Expectations
at Satis House, 23, 26, 32
Shaw, George Bernard, 12
on the class snobbery in Great
Expectations, 4750
Sketches of Boz, 9, 104
Smithfield market in Great
Expectations, 13
Society in Great Expectations
civilized, 7274
and class snobbery, 4751, 64, 75
W
Wells, H.G., 48
Wemmick in Great Expectations, 28,
34, 37, 39, 4142
aged parent, 30, 36, 95, 98
divided life of, 17, 31, 36, 8182,
95100
mannerisms, 9297
post-office mouth, 61
and Miss Skiffins, 17, 36, 40, 45,
95, 98
White, Patrick, 102
Williams, Raymond, 99
Woolf, Virginia, 84
119
120