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Revision

Great
Expectations
Charles Dickens

ORAL EXAM
Chapters 15 – 25

Nun Schools

2023 – 2024

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CHAPTER 15

ORLICK CAUSES TROUBLES AND MRS JOE IS ATTACKED

Main Points:
A. This chapter introduces an important minor character, Orlick.
B. Pip’s ongoing connection to Miss Havisham often brings him disappointment and
sadness.
C. The attack on Mrs Joe is mysterious and unexpected. Orlick avoids capture and
punishment for this vicious act, and does not admit that he carried it out until close to the
end of the novel.

Summary:
 Pip continues his limited education under Biddy and Wopsle.
 We are introduced to Orlick, Joe’s awkward and aggressive assistant worker at the forge.
 When Pip asks for a half-holiday, Orlick insists that he should have one too. Joe agrees,
but his wife scolds him for being weak, leading to an argument between Orlick and Mrs
Joe. Joe and Orlick fi ght but Joe wins easily.
 Pip visits Satis House where Sarah Pocket admits him reluctantly. Miss Havisham tells Pip
that Estella is abroad, being educated. Miss Havisham continues to be cruel to Pip, despite
his f riendly intentions.
 On the way home, Pip meets Wopsle and is persuaded to join him and Pumblechook for
the evening.
 When they head for home they come across Orlick who is waiting beside the road and
says he has been to London. He points out that the guns at the hulks are fi ring, showing
that a prisoner has escaped.
 On returning to the forge, Pip fi nds his sister unconscious. The argument and the fight
put Orlick under suspicion.

Key Quotations: JOE’S DEFENCE OF MRS JOE

Orlick rudely criticizes Mrs Joe’s bad temper, saying: ‘if you were my wife [,] I’d hold you under
the pump, and choke it out of you’. Mrs Joe goes into a frenzy of anger. Joe is faced with no
choice but to confront Orlick. This leads to a surprising scene about which Pip comments: ‘if any
man in that neighborhood could stand up long against Joe, I never saw the man’. This reminds
us of Joe’s great strength; he wins the fight with Orlick easily. Joe is described as physically
carrying Mrs Joe into the house, which descends into a ‘singular calm and silence’ as a result of
Joe’s powerful presence. A successful exam response about Joe Gargery could refer to this less
obvious side of his personality.

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CHAPTERS 16–17

MRS JOE FAILS TO RECOVER AND PIP CONFIDES IN BIDDY

Main Points:
A. Mrs Joe’s terrible injuries mean she is no longer a barrier to Pip’s ambitions.
B. The conversation between Pip and Biddy is the first time Pip openly expresses his desire
to be a gentleman.
C. We can see Pip’s confusion, or ‘perplexities’ (p. 129), over his ambitions to leave the
forge weighed against his loyalty and gratitude to Joe.

Summary:
 Pip gets a clearer picture of Mrs Joe’s attack. Before nine o’clock, a farm labourer had
seen her in the doorway of the kitchen. Joe was in the Three Jolly Bargemen. When Joe
returned home at five to ten Mrs Joe was on the floor.
 Mrs Joe had been struck with something heavy. There was a convict’s leg-iron on the floor
next to her. Pip is sure that it is his convict’s iron, and is frightened.
 Pip suspects Orlick but neither Pip nor the constables find any evidence for this.
 Mrs Joe does not recover from her injuries. She is left unable to speak and seems to
understand little of what is said to her. Biddy joins the household to help out.
 Mrs Joe traces out what appears to be a capital letter T, which puzzles everyone.
Eventually Biddy realizes that it is a hammer and is meant to represent Orlick but there is
nothing anyone can do.
 Orlick remains working at the forge and, strangely, appears to be favoured by Mrs Joe.
 Pip carries on his apprenticeship at the forge but visits Miss Havisham on his birthday. He
later confides in Biddy that ‘I want to be a gentleman’ and wishes to lead a different life.
 He also suggests that he wishes he could fall in love with Biddy, but is too preoccupied
with Estella, however cruel she may be.

Key Quotations: HOW DICKENS COVEYS FEELINGS

- Dickens often draws our attention to small details to bring to life the way a character is thinking
or feeling. During his conversation with Biddy about his ambition, Pip experiences a range of
conflicting emotions, some of which are subtly characterized by the way he plays with the blades
of grass on the river bank. When he is anxious, Pip is shown ‘plucking’ at the grass as if he ‘pulled
[his] feelings out of [his] hair’. Later, calling himself a ‘lunatic’ because of his feelings for Estella,
Pip throws the grass into the river ‘as if [he] had some thoughts of following it’. Dickens makes
Pip’s actions mirror his desperate feelings.

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- Note that despite her obvious intelligence, there would have been little possibility of Biddy
leaving the forge for a better life. Women had fewer rights and opportunities at that time, being
unable to vote or attend university, for example.

 Analyze the following quote:

She had not been with us more than a year (I remember her being newly out of mourning at the
time it struck me), when I observed to myself one evening that she had curiously thoughtful and
attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her shoes came up at the heel,
her hair grew bright and neat, her hands were always clean. She was not beautiful, —she was
common, and could not be like Estella, —but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-
tempered. She had not been with us more than a year (I remember her being newly out of
mourning at the time it struck me), when I observed to myself one evening that she had curiously
thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring at - writing some passages from a
book, to improve myself in two ways at once by a sort of stratagem - and seeing Biddy observant
of what I was about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without laying it
down.

‘Biddy,’ said I, ‘how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or you are very clever.’

‘What is it that I manage? I don’t know,’ returned Biddy, smiling.

She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did not mean that, though that
made what I did mean, more surprising.

‘How do you manage, Biddy,’ said I, ‘to learn everything that I learn, and always to keep up with
me?’ I was beginning to be rather vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it,
and set aside the greater part of my pocket money for similar investment; though I have no
doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely dear at the price.

I might as well ask you,’ said Biddy, ‘how you manage?’

‘No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, anyone can see me turning to at it. But
you never turn to at it, Biddy.

‘I suppose I must catch it - like a cough,’ said Biddy, quietly; and went on with her sewing.

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 Analyze the following quote:

It began with the strange gentleman’s sitting down at the table, drawing the candle to him, and
looking over some entries in his pocket-book. He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle
a little aside: after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and me, to ascertain which was which.

‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am pretty well known. I have
unusual business to transact with you, and I commence by explaining that it is not of my
originating. If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you
see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I do. No less, no more.

Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got up, and threw one leg over
the back of a chair and leaned upon it; thus having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot
on the ground.

‘Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of this young fellow your
apprentice. You would not object to cancel his indentures, at his request and for his good? You
would want nothing for so doing?’

‘Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip’s way,’ said Joe, staring.

‘Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,’ returned Mr Jaggers. ‘The question is; would
you want anything? Do you want anything?’

‘The answer is,’ returned Joe, sternly, ‘No.’

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool for his disinterestedness. But
I was too much bewildered between breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.

‘Very well,’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘Recollect the admission you have made, and don’t try to go from it
presently.’

‘Who’s a-going to try?’ retorted Joe.

‘I don’t say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?’

‘Yes, I do keep a dog.’

‘Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?’
repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him
something. ‘Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is,
that he has great expectations.’

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CHAPTERS 18–19

PIP IS TO BECOME A GENTLEMAN

Main Points:
A. This is the fi rst time we learn about Pip’s benefactor.
B. Pip continues to distance himself from the people around him in Kent, with his newly
acquired wealth giving him more reason to see himself as superior.
C. Pip’s incorrect belief that Miss Havisham is paying for him to go to London begins in
these chapters.
Summary:
 Pip, in the fourth year of his apprenticeship, meets a mysterious stranger at the Three
Jolly Bargemen pub, whom he recognises as the man who passed him on the stairs of Satis
House (in Chapter 11).
 The man asks to speak privately to Joe and Pip, and introduces himself as Mr Jaggers, a
lawyer from London.
 Mr Jaggers tells Pip that he has great expectations and must begin his education as a
gentleman at once. Joe agrees to release the boy from his indentures. Jaggers says Pip
may not know the name of his benefactor, although Pip is sure it is Miss Havisham.
 Pip is impatient to leave for London to begin his new life. He tells Biddy he would like Joe
to visit him in London, but that he is worried Joe might seem out of place.
 Pip has a new suit made at Trabb’s and visits Miss Havisham. He interprets everything
that Miss Havisham says to mean that she has given him the money and opportunity to
be a gentleman, even though her cruelty towards him makes this unlikely.
 Pip finally leaves for London.

Key Quotations: MORAL JUDGEMENTS

Biddy continues to be a moral compass in Pip’s life: she always knows right from wrong, even if
Pip chooses to ignore her. Pip accuses her of being jealous of his new wealth, but Biddy refuses
to defend herself against such a ludicrous suggestion. Instead she says: ‘a gentleman should not
be unjust’. Throughout the rest of the novel Pip’s treatment of Biddy and Joe is a measure of
how he sees himself as a ‘gentleman’ and whether he behaves in a ‘just’ or ‘fair’ way to people
around him.
Pip’s visit to Trabb’s the tailors is a symbolic moment in his journey towards being a gentleman,
as he is aware of the importance of wearing the clothes that show his new status and wealth.
Clothes are significant throughout the novel. For each main character, look for something
notable about their clothing – Mrs Joe’s apron, Miss Havisham’s single shoe, Herbert’s bow tie,
for example – and list two things that it tells us about that character.

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 Analyze the following quote:

I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing where I was going to. It
was not to be shuffled off now, however, and I answered, ‘The beautiful young lady at Miss
Havisham’s, and she’s more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I
want to be a gentleman on her account.’ Having made this lunatic confession, I began to throw
my torn-up grass into the river, as if I had some thoughts of following it.
‘Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?’ Biddy quietly asked me,
after a pause.
‘I don’t know,’ I moodily answered.
‘Because, if it is to spite her,’ Biddy pursued, ‘I should think - but you know best - that
might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain
her over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth gaining over.’
Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what was perfectly manifest to
me at the moment. But how could I, a poor dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency
into which the best and wisest of men fall every day? ‘It may be all quite true,’ said I to Biddy,
‘but I admire her dreadfully.’

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CHAPTERS 20–22

PIP LEAVES FOR LONDON

Main Points:
A. They introduce a new setting, busy central London, which contrasts greatly with the quiet
and desolate Kent marshes.
B. We see the reality of the law courts and Jaggers’s life as a criminal lawyer.
C. Pip’s important friendship with Herbert Pocket begins and Herbert tells Pip some of the
details of Miss Havisham’s past.

Summary:
 Pip arrives in London and visits Mr Jaggers’s office and dismal surrounding area.
 Back at Jaggers’s he sees how the lawyer deals with his clients in a firm and sometimes
brutal manner. Jaggers explains Pip’s allowance and says he will try to keep Pip out of
debt.
 Wemmick takes Pip to Barnard’s Inn which is a shabby collection of rooms and
apartments. After showing Pip round and trying to make him feel at home, the young
man, Herbert, recognises Pip.
 Herbert tells Pip that Estella was adopted by Miss Havisham and has been brought up to
exact revenge on males. He also tells him that Mr Jaggers is Miss Havisham’s lawyer.
 Pip asks Herbert to put him straight about London manners. Herbert gives Pip the name
Handel, after the composer who wrote ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’.
 Herbert tells Pip that many years before, Miss Havisham had been jilted on her wedding
day: ‘At that hour and minute … she afterwards stopped all the clocks’. She had let the
house go to ruin and had not seen daylight since.
 Herbert shows Pip around London and on the Monday he takes him to his parents’ chaotic
house at Hammersmith.

Key Quotations: WHAT IS A GENTLEMAN?

- Dickens uses the character of Herbert Pocket to explore ‘What is a gentleman?’ Herbert says to
Pip: ‘no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true
gentleman in manner’. This draws an important distinction that is explored in the novel: being a
‘gentleman’ does not just mean wearing fine clothes and being rich – it is a way of behaving.
Ultimately, Pip learns that good people such as Wemmick, Herbert and Joe are true ‘gentlemen’
despite their relative lack of money. They contrast greatly with Compeyson and Drummle, who
are wealthy but cruel and violent.

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- Pip has long dreamed of leaving the forge and making his way in the city. However, Dickens
makes it clear that Pip’s dreams are impossibly romantic and the reality of London is often
horrific. Dickens uses a multi-sensory approach to bring London to life for the reader. He
describes the ‘hot, exhausted air’, the ‘filth and fat and blood’ of the Smithfield meat market,
the ‘noise of passing vehicles’ and the people Pip encounters at Newgate Prison as ‘smelling
strongly of spirits and beer’. Pip uses a range of adjectives to describe his response to the city,
such as ‘dreadful’ and ‘sickening’. It is worth remembering that Pip does grow used to the city
and so these first impressions possibly also serve to reflect his bewilderment at what is a strange
new place for him.

 Analyze the following quote:

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be a bad return unsuited to our
years. I therefore told him my small story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who
my benefactor was. I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a country
place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him if
he would give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong. ‘With pleasure,’ said he,
‘though I venture to prophesy that you’ll want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together,
and I should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me the favour to begin
at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?’ I thanked him, and said I would. I informed
him in exchange that my Christian name was Philip.

‘I don’t take to Philip,’ said he, smiling, ‘for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book,
who was so lazy that he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his eyes, or so
avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird’s-nesting
that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighborhood. I tell you what I should
like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith - would you mind it?’
‘Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece of music by Handel, called
the Harmonious Blacksmith.’ ‘I should like it very much.’ ‘Then, my dear Handel,’ said he, turning
round as the door opened, ‘here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the table,
because the dinner is of your providing.’

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 Analyze the following quote:

‘So you were never in London before?’ said Mr. Wemmick to me.
‘No,’ said I. - ‘I was new here once,’ said Mr. Wemmick. ‘Rum to think of now!’
‘You are well acquainted with it now?’
‘Why, yes,’ said Mr. Wemmick. ‘I know the moves of it.’
‘Is it a very wicked place?’ I asked, more for the sake of saying something than for information.
‘You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But there are plenty of people
anywhere, who’ll do that for you.’
‘If there is bad blood between you and them,’ said I, to soften it off a little.
‘Oh! I don’t know about bad blood,’ returned Mr. Wemmick; ‘there’s not much bad blood about.
They’ll do it, if there’s anything to be got by it.’ - ‘That makes it worse.’
‘You think so?’ returned Mr. Wemmick. ‘Much about the same, I should say.’
He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before him: walking in a self-
contained way as if there were nothing in the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such
a post office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top
of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not
smiling at all.
‘Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?’ I asked Mr. Wemmick.
‘Yes,’ said he, nodding in the direction. ‘At Hammersmith, west of London.’
‘Is that far?’ - ‘Well! Say five miles.’ - ‘Do you know him?

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CHAPTERS 23–25

PIP MEETS NEW PEOPLE

Main Points:
A. Bentley Drummle plays a major role in Pip’s life as he later marries and violently abuses
Estella.
B. Pip is settling in well but spending too much money.
C. Wemmick is a gentle and friendly influence in Pip’s life.

Summary:
 The Pocket household with its seven children is chaotic, appearing to be run by and for
the servants. Mrs Pocket takes little notice of what goes on around her. Mr Pocket
welcomes Pip. He has two other boarding pupils, Startop and Bentley Drummle.
 Pip settles in at the Pocket house but keeps his room at Barnard’s. He goes to see Mr
Jaggers who provides him with money to buy furniture although Pip finds dealing with
Jaggers uncomfortable. Pip begins to fall into debt.
 At Wemmick’s suggestion they go to a police court to watch Mr Jaggers at work. Pip gets
the impression that everyone there is terrified of Jaggers, even the magistrates.
 At Hammersmith, Pip enjoys rowing on the river with Herbert and the other two pupils.
He finds Drummle surly and proud and prefers the company of the gentler Startop.
 Pip goes to Wemmick’s home in Walworth one evening. He is surprised to find that the
house is a little wooden building like a toy castle, complete with drawbridge, flagpole and
a small cannon.
 Wemmick asks Pip not to mention his home life to Jaggers as he likes to keep the office
and the Castle separate.

 Analyze the following quote:

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to see him. ‘For, I really am
not,’ he added, with his son’s smile, ‘an alarming personage.’ He was a young-looking man, in
spite of his perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use the
word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught
way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was
very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather
anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, ‘Belinda, I hope you have
welcomed Mr. Pip?’ And she looked up from her book, and said, ‘Yes.’ She then smiled upon me
in an absent state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower water? As the
question had no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider

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it to have been thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational
condescension.

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter
of a certain quite accidental deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his
deceased father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody’s determined opposition
arising out of entirely personal motives - I forget whose, if I ever knew - the Sovereign’s, the Prime
Minister’s, anybody’s - and had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this quite
supposititious fact.

He had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things
must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic
knowledge. So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady by this
judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless.
With her character thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr.
Pocket: who was also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to mount to the
Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was a mere
question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its
length, it would seem to have wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of the
judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or withhold but his blessing, had
handsomely settled that dower upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket
that his wife was ‘a treasure for a Prince.’ Mr. Pocket had invested the Prince’s treasure in the
ways of the world ever since, and it was supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest.
Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful pity, because she had not
married a title; while Mr. Pocket was the object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he
had never got one.

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