# Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Source: https://thegisthub.com/books/great-expectations-by-charles-dickens Last updated: 2026-10-24 Published 1861 · 514 pages · ISBN 9780141439563 · Categories: Fiction, Society and history Charles Dickens's novel about Pip, a poor orphan who receives a fortune from a secret benefactor and learns what being a gentleman really means. For readers who want the plot stage by stage and the ideas behind it. ## The gist **Pip** is an orphan raised by his harsh sister and her kind husband, **Joe Gargery**, a blacksmith in the Kent marshes. As a boy he helps an escaped convict and is sent to play at the house of **Miss Havisham**, a jilted bride who stopped every clock on her wedding day. There he falls for her cold ward, **Estella**, and grows ashamed of his home. A lawyer then announces that Pip has great expectations from a secret benefactor. In London he becomes a snob and a debtor. When he learns where his money really comes from, he must face what he has become. Dickens writes a story about ambition, guilt, class and loyalty. ## Key ideas ### 1. A gentleman is made by character, not money Pip believes money, clothes and manners will make him a gentleman worthy of Estella. In London he gains all three and becomes a snob who is ashamed of Joe. The two most decent people in the book are Joe, an uneducated blacksmith, and Magwitch, a convict. The man who looks most like a gentleman, Compeyson, is a swindler. Dickens argues that true gentility is loyalty, kindness and honesty, and that a rigid class system teaches people to value the wrong things. ### 2. Shame drives Pip's worst choices One afternoon at Satis House changes Pip's life. Estella mocks his coarse hands and thick boots, and he goes home ashamed of the forge and of Joe. From then on his ambition is fed by shame, not hope. He treats Joe coldly in London and neglects Biddy. Dickens shows how the contempt of others can become self-contempt, and how a person can hurt the people who love him in order to escape a feeling that does not belong to him. ### 3. Frozen time and the cost of revenge Miss Havisham stopped every clock at the moment she was jilted and has lived in that moment for decades, in her wedding dress, beside the rotting cake. She raised Estella to break men's hearts as revenge for her own. The result is a daughter who cannot love, even her mother. Dickens uses Satis House as an image of a life that refuses to move on, and shows that revenge hurts the people it is used on and the person who seeks it. ### 4. The source of wealth matters Pip assumes his money comes from Miss Havisham, a lady. It comes from Magwitch, a convict who earned it as a sheep farmer in Australia. Pip's horror shows his snobbery, but it also raises a real question: Victorian gentlemen often lived on money from trade, empire and crime. Dickens strips away the idea that wealth is clean or deserved. Pip's whole education as a gentleman was paid for by the man society treated as its lowest. ### 5. Two lives, office and home Wemmick, Jaggers's clerk, is hard and money-minded at the office and warm at home in Walworth, where he lives in a tiny castle and cares for his deaf father. He keeps the two lives strictly apart. Jaggers washes his hands with scented soap after each client. Dickens uses both men to show how people cope with a cruel system by dividing themselves, and he asks how much of a person's goodness can survive a job that requires coldness. ### 6. Loyalty repays its debts Pip helps a terrified convict once, and Magwitch spends his life repaying him. Joe forgives Pip's coldness again and again, and at the end pays his debts and nurses him through fever. Pip himself grows when he stops being ashamed of Magwitch and stays loyal to him in prison. Dickens makes faithfulness the real measure of worth. Pip's great expectations fail, but his loyalty in the last stage of the book redeems him. ### 7. (Spoiler) Two endings, one question Dickens first ended the book with a brief meeting in London: Estella is remarried, and she and Pip part as friends. Bulwer-Lytton persuaded him to change it. The published ending puts them in the ruins of Satis House, both widowed or alone and both changed by suffering, and Pip sees no shadow of another parting. Readers argue over whether this promises marriage. Either way, Dickens denies Pip a simple reward and keeps the novel's focus on what he learned. ## Questions this book answers ### What is Great Expectations about? Great Expectations by Charles Dickens follows Pip, an orphan raised by a blacksmith, who receives a fortune from a secret benefactor and goes to London to become a gentleman. He hopes to win Estella, the cold ward of the jilted Miss Havisham. When he learns his money comes from a convict he once helped, he has to rethink his values. The novel is about ambition, class, guilt and loyalty. ### Who is Pip's benefactor in Great Expectations? Pip's benefactor is Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict Pip helped in the churchyard as a child. Magwitch was transported to Australia, grew rich as a sheep farmer and swore to make Pip a gentleman. Pip had assumed it was Miss Havisham. The reveal comes at the end of the second stage. ### Who is Miss Havisham? Miss Havisham is a rich woman who was jilted by Compeyson on her wedding day. She stopped every clock at twenty to nine, still wears her wedding dress and leaves the rotting cake on the table. She adopted Estella and raised her to break men's hearts as revenge. ### How does Great Expectations end? Spoiler: Magwitch is caught trying to flee and dies in prison, and his fortune goes to the Crown. Joe nurses Pip and pays his debts, and marries Biddy. Pip works abroad with Herbert for eleven years. In the published ending he meets the widowed Estella in the ruins of Satis House and sees no shadow of another parting. In Dickens's first ending they part for good. ### What is the main theme of Great Expectations? The main theme is what makes a person worthy. Pip thinks money and manners make a gentleman, but the novel shows that loyalty and kindness matter more, through Joe and Magwitch. Related themes are social class, shame, guilt, ambition and the danger of living in the past, as Miss Havisham does. ## Quotes > Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. (Pip, leaving the village for London, Chapter 19) > In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. (Pip, Chapter 6) ## Full summary ### A boy who wants to be a gentleman **Great Expectations** by Charles Dickens appeared in weekly parts in his magazine All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861, and as a book in 1861. It is one of his later novels and one of his tightest. The narrator is **Philip Pirrip**, called **Pip**, who looks back on his youth as an older and wiser man. His tone mixes humor with regret: he sees clearly how foolish and ungrateful he was. Dickens divides the novel into three stages, each about the same length. The first stage is Pip's childhood and apprenticeship in the marsh country of Kent. The second is his life as a young gentleman in London. The third is the collapse of his illusions and what he does after. The main themes are ambition and social class, guilt and loyalty, and the difference between being a gentleman and being a good man. Dickens wrote at a time when money from trade and empire was creating new gentlemen, and when birth still mattered more than character. Pip believes money and manners will make him worthy of the woman he loves. The novel shows him how wrong he is. ### First stage: the convict and the jilted bride Pip is about seven. His parents and five brothers are buried in the village churchyard. He lives with his much older sister, **Mrs. Joe Gargery**, who raises him "by hand" and beats him with a cane called Tickler. Her husband, **Joe**, the village blacksmith, is gentle, simple and Pip's only friend. On Christmas Eve, in the churchyard, a terrifying escaped convict seizes Pip and orders him to bring food and a file to cut his leg iron. Pip steals a pork pie and brandy from his sister's pantry and brings them. On Christmas Day, soldiers come to the forge to have handcuffs mended. Joe and Pip follow the hunt and see two convicts captured as they fight in a ditch. Pip's convict protects him by claiming he stole the food himself. Some time later, Joe's pompous uncle, **Mr. Pumblechook**, takes him to **Satis House**, the home of **Miss Havisham**, a rich, strange old lady. She was jilted on her wedding day and has never recovered. She still wears her yellowed wedding dress and one shoe, every clock is stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and the rotting wedding cake still sits on the table under cobwebs. She wants a boy to play with her adopted daughter, **Estella**, a beautiful girl who is proud and cruel. Estella calls Pip a common laboring boy and mocks his coarse hands and thick boots. Pip goes home ashamed of himself, of the forge and of Joe. Pip keeps visiting. He fights and beats a pale young gentleman in the garden. Miss Havisham watches Estella hurt him and whispers to her to break his heart. When Pip is old enough, Miss Havisham pays the fee for him to be apprenticed to Joe. Pip, who once dreamed of becoming a blacksmith, now hates the work. One night Mrs. Joe is struck from behind by an unknown attacker with a convict's leg iron. She survives but cannot speak or care for herself. **Biddy**, a kind and clever village girl, moves in to help. Pip tells Biddy he wants to become a gentleman for Estella's sake. Biddy, who loves him, says Estella is not worth it. **Orlick**, Joe's surly journeyman, hangs around Biddy. In the fourth year of Pip's apprenticeship, a London lawyer, **Mr. Jaggers**, arrives at the village inn. He announces that Pip has great expectations: an anonymous benefactor will pay for him to be educated as a gentleman and will leave him a fortune. There are two conditions. Pip must always keep the name Pip, and he must not try to learn the benefactor's name. Pip is sure the benefactor is Miss Havisham and that she plans him for Estella. He leaves for London. He tells himself he will help Joe and Biddy, but he already looks down on them. ### Second stage: London and the gentleman In London, Pip shares rooms with **Herbert Pocket**, who turns out to be the pale young gentleman he fought. Herbert is cheerful and poor, and becomes his best friend. Herbert explains Miss Havisham's story. Her half-brother and a handsome man named Compeyson cheated her. Compeyson courted her, took her money and sent a letter breaking off the marriage at twenty to nine on the wedding morning. Pip studies with Herbert's father, **Matthew Pocket**, and meets other students, including **Bentley Drummle**, a rich, sulky, brutal young man. He also meets Jaggers's clerk, **John Wemmick**. At the office Wemmick is dry and portable property is all he cares about. At home in Walworth he lives in a tiny wooden castle with a moat and drawbridge, and cares tenderly for his deaf father, the Aged Parent. Wemmick keeps his two lives separate. Jaggers has a housekeeper, **Molly**, a silent woman with strong wrists whom he once defended on a murder charge. He shows off her wrists at dinner. Joe comes to London to visit. He is awkward in his Sunday clothes, keeps his hat balanced on the edge of a shelf and calls Pip "sir." Pip is embarrassed and cold to him. Joe sees it and leaves with dignity, saying he is wrong out of the forge and that Pip should come see him there. Pip feels ashamed but does not change. Estella comes to London to be presented in society. Pip escorts her and is miserable. She warns him that she has no heart, that she will hurt him, and that he should not love her. She encourages Drummle and other suitors. Pip and Herbert spend more than they have and fall into debt. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the funeral. He promises Biddy he will visit Joe often, and she doubts him. When Pip turns twenty-one, Jaggers gives him five hundred pounds a year but still names no benefactor. Pip secretly uses part of his money to buy Herbert a partnership in a shipping firm, Clarriker and Co. ### The return of the convict On a stormy night, when Pip is twenty-three, a rough, weather-beaten man climbs the stairs to his rooms. It is the convict from the marshes, **Abel Magwitch**. He was transported to New South Wales in Australia, became a sheep farmer and grew rich. Moved by the boy who once helped him, he swore to make Pip a gentleman. He is the benefactor. Miss Havisham has nothing to do with it. Pip is horrified. His fortune comes from a convict, and Magwitch has risked his life to see him, because a transported convict who returns faces hanging. Pip also realizes that Miss Havisham never meant Estella for him. She let him believe it to tease her relatives. Pip feels he cannot take more of Magwitch's money, but he cannot abandon him either. Pip and Herbert hide Magwitch under the name Provis. Magwitch tells his story. He was a petty criminal from childhood. He fell in with **Compeyson**, a gentleman swindler who used him and, when they were caught, got a light sentence by blaming Magwitch. Compeyson was the second convict in the ditch on the marshes. Herbert realizes that Compeyson is the man who jilted Miss Havisham. Compeyson is now in London and watching. Pip visits Satis House and confronts Miss Havisham. He tells Estella he loves her. She replies that she is going to marry Drummle. Pip leaves in despair. ### Spoilers: the ending This section reveals the ending. Pip notices that Molly, Jaggers's housekeeper, has Estella's hands and eyes. From Wemmick and Magwitch he pieces together the truth. Molly was Magwitch's partner, and Estella is their daughter. Jaggers took the baby to Miss Havisham, who wanted a girl to raise. Pip returns to Satis House. Miss Havisham, now full of remorse, gives money for Herbert's partnership and begs Pip's forgiveness. As he leaves, her dress catches fire from the hearth. Pip burns his hands putting out the flames. She lives a short while and dies. Orlick lures Pip to a lime kiln on the marshes and ties him up. He confesses that he attacked Mrs. Joe and says he will kill Pip. Herbert arrives with friends just in time. Pip, Herbert and their friend Startop try to row Magwitch down the Thames to a steamer bound for Europe. A police boat stops them, with Compeyson on board. Magwitch grabs Compeyson, and both go into the river. Compeyson drowns. Magwitch is badly injured and sentenced to death. Pip now stays loyal to him and visits him in prison every day. Before the hanging, Magwitch dies peacefully. Pip tells him that his daughter is alive, is a lady and that Pip loves her. Magwitch's fortune goes to the Crown, and Pip is left with debts. Pip falls ill with fever and is arrested for debt. He wakes to find Joe nursing him. Joe has paid his debts. Pip goes back to the village to ask Biddy to marry him, and finds that she has just married Joe. He asks their forgiveness. He then joins Herbert's firm in Cairo and works there for eleven years, until he becomes a partner. ### Spoilers: the two endings Dickens wrote two endings. In the original, Pip meets Estella by chance in London after Drummle's death. She has remarried a Shropshire doctor and has been softened by suffering. They part as friends. The novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton persuaded Dickens that this was too sad, and Dickens wrote a new ending for the published book. In the published ending, Pip returns from Egypt and walks one evening to the ruins of Satis House. Estella is there. Drummle, who beat her, is dead. She says that suffering has taught her to understand what Pip's heart once felt. They leave the ruins together, and Pip says he sees no shadow of another parting from her. Readers still debate whether this line means they marry or leaves it open. ### What the critics say George Bernard Shaw and many later critics preferred the original ending as truer to the book. Others defend the revised one as earned and still ambiguous. The novel is widely read as Dickens's most self-critical book: its hero is a snob, and the moral center is Joe, the uneducated blacksmith. Some critics see the plot's coincidences, such as Estella's parentage, as Victorian melodrama. Most agree that Pip's voice, looking back on his own errors, gives the book its power. ### Who should read it Read it if you want a story about ambition and ingratitude told with humor, or if you are studying the novel and need the three stages in order. It suits anyone who has ever been embarrassed by where they came from. ## Do this week - List every person who helps Pip and every person Pip helps, and note which list he values more in each stage. - Read Joe's visit to London in Chapter 27 and write down each moment where Pip chooses manners over kindness. - Read both endings, the original and the published one, and decide which fits the rest of the book better. - Write a short paragraph on Wemmick's two lives and one way your work self and home self differ. - Call or write to someone who supported you before you had success, and thank them for something specific. Summary by The Gist Hub (https://thegisthub.com). In our own words, not the book's text.