It's time! It's time! I get to start Great Expectations today! Oh, how I adore this book. I love reading it to my students - kids who, like Pip, are on their own journey. They come of age as Pip comes of age, and that's what makes this book a perfect middle school read. This year, I have promised my students that we will read the first third of the book together, and that I will give them everything they need in order to understand the book. Last year, I did the same for A Tale of Two Cities' most challenging chapter, "A Hand at Cards," and that seemed helpful for my 8th graders who were not quite able to untangle the figurative from the literal in that chapter.
To that end, I am posting this "Jess Notes" summary of Book I of Great Expectations. Yep, it's long. So get yourself a cup of tea, maybe a cookie or two, and settle in. Or even better - pick up a copy of the book and read along with us. I promise, it will be worth your time.
The First Stage of Pip’s Great Expectations
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my
Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer
or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
(1)
With these words, Dickens deposits us down in
medias res, or right in the middle of things, on Christmas Eve of 1812, in
the company of our narrator and main character, Pip. Not Philip, just Pip.
Plain old Pip. As we find out in the second paragraph of the book, Pip’s
parents are dead, so it’s been up to Pip to not only name himself, but to
figure out who he is and what he might become. This should sound familiar - a
hero, orphaned, or arising out of unusual origins strikes out on an adventure.
It’s one of the oldest stories humankind has. Consider some heroes from
literature and film: Harry Potter, Jesus, Luke Skywalker, Percy Jackson, King
Arthur, Pip - they are all either orphans, misplaced royalty, or born out of
unusual circumstances. We meet Pip, the hero of Great Expectations, as
he struggles to interpret the details of his dead parent’s graves, just as he
would study photographs. He derives impressions of his parents from the shape
and slant of the letters, the form of the words, and the placement of the
epitaphs. Pip’s five brothers and sisters lie next to his parents, under five
small gravestones. Our guide to this story, “the small bundle of shivers
growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip,” (2) is absolutely alone
in the world, in a marshy little village where the Thames River meets the sea.
As we already know from reading the back of
the book, Pip will meet a stranger, and that scene gets the plot rolling:
A fearful man, all in
course gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken
shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. 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; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. (2)
I adore this passage, because it’s
quintessential Dickens, all wrapped up in one descriptive paragraph. First of
all, it just goes on forever. It’s a beautifully complex sentence -
well, technically, it’s a complex-compound sentence, because it has at least
two independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses. It also appeals to
the rhetorician in me. I get a little worked up over rhetoric, the use of
language to persuade, to move, to elevate language above the sum of its parts.
It can be as simple as repetition, or as complex as elaborate linguistic
patterns. This passage embodies a couple of lovely rhetorical forms. It’s a
gorgeous example of polysyndeton, or the repeated use of conjunctions
(such as and, but, or) in order to create an effect, such as rhythm, mood, or
pace. The effect created here is the rush of Pip’s confusion and panic. By
using the conjunction “and” over and over to string together a bunch of
descriptive phrases, it evokes Pip’s fear. Pip wants desperately to tell us
about this figure, but he’s frightened, and a little out of his head. He’s not
sure where this confused list of characteristics might end; he’s making it up
as he goes along, and therefore, he’s rambling and imprecise in his language.
To add to the loveliness of the paragraph, Dickens also uses parallel
structure, or isocolon - the repetition of sentences, phrases, and
clauses, all in the same syntax - to create a rhythm and pace. That’s a
lot of terms to define in one place, but no worries; syntax is just a fancy
term for word order. Look back at that paragraph; Dickens repeats
adjective-preposition-noun, adjective-preposition-noun, over and over again.
“Soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones…” Beautiful, right?
Dickens does not just tell us that Pip’s freaked out and out of sorts,
he freaks us out through the very language he uses to describe the very
thing that’s causing the freakout. The paragraph sweeps us up in Pip’s anxiety,
and barrels along as if it’s never going to stop - until it does, abruptly,
when the convict grabs Pip by the chin in mid-repetition, snapping Pip out of
it, and breaking the rhythm. Bam. The convict grabs Pip by the chin, and the
passage screeches to a halt.
I mean come on. This is great stuff.
Dickens is using language not just to tell - that’s for amateurs - he’s
using language to show, to create a mood, and evoke emotions in the
reader that mirror his main character’s. This is why we read Dickens.
There are plenty of books out there that simply spin a good plot and keep us
entertained, but language of this caliber is rare and magical. But back to the
story, because Pip’s in dire straits at the moment.
The convict lifts Pip up by his ankles,
literally and figuratively turning Pip’s world upside down, and demands that
Pip steal food, or “wittles,” for him, as he’s starving. Once the convict finds
out that Pip lives with a blacksmith, he demands a file as well, to remove the
chains still attached to his leg. He’s escaped from one of the hulks, or ships,
that transports criminals to Australia and lies moored offshore, and he can’t
re-enter civilization with a leg-iron tethered to his ankle. In order to assure
Pip’s obedience, he tells him that he has an accomplice nearby, a fearsome,
savage man who wants nothing more than to get at Pip and eat his liver right
out. Pip is so afraid that he runs home, without stopping, to gather the
requested supplies for the convict.
As it is Christmas Eve, Pip’s sister, Mrs.
Joe, and his brother-in-law, Joe, are expecting guests for dinner. Pip is
terrified, but he takes a moment out of the narrative to give us some backstory
and description regarding his guardians. When Pip’s parents died, Mrs. Joe
grudgingly took Pip in, and brought him up “by hand.” In the parlance of
Victorian England, this literally means that Pip was bottle-fed rather than fed
by his mother or a wet nurse, but in an ironic twist on the term, Pip implies
that brought up “by hand” means she beat him on a regular basis. “Having at
that that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing
her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it
upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were
both brought up by hand.” (6) Dickens is very concerned about the treatment of
children in Victorian England, and this motif, or recurring idea, comes
up often in his stories, such as David Copperfield, and Oliver Twist.
Dickens himself was forced into factory work as a child when his father was
imprisoned, and those experiences led to a lifelong interest in the plight of
children in the early years of unregulated, industrial England. When we read
about how Pip is treated by his sister, it’s hard not to think of the starving
orphan Oliver Twist when he tells the ruthless master in the workhouse parish,
“Please sir, I want some more [gruel]”
Pip may not be starving, but he is subjected
to terrible physical and verbal abuse. His sister beats him with a stick called
“the Tickler,” and while Joe tries to run interference for him, Pip usually
bears the brunt of his sister’s frustration over her unhappy life. Joe and Pip
are more siblings than father and son, and they depend on each other for
emotional comfort and comic relief. They play games with their meals, protect
each other from Mrs. Joe’s wrath, and clearly adore each other. The evening Pip
encounters the criminal for the first time, Joe senses that Pip’s upset, but
Pip’s afraid to tell him anything for fear of that accomplice, waiting out in
the marshes, eager to make a meal of Pip’s liver. And here’s where we run into
another of my favorite quotes: “I was in moral terror of the young man who
wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the
iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been
extracted…” (13) And there’s that rhetoric again. This time, it’s anaphora,
or repetition at the start of successive sentences or clauses. As if we had not
figured it out already, Pip is in mortal terror, so much so that he repeats it
for us a couple of times to hammer the point home. The anaphora lulls the
reader into the rhythm, until that last phrase shakes things up - not only
because the rhythm gets interrupted, but because it’s an odd thing to be in
mortal terror of one’s self. The young man who wants his liver? Sure. The
convict with the iron leg? Of course. But himself? Both the incongruity of the
idea and the change in the object of the mortal terror trips the reader up just
enough to make us stop and think about what we just read. It’s lovely, just
lovely.
After a fitful night, Pip wakes up early and
steals food from the pantry and a file from Joe’s forge. As he makes his way
across the marshes to find the convict, Dickens takes some time to describe the
marshes. Description is one of the other linguistic forms, along with rhetoric,
and Dickens is a master at it. He could simply tell us that the marshes are
cold and foreboding, but instead, he renders the marshes as a character in the
novel, more antagonist than mere setting. This mist obscures Pip’s vision, both
literally and figuratively. It obscures his vision of what lies ahead in the
terrain and what lies ahead in his future. Pip can’t see the horizon line of
the marshes any more than he can see what lies ahead in the trajectory of his
life. It isn’t until Pip leaves the village, and its mist recedes, that he
believes he can finally see his future, clear and bright. But let’s get back to
the marshes, because the convict is out there, shivering and waiting for Pip’s
delivery.
The one thing that is clear to the reader as
Pip traverses the marshes, looking for the convict, is that Pip suffers from a
seriously guilty conscience. In his heightened fear and guilt, even the oxen in
the fields take on the appearance of judgmental clergymen, ready to hurl
accusations over their fences. Finally, Pip comes across a man he believes to
be his convict, at least from behind. He startles the man, dressed in the same
coarse gray, with the same leg-iron as his convict, but with a different face.
The man runs away, and Pip assumes he’s just stumbled across the young man who
has been yearning to eat his liver. Pip continues on and finds the convict -
his convict, as he’s come to think of him - and gives him the food and file.
The convict scarfs the food down like a wild dog, frantic. Pip watches him eat,
and tells the convict, “I am glad you enjoy it.” This is an important moment.
Despite his incredible fear and guilt, Pip hopes the convict likes the food.
Even the convict is surprised by Pip’s sentiment.
“Did you speak?”
“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”
“Thankee, my boy, I do.” (17)
Pip’s generosity of
spirit, even toward a convict who has threatened his life, tells us - and the
convict - much about Pip’s character. Again, Dickens does not come right out
and tell us that Pip is kind and caring (a technique called direct
characterization); he does not even have Joe tell the reader through some
heavy-handed attempt at description (“Oh, Pip, how kind and caring you are!”).
No, that’s not Dickens’ style. He allows Pip to show us who he is through his
own words and actions, a much more subtle trick, called indirect
characterization.
Pip leaves his convict,
still sawing away at the iron on his leg, and joins the Christmas Eve
festivities back at home. Apparently, Pip’s relatives view Pip’s mistreatment
as part of the festivities of the holiday, because they berate him mercilessly
over dinner. To add to Pip’s agony, he is feeling guilty about having to steal
the food and file, and fears he may be found out at any moment. Probably, he
believes, when his sister goes into the pantry for the pork pie he’s stolen, or
offers the brandy, which has been replaced by tar-water, a vile-tasting liquid
she makes him drink as a tonic. At the moment he’s convinced the gig is up, “I could
bear no more…I released the leg of the table, and ran for my life. But I ran no
further than the house door, for there I can head foremost into a party of
soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me,
saying, ‘Here you are, look sharp, come on!’” (28)
It’s at this point that
readers might start to notice that certain chapters of Great Expectations
end in cliffhangers. Dickens sold many of his novels to magazines in monthly
serial installments, and the cliffhanger was a great way to keep readers on the
hook until the next installment was published. If you read carefully, you can
tell which chapters ended the installment - they are usually the chapters with
the most tense and exciting endings.
But back to Pip, standing
there at the door, positive he’s about to be arrested for the theft of
“wittles” and a file. It turns out the soldiers are not there for him, but for
Joe’s services. They are in pursuit of an escaped convict, and their handcuffs
are in need of repairs. Joe fires up the forge and as they wait for the work to
be done, wine is passed around. Pip and Joe are invited to come along on the
hunt for the convict, with Pip riding on Joe’s back. The soldiers signal the
alert when they come across two convicts fighting in a ditch, and Pip
recognizes them as his convict and the liver-craving convict immediately. The
two are bloodied and bruised from their struggle, and they each claim the other
was intent on murder.
Despite his curiosity, Pip
is nervous about getting too close; he’s afraid that his convict will think
that Pip alerted the police to his whereabouts. However, when the convict
catches sight of Pip, he does something truly surprising. The convict lies. He
confesses to stealing the food and file from Joe’s house, apparently as a ruse
to keep Pip out of trouble. It’s a wonderful moment, made even more wonderful
when Joe, in another moment of Dickens’ graceful characterization, quickly
offers that the convict is welcome to whatever food he needed, as he would not
have wanted the convict to starve, no matter what he’d done in his past.
The next couple of
chapters offer up some exposition, another of the four rhetorical form
we’ll encounter (the others are narration, argumentation, and description).
Exposition conveys backstory, information the reader needs to understand in
order to move the plot forward. Joe and Pip spend some quiet time together,
reading, and through their conversation, we learn that Joe is illiterate, that
he suffered at the hands of a cruel, alcoholic father, his mother died, and his
loneliness drove him into his marriage to Mrs. Joe. Pip and the reader come to
understand the source of Joe’s tolerance for Mrs. Joe’s fits of temper. “I see
so much in my poor mother, of a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her
honest hart and never getting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead afeerd
of going wrong in the way of not doing what’s right by a woman, and I’d fur
rather of the two go wrong the t’other way, and be a little ill-conwenienced
myself. I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn’t no
Tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself…” (50) It’s
official: Joe’s a really good guy. Despite the abuse of Mrs. Joe, he wants to
do right by women, and more than anything else, he wants to protect Pip.
Now that the reader has
all of this vital backstory and context, we arrive at a critical moment in the
plot and in Pip’s journey. Pip is about to receive an invitation, what the
author Joseph Campbell refers to as the “call to adventure.” Some calls are
literal invitations - Harry Potter received a living room full of owl-posted
letters - but Pip’s invitation much is less literal. His invitation comes in
the form of Pumblechook, a disagreeable and pompous relative, who has arranged
for Pip to play at Miss Havisham’s mansion, Satis House. Miss Havisham is a
rich and noble woman who lives in town, and while Pip does not understand the
purpose of the visit, wondering “what on earth I was expected to play at” (53),
he is packed off to Miss Havisham’s. The preparations Pip is subjected to
before his first visit may seem like a simple humorous scene, but when viewed
in terms of the hero’s journey, it’s much more significant.
…She pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed
into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and
I was soaped, and kneaded, and toweled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped,
until I was really quite beside myself. (53)
Pip refers to this
treatment as “ablutions,” because that’s exactly what this washing is.
Ablutions, from the Latin abluere is a washing away, a cleansing, used
most often in the sense of ritual purification in preparation for some journey
or ritual. Through this humorous description (and did you notice the polysyndeton
again? The way the repetition of the conjunction “and” makes the torture of
being soaped and kneaded and toweled and thumped just
sweeps the reader up in Pip’s passive yet violent experience?), Pip is cleansed
in preparation for the experiences that lie ahead. He’s about to embark on his
adventure, his quest for those great expectations, and like a medieval knight
preparing for a religious quest, he is purified before setting out.
Upon his arrival at Satis
House, Pip is greeted at the gates by a young girl named Estella, “who was very
pretty and seemed very proud.” (56). She allows Pip, but not Pumblechook, who
has accompanied him on his journey into town, to pass over the threshold of
Satis House. The hero of our story has thus arrived at another significant
moment, what Campbell calls “The Crossing of the First Threshold,” the moment
when the hero crosses over from known to the unknown world. In mythology, the
threshold is guarded by a sentry, such as an ogre or the monster dog Cerberus.
Pip’s threshold is guarded by a monster even more fearsome: a pretty and proud
teenage girl, and she will change Pip’s view of himself and his world forever.
He arrives at Miss Havisham’s thinking of himself as a normal child, maybe even
a little smarter than the average child thanks to Joe’s lavish praise of his
reading and writing. By end of the chapter, however, Pip has found out that in
Estella’s estimation, he is common, coarse, and poor. Worst of all, he has
begun to fall in love with Estella and all she represents to him, and he knows
in his heart that he is unworthy of her love.
She gave me a triumphant glance in passing
me, as if she rejoiced that my hands were so coarse and my boots were to thick,
and she opened the gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without
looking at her, when she touched me with a taunting hand.
“Why don’t you cry?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“You do,” said she. “You have been crying
till you are half-blind, and you are near crying again now.”
She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out,
and locked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s, and was
immensely relieved to find him not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman
on what day I was wanted at Miss Havisham’s again, I set off on the four-mile
walk to our forge, pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply
revolving that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my
boots were thick; that I had fallen into a more despicable habit of calling
knaves jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last
night; and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way. (65)
This is the moment Pip
loses his innocence, for Estella’s observation is offered up to Pip just as the
apple was offered to Adam. Adam understood he was human, naked, and he was
ashamed, and Pip understands that he is low, and coarse, and unworthy. As it’s
impossible to go back home, back to the place of childhood innocence, Pip’s
only choice is to move forward, away from this new impression of himself and
toward the person he will become. In order to make his way in the world Estella
has revealed to him, he must embark on a quest for his great expectations - to
deserve Estella, to raise his status and become a gentleman, to discover who he
wants to be. Pip understands the significance of this moment, and tells us:
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 for
the first link on one memorable day. (72)
In order to become a gentleman, Pip will need
education and money. On the very first morning of his new life, Pip reaches out
to his friend and teacher, Biddy, for an education. As for the money, Pip is in
a bit of a predicament. From the day he entered Joe and Mrs. Joe’s home, the
course of Pip’s life had always pointed toward the forge, to become Joe’s
apprentice, and take over Joe’s business when Joe was ready to retire. But even
Pip’s modest proposal costs money. At the time Dickens was writing, an
apprenticeship was an official, contractual obligation, an agreement one had to
apply for, and pay a fee to obtain. Pip has been looking forward to his
apprenticeship with Joe for his entire childhood, but when Miss Havisham offers
to pay for it, and end his visits to Satis House, he knows the life of a
blacksmith will never be enough for him. “Finally, I remember that when I got
into my little bedroom, I was truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me
that I should never like Joe’s trade. I had liked it once, but once was not
now.” (107)
Pip has the presence of mind to be ashamed of
himself, but he believes that the forge, Joe, his home, his village, are not
his destiny. Look for the anaphora in the following lament about the curse of
his shame:
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of
home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing and the punishment may be
retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
Home had never been a very pleasant place to me,
because of my sister’s temper. But Joe had sanctified it, and I believed in it.
I had believed in the best parlor as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in
the front door as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn
opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the
kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the
forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all
this was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had
Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account. (111)
Despite his dissatisfaction, Pip commits to
his interminable tenure in the forge. It is at this point that a journeyman
named Orlick takes work at the forge with Pip and Joe. Dickens uses a wonderful
bit of biblical allusion, a reference to a story outside the text, to
give us all the information we need to know about Orlick’s character. He
describes Orlick as “Cain or the Wandering Jew” (118), and, if we know our Old
Testament, we understand that Orlick, like Cain, or the Wandering Jew, has been
condemned by God to wander the world in retribution for some evil he’s
committed in his past. Dickens does not have to go into a lot of narrative
about what Orlick may or may not have done, the reference to Cain serves that
up in a much more subtle fashion. No good can come of Orlick’s presence in the
forge, and he brings a sense of danger and foreboding into the story. Orlick
hates Pip because he understands that no matter how hard he works in the forge,
he will always have to defer to Pip, Joe’s successor in the family business.
Orlick hates Joe because he knows Joe will always prefer Pip. Orlick hates Mrs.
Joe because, well, she’s a shrew; what’s not to hate.
Pip tries to stay focused, to stay away from
Miss Havisham’s as long as he can, but when her birthday rolls around, he makes
the trip into town to thank her once again for putting up the money for his
apprenticeship. At least, that’s his ostensible reason. His real reason is, of
course, to see Estella. However, Estella is abroad, getting a lady’s education,
and Pip knows he’s even further from earning her love than he’s ever been.
“Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach; prettier
than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you have lost her?”
(122) Pip sees no way out of this life that’s been forced on him, and as if to
hammer home this point, the fog hangs heavy, wet, and thick over the village.
Arriving home, Pip finds that his sister has
been savagely attacked by an unknown intruder. She is, from this night,
permanently damaged mentally and physically, “destined never to be on the
rampage again while she was the wife of Joe.” (125) Pip feels guilty about the
attack on his sister, particularly as the weapon is determined to be a
“convict’s leg-iron that had been filed asunder.” (126) Pip is does not think
it was his convict who committed the act, but he assumes that he is
responsible for the weapon, for it is likely the same leg-iron that his convict
removed with Joe’s file. Even in her disabled state, Mrs. Joe’s behavior toward
Orlick suggests that he was her attacker. She can no longer speak, but she
draws pictures of hammers on her slate in a desperate attempt to communicate
the identity of her attacker, and is particularly eager to stay on Orlick’s
good side whenever he is around.
Save for this one change to Pip’s household,
life continues in “a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was varied,
beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no more remarkable
circumstances than the arrival of my birthday and my paying another visit to
Miss Havisham.” (131) Pip is bored, his life is monotonous, he’s depressed, and
he can’t even bring himself to recount the details of what appears to be the
interval of a few years for us. The only detail he bothers to note is regarding
his opinion of Biddy. He’s begun to notice her. Not that she can compete with
Estella, of course. “She was not beautiful
- she was common, and could not be like Estella - but she was pleasant
and wholesome and sweet-tempered.” (131) Dickens makes a clear comparison,
positining these two women as foils, opposites meant to contrast each
other, to highlight the differences between them. Estella and Biddy. The
difference is apparent from the moment we learn their names. Estella: Spanish
for “star,” luminous and beautiful, cold and distant. And Biddy? Well, Biddy is
another word for chicken, and slang for a female servant. Their personalities
only serve to reinforce their roles; they may as well be from two different
species.
Biddy does not understand or encourage Pip’s
desire to become a gentleman. She’s perfectly content in her life and wishes
the same for Pip. Unfortunately, Pip’s desire for great expectations has begun
to change him, and where he used to possess empathy and care for other’s feelings,
he manages to insult and alienate Biddy when he confides in her about his
regrets.
“If I could have settled down,” I said to Biddy,
plucking up the short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled
my feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall; “if I could
have settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was
little, I know it would have been much better for me. You and I and Joe would
have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I would perhaps have gone partners when I
was out of my time, and I might even have grown up to keep company with you,
and we might have sat on this very bank on a fine Sunday, quite different
people. I should have been good enough for you; shouldn’t I, Biddy?”
(134)
Pip’s implication is that he can never be
enough for the lovely Estella, but he would be enough for Biddy. That’s
low, and certainly not what a woman of marriageable age would want to hear. To
her credit, she brushes the comment off and forgives Pip, because Biddy is
simply that type of person; kind, gentle, and willing to see the best in Pip.
The polar opposite of Estella, who is happiest when Pip is in tears over her.
Four years go by in much the same manner as
the years before, and then, like a bolt from heaven, Pip is visited by a
stranger who changes his life. Jaggers, a lawyer whom Pip has seen at Miss
Havisham’s house, informs him that he has been granted his dream, the promise
of great expectations.
“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said
Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, “that he will come in to a
handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of
that property that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life
and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman – in a word, as a young
fellow of great expectations.” (144)
There are two conditions on these “great
expectations,” however. Pip must “always bear the name of Pip,” and “the name
of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a profound secret.” Pip –
just plain old Pip – must keep his name as a reminder of his origins. A fortune
cannot change the fact that he remains just Pip, and his benefactor wants him
to remember this no matter how far he travels from the marshes and the forge. Despite
the directive that he must retain his diminutive name, Pip immediately assumes
a selfish and pompous persona. He orders clothes for his new life as a
gentleman of London, but has them delivered to town rather than to his village,
because he believes he will be stared at by the villagers now that he is
something of a local celebrity. As he becomes more and more vain, he also
becomes more and more dissatisfied with his family and former life. He feels
his new station and fortune elevate him above his family and peers, until even
his familiar old bed cannot offer the comfort it once did.
Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe’s pipe
floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe – not obtruded on
me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we shared together. I put my
light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy bed now, and I never slept
the old sound sleep in it anymore. (152)
Before Pip’s departure for London, where he
will commence his gentlemen’s education, he pays a last visit to Miss Havisham,
whom Pip assumes to be his benefactor. He expresses his gratitude, kisses her
hand, and as he leaves, Miss Havisham reminds Pip, “You will always keep the
name of Pip, you know.” Despite her rejoinder, it is too late. Pip is already
quite changed. He may still answer to Pip, but he’s rapidly forgetting where he
came from. He will not even allow Joe to walk with him to the village, and not
because he is dreading a teary goodbye. His reasoning that of an increasingly
pompous Pip, wearing fancy new clothes and an obnoxious attitude, “I am afraid
- sore afraid - that this purpose originated in my sense of the contrast there
would be between me and Joe, if we went to the coach together.” (166) He’s
ashamed of Joe, and would rather not be seen with him on his first morning of
his new life as a gentleman.
He regrets this course of action long enough
to consider getting off the coach and walking back to the house in order to
have a better parting with Joe. Rather than follow his heart, however, he
remains on the coach, “and it was now too late, and too far to go back, and I
went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread
before me.” (167)
THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE
OF PIP’S EXPECTATIONS.
