Great Expectations Character Quotation Bank

Estella:
 “came down the passage like a star”
Stars are cold, unavailable and inaccessible - just like Estella.
 Estella first appears at the gate of Satis House, with a bunch of keys.
The metaphor of gates and locks is very important in the novel. Estella stands at the gateway
to upper class life; she is the reason Pip wants to be a gentleman.
 “her contempt was infectious and I caught it”
Estella’s whole attitude pervades Pip’s identity. This is most obvious when Pip reflects his
hands are ‘coarse’. This is the exact word used by Estella when they play cards. It is
emotionally scarring for Pip.
 “I have a heart to be shot at… I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—
nonsense.”
Pip and Estella understand the heart on different levels. Estella sees only the literal, and
does not understand what Pip means when he speaks of love.
 “[you speak of] sentiments I am not able to understand - you touch nothing there”
Pip and Estella understand the heart on different levels. Estella sees only the literal, and
does not understand what Pip means when he speaks of love.
 “you are part of my existence”
Estella is an intrinsic part of Pip. Pip sees her in everything. She IS his world view. But he
loves her as a gentlewoman, when, ironically, she is the daughter of a criminal.
 Pip describes his love for Estella as “an ecstasy of unhappiness”
This oxymoronic expression reveals the contradictory nature of Pip’s love; Estella causes him
pain but she loves him anyway.
 when Pip admits his love for Estella he gives her a “lingering kiss” on the hand
Pip realises he has no hope with Estella after he admits his feelings to her, so he kisses her
hand. He lingers because he hopes - still- that maybe she will react and say she loves him
back. Estella doesn’t reply, however, and Pip leaves.
 “I have warned you”
Estella tries to tell Pip she is incapable of love, but Pip persists. This is a fleeting moment
where we think Estella does feel something for Pip, even if it isn’t the love Pip hopes for.
 Pip sees Estella as the “princess” and himself as the “shining knight of romance”
Pip sees himself as a character in a fairy-tale. This illusion is shattered when Magwitch
comes back and reveals he is Pip’s benefactor.
 “I have been bent and beaten but I hope into a better shape”
Estella ultimately seems to have learnt from her suffering (reflected in the violent verbs
‘broken’ and ‘beaten’) and ends the novel asking Pip for friendship. The metaphor she uses
even seems to be a blacksmith one; perhaps she is coming round to Pip’s viewpoint.
 “I am what you have made me”
Estella retorts that she is not responsible for being ‘cold’ of heart, since Miss Havisham made
her that way. Miss Havisham never expected Estella to turn on her though.
 “I saw the shadow of no parting from her”
At the very end of the novel, Pip and Estella meet in the garden at Satis House. They have
both suffered and look back at what has happened. We wonder if Estella is capable of love,
and know that Pip is not over Estella. The final line is ambiguous, and how you choose to
interpret it changes your opinion of Pip’s development in the novel.
Joe:
 “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.”
When Pip and Joe have dinner in London: The blacksmith concocts a metaphor of
metalsmithing to describe these natural divisions: some men are blacksmiths, such as Joe,
and some men are goldsmiths, such as Pip. In these simple terms, Joe arrives at a wise and
resigned attitude toward the changes in Pip’s social class that have driven them apart, and
he shows his essential goodness and loyalty by blaming the division not on Pip but on the
unalterable nature of the human condition.
 “Blue eyes and flaxen hair”
Stereotypical features of the hero. Dickens uses outward appearance as an indicator of
inward goodness. Contrast with Orlick.
 “Touch of a woman ... strength of a steam hammer”
The metaphor reveals that Joe has great strength but also great gentleness.
 Says that Pip has been “gentlefolked”
Joe creates a new verb to explain how Pip has turned into a gentleman. Dickens shows how
Joe acknowledges the change, but doesn’t have the vocabulary to express it; Pip is
completely out of Joe’s experience.
 Pip sees him as “a larger species of child, and as no more than my equal”
Initially Pip sees Joe as his equal (quote shows their initial intimacy); later on, he sees himself
as superior.
 “What larks Pip!”
This is Joe’s constant refrain throughout the novel. It reveals Joe’s innocent belief in a future
happy time. It demonstrates the innate, innocent, goodwill of Joe and Pip’s initial
relationship. Joe (and Pip) come back to this at the end of the novel, to signal they are
friends again.
 “That good Christian man”
When Pip sees Joe at the end of the novel (when he is ill and in debt) he finally realises what
a good, honest, religious man Joe is, and how immature he was not to see this in the first
place.
 “Joe had sanctified it”
This is how Pip describes how Joe has made the forge (which could be very violent with Mrs
Joe around) a pleasant place to be. The use of the verb ‘sanctify’ puts Joe on a saintly level.
Even at a young age, Pip is aware of Joe’s positive effect.
 “Joe! You never complain”
At the end of the novel, Pip returns home and is told by a stranger how ungrateful Pip is to
Pumblechook, and that Pumblechook is most aggrieved. Pip inwardly notes that Joe has
never chided him for being ungrateful, when he had much more reason than Pumblechook.
 “What have been between us – have been”
At the end of the novel, when Joe visits Pip (ill and in debt), he tries to put things right. Joe
doesn’t have the words to express his feelings, and Dickens poignantly highlights Joe’s
dialect at this point to reveal how despite Joe’s lack of education, he has a wise sense of
forgiveness.
 “You and me is not two figures to be together in London”
When Joe visits Pip in London, Joe innately understands the situation: that he and Pip do not
fit together. Joe has a poignant dignity in this scene, which contrasts with Pip’s ungrateful
and snobbish behaviour. Again, Dickens uses dialect grammar at this point to emphasise
Joe’s lack of education.
 “Jaggers saw in him.. the village idiot and in me his keeper”
Pip steps back from the situation and sees it as a London gentleman does. This perspective
makes him feel ashamed, and pollutes his entire view of Joe.
 Joe looked like “an extraordinary bird”
When Joe visits Miss Havisham’s house with Pip to sign his indenture papers, he dresses up
in his best clothes and looks ridiculous. Pip judges on out appearance and sees only how
embarrassing Joe is being, not how much he loves Pip.
 “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!—”
When Jaggers comes to tell Pip that he has expectations, Jaggers offers to compensate Joe
financially. Joe is so shocked by this he is unable to speak, and even seems to threaten to
fight Jaggers, so strongly does he feel!
 “He was… a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness”
This is the characterisation of Joe at the beginning of the novel, in chapter 2. Hercules had
Zeus as a father but a human mother, making him a demigod. The strengths of Hercules thus
came from the gods, whilst his weaknesses were all too human. This quote thus suggests
there’s huge contrast between Joe’s tremendous brute-force strength and his weaknesses,
surprisingly being sensitivity – especially to personal affairs. This description lies in the
contextual backdrop of huge interest (in this Romantic Era) in Ancient Greece and the
Ancient Greek gods, meaning the contemporary reader of the novel would certainly have
understood such a reference.
Miss Havisham:
 “fairy godmother who had changed me, were bestowing the finishing gift”
This is how Pip views Miss Havisham; it links into how he sees his whole life as a fairy tale,
and himself as “the shining knight of romance” .
 “I wish to see some play”
Miss Havisham asks Pip to ‘play’ for her. She thinks she can control people as toys. This is a
metaphor for how she treats Pip throughout the novel - as ‘a model with a mechanical
heart’.
 “corpse-like”
Miss Havisham is a kind of living dead. She is static, unmoving and forcing herself to continue
suffering.
 “wax-work at the fair”
Her appearance is ghastly.
 “Clocks at twenty minutes to nine”
Miss Havisham is frozen in the past and refuses to move on, but she can’t control the world
around her. Her clocks are stopped at the point Compeyson jilted her.
 “Take the pencil and write under my name ‘I forgive her’”
When Miss Havisham has been burnt in the fire, she tells Pip to say that he forgives her.
 “Speak the truth, you ingrate!”
Estella and Miss H argue and Miss Havisham feels Estella has taken her forgranted. In this
exchange, we see that Miss Havisham and Estella are very different: Miss Havisham has
feelings (to be hurt and upset) whereas Estella does not.
 “ ‘Love her! Love her! ...’ [she says with a “witch-like eagerness” ]
When Pip is a young man, Miss Havisham says this in an incantatory, curse-like way. Sadly, it
works...
 “I’ll tell you what real love is...blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter
submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your
whole heart and soul to the smiter—as I did!”
Miss Havisham’s definition of love reveals her twisted attitude to life. Think how Pip has
experienced these things. Think how Biddy and Joe have too in their love for Pip.
Pip:
 “coarse hands and common boots... a low-lived sort of way”
Pip absorbs and internalises every criticism Estella makes of him, and sees himself so poorly
he even considers himself a criminal.
 “it is a most miserable thing to be ashamed of home”
Estella has infected and polluted Pip’s entire world view.
 “I had believed in the forge as a glowing road to manhood and independence”
The road metaphor, frequently used in the novel, reveals how Pip now sees the direction of
his life has changed.
 “Biddy, said I, after binding her to secrecy, ‘I want to be a gentleman.’ ”
This is Pip’s deepest desire, but he feels guilty about it because he is so ashamed of his
upbringing, hence why he asks Biddy to keep it secret.
 “Holloa young thief!”
Pip feels so guilty at stealing from Joe and Mrs Joe that he imagines the floorboards are
calling out to him. This guilty attitude shapes his whole world-view as he moves into
adulthood.
 “the stain of Newgate”
After his childhood encounter with a convict, Pip is hypersensitive to any whiff of criminality.
When he visits Newgate with Wemmick, he ‘beats’ the Newgate dust off his shoes and out
of his lungs.
 “all my expectations... a mere dream”
When Magwitch returns, Pip sees that he was never intended for Estella and that his money
comes from a convict. The metaphor of the dream is particularly poignant: ethereal,
intangible, it has vanished before his eyes.
 “like blood from an inward wound”
When Pip admits his love to Estella, he uses a wound metaphor to explain his feelings. It
reveals the pain and hurt Estella’s love has caused him.
 “a model with a mechanical heart to practise on”
This is how Pip understands what he was to Estella: he was not the knight of romance
intended to save the princess. This links back to Miss Havisham treating him as a toy.
 “you always waits at the gate, dear boy”
Magwitch, lying on his deathbed, expresses a poignant truth without fully realising it: that
Pip always stood on the threshold in whatever environment he found himself in. This is true
of Pip in London, when he returns to the forge, and also in the novel itself, with its double
narration.
 “my great expectations had all dissolved like our marsh mists before the sun”
The motif of the mists is deeply significant. Here, the mists have dissolved and have shown
Pip the reality of his situation.
 “the evening mists were rising now”
(Very end of novel.) Finally, the mists, which have been a motif throughout the novel, rise.
Normally, mists bring confusion, but this moment is a moment of rare understanding for Pip,
even if it is left unclear for readers.
 “I - again!”
When Pip returns home at the end of the novel, he looks in the forge and sees little Pip
sitting by the fire. This tableau makes him realise he is not ‘the hero of his own story’; he has
been replaced by Joe and by the small child. The odd syntax of ‘I - again’ expresses Pip’s
surprise and also the awkward situation Pip finds himself in. The novel does not end neatly -
and this phrase syntactically expresses this.
Magwitch:
 “A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut
by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and
growled”
(Start of novel.) Magwitch appears quite pitiful here: despite being a criminal, he has clearly
suffered. Note the uses of passive verbs to reveal how he is avictim. Remember, Compeyson
is the one who gets Magwitch into trouble. Magwitch also seems to be part of the marsh
landscape. He is part of the fabric of Pip’s childhood.
 “growled... dog’s way of eating”
Animal metaphors to represent his bestial nature.
 his aim was to “make that boy a gentleman”
The use of the verb ‘make’ is highly significant. He thinks gentlemen are made, not born, and
that possessions make a gentleman. Compare with the fact that Compeyson, who he bases
his ideas of being a gentleman on, is actually a fraud.
 “suffocating… shuddering.. looking wildly.. feeling faint”
These are descriptions of Pip when he realises that Magwitch is his benefactor. He is
repulsed viscerally by Magwitch and the horror of being associated with a criminal.
 Magwitch has led “a peaceable and honest life”
When Magwitch is put on trial for having returned to England, this is what they say about his
life. It reveals that criminals can be reformed.
 “Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son’’
Magwitch sees himself in a paternal role and cares deeply for Pip and making him a
gentleman. Like Joe, Magwitch is violent but deeply caring. As with Joe, Pip is initially
unwilling to accept this.
Biddy:
 “I said in a virtuous and superior tone”
Biddy was Pip’s teacher, but Pip soon becomes arrogant with her, even though she is much
brighter and more emotionlly intelligent than Pip.
 “Oh Biddy! Don’t echo!”
Pip quickly becomes annoyed with Biddy when he discusses becoming a gentleman. Biddy
asks Pip difficult questions about his motives that he doesn’t want to answer. Biddy
represents Pip’s suppressed conscience .
 “There are many kinds of pride, Pip.”
Biddy makes Pip realise that Joe might be proud, when Pip doesn’t even think he is capable
of the emotion. Pip feels embarrassed when confronted with Biddy’s superior understanding
of the situation.
 “But you never will, you see, said Biddy.”
This is Biddy’s response when Pip says he might try to fall in love with her (“If I could only
get myself to fall in love with you”). Biddy poignantly sees how Pip will move on and be
impressed by other, more beautiful women. Biddy is more emotionally mature than Pip ever
realises. Biddy’s tone is also very clear to readers that she is indeed in love with Pip but Pip,
as an unreliable narrator, doesn’t see such a blatant truth.
 Pip is “indignant” when he realises Orlick fancies Biddy
(Indignant = annoyance/ anger at unfair treatment.) More evidence that Orlick and Pip are
odd doubles of each other. Pip is ‘indignant’ despite having rejected Biddy earlier in the
novel.
 “turned her face away… and put her apron to her face”
When Pip leaves to go to London, Biddy and Joe throw shoes after Pip as a sign of good luck.
Pip is embarrassed and doesn’t see the signs that Biddy is upset and crying.
 “I would say my errant heart had strayed.”
(Errant = going in the wrong direction.) At the end of the novel, Pip returns home and
intends to propose to Biddy. He thinks he can put it all right with this form of words. The use
of the word ‘errant’ makes him sound like a knight of romance. How much has he learnt
 “You have the best husband in the whole world!”
When Pip understands that Biddy has married Joe, he sees that Joe is a far better husband
that he ever would be. He finally sees the error of his ways, and that Joe is a better person
than he is.
Orlick:
 lurks “in a dark corner of the forge”
Orlick is always in the darkest corners of Pip’s mind, just as he dwells in the darkest part of
the forge. He represents Pip’s repressed desires, namely dissatisfaction with life, work and
Mrs Joe.
 “a fiend, a wandering Jew, a journeyman”
Orlick is a devilish outsider who fits in nowhere - just like Pip by the end of the novel. This is
another way he is like Pip.
 “said a suppressed voice”
When Orlick tries to kill Pip near the end of the novel when Pip returns home, this is how his
voice is described. This is another indicator that Orlick forms part of Pip’s repressed desires.
 “you always was in Orlick’s way”
Orlick and Pip are odd doubles, and Orlick tries to dominate the narrative, but Pip pushes
him aside. This could represent the different sides of Pip’s psyche in conflict.
Bentley Drummle:
 “a blotchy, spidery sort of fellow”
Drummle is the lowest sort of men in every sense except in social class. This insect metaphor
reveals his undesirable nature.
 “idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in
Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery
that it was just of age and a blockhead.”
These are Drummle’s ungentlemanly qualities. Drummle is technically a gentleman, but not
according to Samuel Smiles, who says a gentleman has ‘honest and upright performance of
individual duty’ .
 “one of the true sort”
Jaggers says this about Drummle to Pip, meaning he believes Drummle to have a truly
criminal personality. He hence also warns Pip to keep away from Drummle.
Wemmick:
 “Walworth Wemmick” and “London Wemmick”
Dickens uses Wemmick to make a point about people acting differently at work and at
home. Walworth has a sham gothic castle and shows Wemmick has a warm, human side. He
also cares for his father, the Aged P, very well, and in this respect is a good role model for
Pip.
Herbert:
 “look about myself”
This is how Herbert explains how to be a gentleman: looking for opportunities. The phrase is
deliberately vague; it reveals Herbert isn’t entirely sure about how to be a gentleman
successfully, even though innately he is a true gentleman.
 “something...whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich”
Pip senses that Herbert will never be wealthy. The use of the verb ‘whisper’ is interesting. Is
this an innate sense, or another instance of how Estella’s contempt has infected him?
 “There was something so natural and winning in Clara’s way of looking”
Clara Pocket - Herbert’s wife is kind and pretty. She is exactly the sort of woman Pip should
marry. She is very like Biddy, and a contrast to Estella.
 “Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I have had senses to
perceive it.”
Pip admits to Herbert that he loves Estella, and he says he knew all along. This reveals to us
that others perceive Pip much more clearly than he perceives himself.
Trabb's boy:
 “Don’t know yah!”
Trabb’s boy is a parody of Pip. He is young and insolent and perfectly punctures Pip’s ego by
imitating him in the street. He sees Pip for the fraud he is – not a true gentleman and an
abandoner of the friends and family he thinks aren’t good enough for him. The way Trabb’s
boy imitates Pip’s accent in this quotation is further evidence of how Dickens derides Pip’s
attempts to change social class.
Mr. Pumblechook:
 “that brazen pretender”
(Brazen = shameless.) At the end of the novel, Pumblechook starts claiming that Pip’s
success is entirely due to him. Pip is so aggrieved by this as it pushes Joe out, when Joe has
stood beside Pip all the way through.