A six-year-old boy named Pip lives on the English marshes with his sister (Mrs.

Joe
Gargery) and his sister's husband (Mr. Joe Gargery). His sister is about as bossy and
mean as most older sisters arebut his brother-in-law Joe is pretty much the best thing
that's happened to Pip.
One Christmas Eve, Pip meets a scary, escaped convict in a churchyard. Pip steals
food from Mrs. Joe so that the convict won't starve (and also so that the convict won't rip
his guts out). Soon after, in apparently unrelated events, Pip gets asked to play at Miss
Havisham's, the creepy lady who lives down the street. And we mean creepy: her
mansion is covered in moss; she still wears the wedding dress she was wearing when
she was jilted at the altar decades ago; and the whole place is crawling with bugs. It's
likeBeauty and the Beast, only without the singing tableware.
The only good thing about the mansion is Estella, Miss Havisham's adopted daughter.
Estella is cold and snobby, but man is she pretty. Pip keeps getting invited back to play
with her, and he develops quite the little crush on her. This crush turns into a big crush,
and that big crush turns into full-blown, all-consuming L-O-V-E, even though there's no
way that orphan Pip can ever have a chance with Estella, the adopted child of the
richest lady in town.
When Pip is old enough to be put to workyou know, early teens or sohe starts an
apprenticeship at his brother-in-law's smithy, thanks to Miss Havisham's financial
support. You'd think he'd be thrilled (fire, swinging heavy things around), but he hates it:
all he wants is to become a gentleman and marry Estella.
Then, surprise! He comes into fortune by means of a mysterious and undisclosed
benefactor, says goodbye to his family, and heads to London to become a gentleman.
And it's pretty sweet at first. Mr. Jaggers, Pip's caretaker, is one of the biggest and
baddest lawyers in town. Pip also gets a new BFF named Herbert Pocket, the son of
Miss Havisham's cousin.
Herbert shows Pip around town, and they have a busy city life: dinner parties in castles
with moats, encounters with strange housekeepers, trips to the theater, etc.
Two teeny problems: he spends way too much money, and whenever he goes home
he's ashamed of Joe. Meanwhile, Estella, who's been off touring the world, comes back
to London and is even more gorgeous than ever.
On his 21st birthday, Jaggers gives Pip a huge 500-pound annual allowance, which he
uses to help Herbert get a job. Aw, good friend! This goes on for a couple of yearsPip
is a man about town; Estella keeps rejecting himuntil, on his 23rd birthday, a stranger
shows up. The stranger is Pip's benefactor. The stranger is the convict that Pip
helped when he was only six years old!
Here are the deets: the con's name is Abel Magwitch/Provis. The courts exiled him to
New South Wales under strict orders never, ever to return to England, so not only is Pip
super bummed to find out that his benefactor isn't Miss Havisham after all, as he's
assumed, but a criminalhe's also harboring a convict. Obviously, Pip decides that he's
got to get Magwitch out of the country, but not before Pip rescues Miss Havisham from
a fire that burns down her house and eventually kills her.
Pip devises a plan to get Magwitch out of the country, but he's uneasyand with good
reason: just as they get ready to make their great escape, Estella goes and marries
Pip's nemesis and Pip is almost thrown into a limekiln by a hometown bully who claims
to know about Magwitch. And then the two are ratted out by Magwitch's nemesis
Compeyson, who is, coincidentally, Miss Havisham's ex-lover. Magwitch is thrown in jail
and dies, but not before Pip tells him the shocking truth: Estella is his daughter.
After these traumatic events, Pip gets really sick, and Joe comes to the rescue. As soon
as Pip recovers, however, Joe leaves him in the middle of the night, having paid off all
of Pip's debts. Obviously, Pip follows him home, intending to ask for Joe's forgiveness
and to propose marriage to his childhood friend, Biddy. Upon arriving home, however,

he finds that Joe and Biddy have just married, which is a little weird, if you ask us. He
says he's sorry he's been such a butthead, and then he moves to Cairo.
For eleven years, Pip works at Herbert's shipping company in Cairo, sending money
back to Joe and Biddy. He finally returns to England, and then has one of two different
fates, depending on whether you read the original ending or the revised ending:
Original ending: Pip is hanging out in London a few years later with Joe and Biddy's
son, baby Pip, when he runs into Estella. She's had a hard life: her husband was
abusive, and when he died she married a poor doctor.
Rewritten ending: Pip visits Miss Havisham's house once more. Estella is walking the
grounds, being all single, beautiful, and sad about having thrown Pip's love away. Aw.
They're going to be together forever, you guys!

Charles Dickens's Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, an English orphan who rises
to wealth, deserts his true friends, and becomes humbled by his own arrogance. It also
introduces one of the more colorful characters in literature: Miss Havisham. Charles
Dickens set Great Expectations during the time that England was becoming a wealthy
world power. Machines were making factories more productive, yet people lived in awful
conditions, and such themes carry into the story.
Genres: bildungsroman; Victorian Literature; social commentary
First Published: December 1860-April 1861 in weekly installments to a magazine; July
1861 as a novel in 3 volumes; November 1862 as a whole novel
Main Characters: Pip; Joe Gargery; Magwitch; Mrs. Joe; Miss
Havisham; Estella; Jaggers and Wemmick
Major Thematic Topics: good versus evil; moral redemption from sin; wealth and its
equal power to help or corrupt; personal responsibility; awareness and acceptance of
consequences from one's choices; abandonment; guilt; shame; desire; secrecy;
gratitude; ambition; obsession/emotional manipulation versus real love; class structure
and social rules; snobbery; child exploitation; the corruption and problems of the
educational and legal systems; the need for prison reform; religious attitudes of the time;
the effect of the increasing trade and industrialization on people's lives; the Victorian
work ethic (or lack thereof)
Motifs: sense of location; criminals; social expectations
Major Symbols: Miss Havisham's house; money
The three most important aspects of Great Expectations:
Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Other examples
of this form include Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.

Salinger. Great Expectations is unusual in that its main character, Pip, is often
hard to sympathize with because of his snobbery and the resulting bad behavior
he exhibits toward some of the other characters, like Joe Gargery.

Ambition and Self-Improvement

The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and
conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens
establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of
ambition and self-improvementideas that quickly become both the thematic center of
the novel and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pips
development. At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is
better than what he already has, he immediately desires to obtain the improvement.
When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his
moral shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he realizes that he cannot read, he
longs to learn how. Pips desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novels
title: because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has great
expectations about his future.
Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectationsmoral, social,
and educational; these motivate Pips best and his worst behavior throughout the novel.
First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts
immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he
leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself about having behaved so
wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. In love
with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by Mrs.
Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working
out of this fantasy forms the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity
to gently satirize the class system of his era and to make a point about its capricious
nature. Significantly, Pips life as a gentleman is no more satisfyingand certainly no
more moralthan his previous life as a blacksmiths apprentice. Third, Pip desires
educational improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and
longing to marry Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long
as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social advancement. Pip
understands this fact as a child, when he learns to read at Mr. Wopsles aunts school,
and as a young man, when he takes lessons from Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through
the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational
improvement are irrelevant to ones real worth and that conscience and affection are to
be valued above erudition and social standing.
Social Class
Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian
England, ranging from the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of
the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich
(Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the novels plot and to the

ultimate moral theme of the bookPips realization that wealth and class are less
important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he
is finally able to understand that, despite the esteem in which he holds Estella, ones
social status is in no way connected to ones real character. Drummle, for instance, is
an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novels treatment of social
class is that the class system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution
model of Victorian England. Dickens generally ignores the nobility and the hereditary
aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have been earned through commerce.
Even Miss Havishams family fortune was made through the brewery that is still
connected to her manor. In this way, by connecting the theme of social class to the idea
of work and self-advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the novels overarching theme
of ambition and self-improvement.
Crime, Guilt, and Innocence
The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely
through the characters of the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the
handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the gallows at the prison in London, the imagery
of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming an important symbol of Pips
inner struggle to reconcile his own inner moral conscience with the institutional justice
system. In general, just as social class becomes a superficial standard of value that Pip
must learn to look beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external trappings of
the criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of
morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his inner conscience. Magwitch, for
instance, frightens Pip at first simply because he is a convict, and Pip feels guilty for
helping him because he is afraid of the police. By the end of the book, however, Pip has
discovered Magwitchs inner nobility, and is able to disregard his external status as a
criminal. Prompted by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and the
police. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitchs inner
character, he has replaced an external standard of value with an internal one.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop
and inform the texts major themes.
Doubles
One of the most remarkable aspects of Dickenss work is its structural intricacy and
remarkable balance. Dickenss plots involve complicated coincidences, extraordinarily
tangled webs of human relationships, and highly dramatic developments in which
setting, atmosphere, event, and character are all seamlessly fused.
In Great Expectations, perhaps the most visible sign of Dickenss commitment to
intricate dramatic symmetryapart from the knot of character relationships, of course
is the fascinating motif of doubles that runs throughout the book. From the earliest
scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element of Great Expectations is mirrored
or doubled at some other point in the book. There are two convicts on the marsh
(Magwitch and Compeyson), two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young

women who interest Pip (Biddy and Estella), and so on. There are two secret
benefactors: Magwitch, who gives Pip his fortune, and Pip, who mirrors Magwitchs
action by secretly buying Herberts way into the mercantile business. Finally, there are
two adults who seek to mold children after their own purposes: Magwitch, who wishes to
own a gentleman and decides to make Pip one, and Miss Havisham, who raises
Estella to break mens hearts in revenge for her own broken heart. Interestingly, both of
these actions are motivated by Compeyson: Magwitch resents but is nonetheless
covetous of Compeysons social status and education, which motivates his desire to
make Pip a gentleman, and Miss Havishams heart was broken when Compeyson left
her at the altar, which motivates her desire to achieve revenge through Estella. The
relationship between Miss Havisham and Compeysona well-born woman and a
common manfurther mirrors the relationship between Estella and Pip.
This doubling of elements has no real bearing on the novels main themes, but, like the
connection of weather and action, it adds to the sense that everything in Pips world is
connected. Throughout Dickenss works, this kind of dramatic symmetry is simply part
of the fabric of his novelistic universe.