Great Expectations

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Introduction

One cold and misty evening, a little boy meets an escaped criminal on the marshes near England's coast. No, it's not the opening of a TV crime drama (although it could be)—it's the beginning of one of Charles Dickens' most famous novels: Great Expectations.

The story of a young blacksmith boy Pip and his two dreams—becoming a gentleman and marrying the beautiful Estella—Great Expectations was serialized from December 1, 1860 until August 3, 1861. With two chapters every week, Great Expectations (and other serialized novels like it) were as close as Victorian England got to Breaking Bad orMad Men. People waited anxiously every week for the next "episode" to arrive in the newsstands and on the shelves—and you can see why. Dickens was a master of the serialized novel, writing segments full of cliff-hangers and nail-biting action, while remaining true to the novel's overall storyline. His stories worked in pieces and as a cohesive whole—not an easy task. (Just askJ. J. Abrams.)

When Great Expectations began its run, Charles Dickens was already world-famous, but his magazine All the Year Round was struggling. So, he came up with a plan: rather than save the story he'd sketched out for a cooler and better-paying publication, he decided to run it in his own magazine.

The novel was a major success. Like most of Dickens' work, it addressed contemporary issues of social justice and inequality. While England was growing rich and powerful in the era of colonialism and the Industrial Revolution, Dickens saw the injustice that ran rampant among the working and lower classes. He documented Britain's underbelly and explored the fight for survival in a time of such wealth.

But it's not all doom and gloom. (We promise.) Sure, there are broken hearts, glimpses into London's dark criminal underworld, and enough child abuse to make you want to call protective services. At the same time, it's full of hilarious characters and little slice-of-life sketches that, just like any serialized TV show, will keep you coming back for more.

Charles Dickens

(Summary in Tamil)

Summary

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 are—but 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 work—you know, early teens or so—he 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. Twoteeny 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 years—Pip is a man about town; Estella keeps rejecting him—until, 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 criminal—he'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 uneasy—and 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 alimekiln 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!

CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

We kick things right off with … a lecture about our narrator's name.His first name is Philip, and his last name is Pirrip. Philip Pirrip. When we try to say that name ten times fast, we end up saying "filapeera," and we have multiple advanced degrees.Our narrator is only six years old, so he calls himself "Pip." Fine by us. This is a 500-page novel, so the shorter the better.Pip is an orphan who lives in the marsh country along the river Thames, twenty miles from the sea to be exact. He lives with his meanie sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and her blacksmith husband, Joe Gargery.Pip can't remember his parents, so he likes to chill in the cemetery with their gravestones and decide what they were like based on their inscriptions.Dum dee dum. We continue to hang out with Pip in the cemetery in the late afternoon, chilling with the family graves when, suddenly, a scary-looking someone jumps out of a hiding place and grabs Pip by the throat.

Stranger Danger tells Pip to be quiet or else. Then he demands that Pip bring him some wittles (a.k.a. vittles; a.k.a. victuals, a.k.a. food) and a file (a sharp metal instrument, not something you save on your computer). Then he shakes Pip a little, turns him upside down, tells him he'll cut out his heart and liver if he doesn't obey, and disappears into the marshes.Pip is thoroughly freaked out.

CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY

Pip's sister is more than twenty years older than him, and she's ugly. She's famous in the neighborhood for having raised Pip "by hand."This phrase can just mean that he was bottle-fed (or, more like tea-cup fed!), but also means that she chose not to leave him out on the street and instead adopted and raised him herself. It probably also has something to do with her being a fan of corporal punishment.Pip's brother-in-law, Joe Gargery, is pretty much Pip's best friend in the whole wide world. He has big blue eyes and is really, really nice.Joe is a blacksmith and his smithy is attached to the Gargery house. Even six-year-old Pip can't figure out why a man as gentle and sweet as Joe would ever marry a woman as mean and hard as his sister.Anyway, Pip gets back from being hanged upside down by a terrifying escaped convict, only to find that his sister has been out looking for him, that she's furious he's been gone so long, and that she plans to use the Tickler on him.No matter what you're thinking, the Tickler isn't some fun Fisher-Price toy. It's a wax-ended cane that she likes to beat him with.At dinner, Pip secretly stuffs his buttered bread down his pants, which sounds awfully greasy to us. They think he's gulped it whole, and his sister threatens to make him drink tar waterto make him digest better.Guns fire in the distance, which is standard operating procedure anytime a prisoner escapes from the convict ships that hang out in this part of England.Understandably, this doesn't make Pip feel any better.Oh, by the way, it's Christmas Eve, and Pip has to stir the Christmas puddingfor a long, long time, which means he doesn't have an opportunity to pilfer more food for his convict.After a long night of no sleep, he gets up at the crack of dawn and steals a delicious pork-pie, brandy, some bread, mincemeat, and a meat bone. Grabbing a file from Joe's smithy, he runs off into the marshes.There's a lot of marsh-running in this novel

CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

It's a wet, foggy day. But then again, itis marshland, and it is England.Mediterranean climate, this is not.Pip feels so guilty that he even imagines the cows are judging him.The convict is sleeping, so Pip just kind of whispers and pokes him gently.BUT IT'S NOT THE CONVICT! It's a younger man who Pip assumes to be the bloodthirsty sidekick the convict tried to scare him with, but he must not be thirsty this morning because he just runs away, despite the iron chain around his leg.Pip continues in search of his very own convict. Eureka! His convict looks pretty beat up, but really appreciates the food.Is the convict is going to share any of the food with the sidekick?The convict is shaken when he realizes that Pip saw someone else on the marshes, and he runs off, madly trying to free himself of his iron with the file.Whew. Glad that's over.

CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY

Double whew, because no one suspects Pip has been up to no good when he returns home.Everyone's getting ready for Christmas dinner with Mr. Wopsle (the clerk at church), Mr. Hubble (the wheelwright), Mrs. Hubble (the wheelwright's wife), and Mr. Pumblechook (Joe's uncle).It's a nerve-wracking dinner. What will Mr. Pumblechook do when he tastes the watered-down brandy or when his sister discovers that the pork-pie is gone? (Hopefully celebrate, because pork-pie doesn't sound appetizing.)Pip is too busy worry about what the Tickler will do to him to eat much.Mr. Pumblechook tries the brandy, only to launch into a coughing fit. Pip accidentally filled the brandy bottle with tar water to make it seem like nothing had been stolen.Everyone is totally confused as to how tar water could have possibly found its way into the bottle.When Pip's sister goes to get the famous pork-pie, the crowning Christmas delight, Pip can't take it anymore. He bolts for the door in the hopes of escaping the Tickler's wrath ....… and he runs right into a party of soldiers at the Gargery doorstep.Uh-oh.

CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY

False alarm! The soldiers just want Joe to fix their handcuffs, and everyone totally forgets about the pork-pie. Pip escapes his sister's wrath.This time.The soldiers invite Joe and Pip to come convict-hunting with them. Fun! Pip climbs on Joe's back and the party heads into the marshy Christmas night to find the escapees.Suddenly, Pip is feeling a little worried about his convict. Sure, the convict was scary and all, but he was Pip's convict, and he doesn't want anyone messing with his very own convict.The men find two convicts fighting gladiator-style. Pip's convict is pulverizing the younger convict he had seen earlier that day.The younger convict tries to convince the soldiers that Pip's convict is intent on killing him, but Pip's convict retorts that he only wants to deliver him to the authorities and to make sure he doesn't escape his well-deserved fate.Pip's convict recognizes Pip, but doesn't say a word about this.In fact, he tells the authorities that he had himself stolen one pork-pie from the local smithy, thus acquitting Pip of any Tickler-inducing crime.The two convicts are taken away, supposedly to the giant convict ships that loom in the horizon, on the marshes.

CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY

Pip feels really guilty now. Not about stealing the food per se, but about not telling his best friend in the world, Joe Gargery, about what he had done.He decides it will be best never to tell Joe the full story, because he doesn't want this hero of his to ever doubt his six-year-old integrity.The action over, Joe carries Pip home.There's still Christmas dinner to be had, but Pip is tuckered out.Joe relates the whole story, pilfered pork-pie and all.Everyone spends some time trying to figure out how the convict could have gotten in to steal the pie, until Mrs. Gargery finally yanks Pip up the stairs and sends him to bed.It's a short chapter.

CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY

Pip goes to school for an hour every day at Mr. Wopsle's great aunt's house. It's not exactly a rigorous education. Mr. Wopsle's great aunt sleeps through lessons, and then sometimes Mr. Wopsle performs Shakespeare and poetry for the students, with bloody sword and all.At school, Pip encounters Biddy, Mr. Wopsle's great aunt's granddaughter. Biddy is an orphan, just like him.She's a bit unkempt, but man can she run a store. She basically manages Mr. Wopsle's great aunt's grocery store, which happens to be in the schoolroom.One night, Pip is practicing his writing with Joe, and he writes a letter to Joe. Despite the fact that it's functionally illiterate, Joe thinks this is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread.Oh, turns out Joe isn't much for reading and writing. Here's why:Joe explains that his father was an alcoholic and beat his mother often. Sometimes he and his mom would run away from his father, but his father always found them and always was convincingly penitent, only to relapse into a state of perpetual drunkenness.Joe was forced to work as a little boy to support his dad's drinking habit, and, thus, never had time for school. In spite of this rough childhood, Joe loves both his father and his mother and was with them until their deaths.This ends Joe's story.After seeing his mother suffer so much, Joe tells Pip he tries to do anything Mrs. Gargery wants and to provide her with anything she needs. He's sorry he can't control her temper or her love of the Tickler, but he sure does love Pip.Joe tells the story of how he insisted on adopting Pip, and Pip starts to cry. So do we.It's super cold outside, and Joe is starting to worry about his wife, who is out visiting Mr. Pumblechook,Suddenly, she arrives proclaiming that Miss Havisham, the Donald Trumpof the marshes, has requested that Pip serve as a playmate to her daughter.Pip has to spend the night at Mr. Pumblechook's that very night and will be taken to Miss Havisham's in the morning.Pip is confused. But before he can be too confused, his sister pounces upon him and subjects him to serious deep cleaning and scrubbing before she sends him off into the freezing cold night air. Pip is sad. He's never left Joe before.

CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY

Pip spends the night at Mr. Pumblechook's in the attic, where the ceiling is like two inches from his eyebrows. Mr. Pumblechook is a seedsman, meaning he sells lots ofseedy stuff. He also wears corduroys. A lot of corduroy goes on in the seed store.In the morning, Mr. Pumblechook pours Pip milk with water in it and bread with only a teensy amount of butter.To top it off, Mr. Pumblechook quizzes Pip on his multiplication tables while munching on the equivalent of an Egg McMuffin with bacon.Mr. Pumblechook and Pip walk over to Miss Havisham's. It's a big, dismal mansion with lots of bars, gates, and boarded up windows. There's a vacant brewery too. They ring the bell and wait for someone to unlock the gate.That someone arrives and is kind of cold and snippy. She's a young girl, and she doesn't let Mr. Pumblechook inside.She tells Pip that the house has two names: the manor house and Satis House. "Satis" means "enough" in either Greek, Hebrew, or Latin—she's not quite sure.(Too bad she didn't have Shmoop to tell her that it's Latin.)Anyway, the little girl tells Pip that, when it was first built, the builders thought that whoever owned the house could want nothing more in life.The little girl is Pip's age, but she calls Pip, "boy."She's also really pretty. This is important.They walk into the dark house, and the girl heads him down a series of cold, dark passages.She tells him to go inside a closed door, and inside he sees a dressing table and the whole room, though dimly lit, looks like a lady's dressing room.Someone's in there.It's the weirdest lady he's ever seen in his life. She's old and she's wearing beautiful clothes. Well, they would be beautiful, if they weren't so old that they were yellowy-brown.Uh, it's also a wedding dress, which isSO CREEPY.The lady only has one shoe on, and there's a tattered veil in her hair. There are jewels and gloves and lace on her dressing table, and half-packed trunks of dresses are lying around everywhere.The lady herself is pretty freaky looking, too, kind of a cross between a skeleton and a mummy. She's got deep sunken eyes, and her hair is all white.Pip realizes that all of the clocks in the room are stopped at exactly twenty minutes to nine.Seriously, if we were Pip we'd be so out of there right now.Instead, Pip stays. Miss Havisham (that's her name) tells Pip that she has a broken heart and then commands him to play.Uh, how does one play on command? That violates the laws of playing. It's like anti-play.Pip, showing good sense, feels the same way, and he's frozen in his tracks.Miss Havisham asks Pip to call for Estella (which we guess is the little girl's name). He does, but he's not happy about it.Well, how would you feel if you were forced to yell a name like "Estella" into a dark, cold, empty mansion with a creepy, half-dead lady watching you?Miss Havisham makes Pip and Estella play cards, and Estella rolls her eyes about having to play with a "common" boy.They play the age-old classic, Beggar My Neighbor, and Estella kicks Pip's butt.She also kicks his little heart around a little, making fun of him for calling "knaves," "jacks"; and making fun of his coarse hands and thick boots.Pip doesn't know what to do with himself. He's never doubted his hands, boots, or jacks before. What is going on? Aren't mid-life crises supposed to happen in the middle of life?Miss Havisham asks Pip what he thinks of Estella, and he tells her that he thinks she's proud, insulting, and pretty. You know, just your average pre-pubescent heartbreaker.Oh, also he'd like to go home. NOW.Miss Havisham tells Pip to come back in six days, and she orders Estella to give him some food.They walk down the pitch-black passages again, and Pip is weirded out by the sunshine outside. He thought for sure it would be dark out there too, you know, like when you go see a movie in the middle of a sunny day and then walk outside.Estella brings him beer, bread, and meat and leaves it on the porch for him as though she were feeding a dog.Naturally, Pip starts to cry, which totally pleases Estella, and then she leaves him outside. Pip has to kick a wall a little bit and twist his hair in order to get his tears and emotions out.He's never felt so degraded ever, and—instead of dismissing Estella as a stuck-up little brat—he wishes he had nicer clothes and softer hands.But then he drinks some beer and eats some meat, and he feels better.He starts to look around the "garden" and it's in need of an Extreme Makeover. Everything is dead and withered. (We're thinking that's symbolic.)He explores the brewery, too. The weird thing is that everywhere he goes, Estella is there too, but just ahead of him. It's like she's following him, but leading him at the same time. She climbs a ladder/stair in the brewery, and it looks like she's climbing into the sky.Then, suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Pip sees something hanging from a rafter at the other end of the brewery. He looks closer, and the thing is a figure of a woman all in white, and the face is of Miss Havisham. Logically, he runs toward the hanging figure.(Shmoop interlude: Do not try this at home. Shmoop endorses the "if you see a white humanlike figure hanging from a rafter, turn and run" policy).But there's nothing there at all. Spooky!Finally, Estella leads him to the gate and then gets in another jab at him for crying (because she was apparently spying on him) before pushing him out onto the street and locking the door behind him. Charming.All the way home, Pip thinks about his coarse hands and his thick boots.

CHAPTER 9 SUMMARY

The next day, Pip's sister wants to know ALL the juicy details about Miss Havisham and Satis House, but Pip doesn't want to tell her.For one, he doesn't think that anyone would believe his account of the old lady in an old wedding dress, and he also doesn't really want to subject Mrs. Havisham to any public criticism or mockery. For some reason.When Mrs. Joe realizes she's not going to get the goods out of Pip, she pushes his forehead against the wall.Then, Mr. Pumblechook comes over for tea, and, after unsuccessfully getting Pip to recite multiplication tables, he asks Pip for the gossip on Miss Havisham.So Pip lies.He lies that Miss Havisham lives in a black, velvet carriage that sits in her mansion. He lies that he ate cake and wine on gold plates in the carriage. He lies there were huge dogs eating veal-cutlets in silver baskets.And he lies they played with flags. In his story, he, Estella, and Miss Havisham each had different colored flags, and they waved them around out the windows of the coach—which sounds like some bizarre piece of performance art.At that point his well of lies is running dry and he's about to tell them that there was a bear in the cellar or a hot air balloon in the back yard, but the inquisition is over for the moment.Later on, in the forge, Pip confesses to Joe that he made everything up because he's so bummed out about being "common."He wants to be uncommon, see.Joe shows a little folk-wisdom by telling Pip that he won't ever become uncommon if he keeps lying.He also tells Pip that no one can become uncommon without being common first. Everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time, he says.Pip goes to bed thinking about all the differences between Joe's house and Miss Havisham's house, and how so much had changed that day.Narrator Pip (that would be the grown up Pip who's telling us this story) interjects to ask us to think about moments in our lives that change our path or direction forever.

CHAPTER 10 SUMMARY

Pip gets the notion in his head that he needs some schooling in order to become uncommon.The only problem is that Pip's narcoleptic school teacher, Mr. Wopsle's great aunt, can't teach a thing to anybody, because she's too busy sleeping in her room/grocery store/schoolhouse.Fortunately, Biddy comes to the rescue. Biddy not only agrees to teach Pip everything she knows about reading, writing, and arithmetic, but she also takes on the task of teaching all the children in town.One night after school, Pip stops at the Three Jolly Bargeman pub to collect Joe. He finds Joe, Mr. Wopsle, and a strange man next to the roaring fire, drinking rum and smoking pipes.The strange man looks at Pip through squinty eyes and seems to recognize him. Creepy.Pip decides to sit next to Joe, even though El Weirdo summons him to sit with him.This mystery man is very curious about Pip and about how Pip is related to Joe.Mr. Wopsle is tanked and reciting lines from Shakespeare's play, Richard III.The mystery man keeps rubbing his leg, and, suddenly, he pulls out a file and starts stirring his drink with it. Pip's little heart is atwitter, because he recognizes that file to be the very same file he stole out of Joe's smithy to give to the escaped convict.The mystery man watches Pip the whole time knowingly.As the men get up to leave, the mystery man gives Pip some change wrapped in a piece of paper. Pip is stoked about the money, but still freaked out aboutMr. International Man of Mystery.When he unwraps the paper at home, he realizes that the paper is actually money itself—a lot of money.Joe runs back to the pub to return it, but the mystery man is gone, so Mrs. Joe stuffs the money in a tea pot to keep it safe.Pip has wild dreams all night long

CHAPTER 11 SUMMARY

It's Miss Havisham day!Pip arrives at the gate, and again Estella disdainfully lets him in and guides him down the dark passages.Today, however, he waits in a different room with three ladies and gentleman.These are Miss Havisham's relatives, and they're all just sick with worry about her. They talk dismissively of a one "Matthew Pocket."When they finally notice Pip, they look at him like he were a piece of moldy meat.We're pretty sure we don't like these people.Estella takes Pip up to Miss Havisham's room. He says he doesn't feel like playing, but he's totally down to work.Miss Havisham takes Pip across the hall to another big room. There's a long table with some kind of blob sticking out of the middle of it. Little speckled spiders are running every which way, but mostly into the blob, like there's a spider convention going on inside the blob.There are slower moving beetles chilling by the fireplace, and Pip can hear mice running behind the walls.So, Dickens has basically just described Shmoop's worst nightmare.Miss Havisham tells Pip that this is her wedding feast, and that the blob is her bride-cake. Ew. When she dies, she wants to be laid on that very same table where her beyond-rotting wedding feast lies.Miss Havisham grabs hold of Pip's shoulder and tells him to walk, and so he walks her around and around the room.Pretty soon, Estella and the relatives come traipsing into the room, but Miss Havisham is so not interested in them, even though they spend a lot of time telling her how they're all worried about her (and how dumb they think some guy named Matthew Pocket is).Miss Havisham has had about enough of this, and she bangs her cane on the ground and insists that Matthew Pocket will stand at the head of the table. This shuts the visitors up, and they all head out.Apparently, it's Miss Havisham's birthday, and they visit her every year on her birthday.Estella comes back into the room after having escorted the guests out, and the three of them stand in silence as Miss Havisham imagines her dead body on the table.After some more card-playing, Pip is wandering through the garden and greenhouse looking at all of the deformed, overgrown vegetables when he sees another (totally random) little boy studying. The little boy is very pale and has red eye-lids.After playing twenty questions, the little boy asks Pip to fight. Pip, not wanting to be rude, accepts.The boys find a little protected nook, and the little boy brings over a sponge and bucket of water and vinegar. Pip is a little worried he's gotten in over his head, especially when the little boy starts fancy footing around, balling up his fists and going over the rules.As you can guess, it's not much of a fight. Pip basically knocks the kid out in ten seconds, but it's all very friendly.When Pip heads out, Estella appears out of nowhere, and she's kind of flushed. She tells Pip that he can kiss her on the cheek, and he immediately accepts.It is really dark when Pip finally arrives home, and he can see the glow of Joe's forge fire reflected on the marshes.

CHAPTER 12 SUMMARY

Pip is pretty sure that he's either going to be thrown in prison for life or be pummeled to a pulp by a gang of rich kids for having hit (twice) the random, pale little boy in Miss Havisham's garden.But nothing happens!When he returns to Miss Havisham's, Pip visits the scene of the fight. He covers up some dried blood on the pavement with some leaves and calls it a day.Pip starts a new ritual at Satis House—he pushes Miss Havisham in a garden-chair-on-wheels (you know, a wheelchair) around and around her dressing room and wedding feast room. For almost three hours.During one of these indoor adventures, Miss Havisham notices that Pip is tall, and she asks him what he's going to do with his life. He tells her he intends to apprentice with Joe.The ritual continues over the course of many months.Estella remains frosty, and Miss Havisham continues to give her jewels and to coach her in the ways of breaking men's hearts.One day, Miss Havisham tells Pip to bring Joe with him the next time he visits.When Pip relays the message at home, Mrs. Joe is furious that she isn't invited. Her method of coping is to tear up the entire house and subject everything to a deep cleaning, which is at least better than some we can think of.

CHAPTER 13 SUMMARY

On the day of the visit, Joe works himself up into a tizzy. He can't decide what to wear, and puts on his finest digs.He pops his collar to seem more gentlemanly, but the poppage just pushes up the hair in the back of his head so that he looks like a bird.Pip wishes Joe would just be himself and wear his normal workday clothes—as though he doesn't understand exactly what Joe is feeling.Mrs. Joe, Joe, and Pip walk into town with Mrs. Joe at the helm. She's wearing a big sun bonnet and is carrying an umbrella and lots of other random items. Pip thinks she's popping her proverbial collar for all the town to see.Mrs. Joe hangs with Mr. Pumblechook during the visit, but she's still ticked off that she's not invited.Estella opens that gate for Pip and Joe, but she doesn't say anything, nor does she look at them. Surprise, surprise.Estella leads the Gargery men down the dark, labyrinthine passages.Joe is a mess. When she asks him a question, he tells Pip the answer instead of answering her directly, and he tries to talk all elegant but just ends up sounding, um, incomprehensible.Pip is MORTIFIED.Finally, Miss Havisham tells Joe that Pip has earned a reward: 25 pounds as an investment in Pip's apprenticeship in the smithy.(Apprentices usually had to pay money to get training, kind of like having to pay for school, except you learn a useful trade. The money covered the apprentice's expenses, like food and rent.)Joe is flabbergasted. That's a LOT of dough.Miss Havisham sends Pip away, and she tells Joe never to expect more money from her than what she's just given.As they leave Satis House, Joe is dumbfounded by the amount of money he's holding, but Pip is crestfallen: he thought that Miss Havisham was going to adopt him or something, and instead he's just lost Estella for good.When they arrive at Mr. Pumblechook, Joe conjures up a story about how Miss Havisham did not feel well enough to entertain a lady such as one Mrs. Joe Gargery, but that she sends her best regards. Total poppycock, but Mrs. Joe eats it up.When Mrs. Joe and Mr. Pumblechook learn that Miss Havisham has given a gift of 25 pounds, they go CRAZY.Pip is taken to the court that very day to be sworn in as an official blacksmith's apprentice, thus binding him to the trade for the rest of his days.That night, the whole family celebrates at the Three Jolly Bargemen with a big feast.Everyone but Pip, that is. He's just depressed.

CHAPTER 14 SUMMARY

Pip is sad. He hates his home, because it reminds him of how far away he's from the wealth and privilege of Satis House.(Seriously, Pip, we think you're better off.)He feels like a black cloud has settled just above his head, following him wherever he goes and, like a big, heavy curtain, has barred him from continuing on the path toward becoming a gentleman.Sometimes, he looks at the marshes near his house, and he thinks that they're like a metaphor for his own future. They're flat, low, dark, misty, and they lead only to the ocean.So many analogies!Narrator Pip interjects, telling us that his one consolation in life is that he never told Joe how he felt.When Pip is working in the forge at night, he and Joe will often sing "Old Clem," and Pip remembers singing the very same song with Estella and Miss Havisham.Often, he imagines Estella looking in at him from outside of the smithy. How embarrassing!

CHAPTER 15 SUMMARY

When Pip has learned about all he can from Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, he begs Biddy to teach him everything she knows. Which she does. Because unlike Estella, Biddy is actually a nice girl/woman.He also tries to teach Joe everything that he learns in a way of helping Joe become more educated, and, thus, more worthy of Pip's company. How nice.Pip and Joe go to the old Battery on the marshes for their lessons on Sundays, but Joe isn't the most attentive student.Pip, too, spends most of his time looking at the sails on the horizon and dreaming of Estella and Satis House.One Sunday, when Pip and Joe are hanging out at the battery, Pip asks Joe if he can take half a day off of work so that he can go visit Miss Havisham.Joe doesn't think this is a good idea. He remembers Miss Havisham's last words warning Joe never to ask for more money than she's already given. Joe is worried that if Pip visits her, she will feel like he's returned to butter her up for more dough.After they go back and forth, Joe finally agrees to give Pip a half day.Pip isn't the only one at the smithy. Joe also employs a burly, gruff looking man named Orlick. Orlick hits things with his hammer in the smithy (wait, isn't the point of a smithy…?) and he's not too friendly.When Orlick catches wind that Pip gets to take half a day off of work, Orlick has a conniption, extolling the inherent injustice of giving only one employee such a privilege.Joe is befuddled, but then decides to give everybody a holiday in order to make everybody happy.Mrs. Joe, however, overhears this ruling and bursts in upon the scene yelling and shouting at Joe for being such a fool as to let his employees walk all over him.She calls Orlick names, so Orlick calls Mrs. Joe names and threatens her with violence.Joe finally has to challenge Orlick to a fight to satisfy Mrs. Joe's notions of honor, and he knocks Orlick down faster than you can say "smithy."We're guessing that the village blacksmith would win most fights.Mrs. Joe faints, and Orlick slouches away with a bloody nose.When Pip arrives at Miss Havisham's, Sarah Pocket almost refuses to let him in.Miss Havisham tells him she won't give any more money, but Pip assures her he's just come to say hi and thanks.Miss Havisham catches Pip looking around the room for signs of Estella.Oh, ho ho! Sorry, dude. Estella is in France learning to be a beautiful, educated woman way out of his reach.As Pip is ejected onto the street, he feels even worse than he did before. We could have called that one, Pip.He walks around the main street of town, looking at all of the shop windows and thinking about what he'd buy for himself if he were a gentleman.Pip runs into Mr. Wopsle, who has just come out of the bookstore with a copy of The Tragedy of George Barnwell, a play. He invites Pip to come over to Mr. Pumblechook's house to read the play aloud. Fun times!Under normal circumstances, Pip would never, ever hang out with Pumblechook, but since he's feeling so sad, he decides to accept the invitation.The play reading doesn't end until 9:30 at night. He and Mr. Wopsle walk home together, and on their way they find Orlick crouching on the side of the road. It's a really misty night, so they can't tell what he's doing.Something seems off about the guy, but he tells them that convicts have escaped from the prison ships, and that the prison ships are firing cannons to warn the local area.The three men walk past the Three Jolly Bargemen, where there's mass chaos going on because of something that's happened at Pip's house.And that something is Pip's sister lying unconscious in the kitchen, hit hard on the back of her head.

CHAPTER 16 SUMMARY

There's a general consensus that one of the escaped convicts is to blame, since there's a convict's leg iron found at the scene of the crime.But it's weird. The attacker struck Mrs. Joe from the back and didn't take anything in the house.And it gets weirder: a prison ship guard says that the leg-iron wouldn't have been worn by a recent convict, since it's totally last year's model.Pip suspects either Orlick or the mysterious man who gave him the two one-pound notes.Sure, Orlick has the alibi of being out and about around town, but there was the little matter of him hiding out by the road.Plus, if the mysterious man were to have asked Mrs. Joe for his money, she would have given to him, since she tried to give it to him in the first place.In any case, the leg-iron is the one that his convict severed and left on the marshes those many years before. Pip feels REALLY guilty, like an accessory to his sister's assault.Mrs. Joe has lost her hearing and can hardly see, and she can't move or talk without great difficulty. The family gives her a chalk board, but they have a hard time figuring out what she writes/draws.Fortunately, Biddy comes to live with the Gargerys, and she understands Mrs. Joe really well.One day, Mrs. Joe draws a picture of a hammer, and Biddy eventually realizes that she's asking for Orlick.Orlick is brought to Mrs. Joe, and she's just delighted to see him. Orlick feels super awkward about the whole thing, but she asks for him every day.

CHAPTER 17 SUMMARY

Pip gets used to his blacksmith lifestyle, even if he's still a little mopey.He also starts to notice that Biddy is all grown up with fancy hair-dos and high heels and pretty eyes.One day, Pip is studying in the kitchen while Biddy sews near him, listening to him read aloud. She seems to be sponging up everything that he learns himself, all while taking care of daily domestic tasks, errands, and chores.Basically, we kind of wish we were reading more about her and less about Pip's whininess.Pip begins to think that Biddy must just be the perfect person to confide in, to express all of his melancholy emotions, as well as his hopes and dreams. (What, you say Biddy might have had hopes and dreams of her own?)On Sunday, the two of them take a summer stroll on the marshes. It's a beautiful day, but Pip finally confesses his deepest secret to Biddy: he wants to be a gentleman more than anything in the world.Uh, says Biddy, maybe you shouldn't spend your time wishing for something you won't ever have.No way. Someone once told him that he was common, and that comment has been haunting him ever since.Biddy tells him that the comment was neither polite nor true. She asks Pip who made the comment, and Pip tells her the most beautiful lady in the whole wide world said so, and he l-o-v-e-s her.Very gently, Biddy points out that probably the best thing to do is just ignore her, since she's not worthy of him anyway, but Pip ignores this excellent advice.Instead, he repays her by saying that he wishes he could make himself fall in love with her, because, if that were the case, everything would be okay for him.He's a real charmer, that Pip.Suddenly, Orlick shows up out of the graveyard and menaces them a little. Biddy tells Pip that she doesn't like Orlick. She tells him that Orlick likes her and flirts with her mercilessly, against her will.Ooh, Pip doesn't trust that guy.Pip realizes that he's starting to get used to the whole blacksmith thing, especially now that his sister is incapacitated. He begins to imagine himself living with Joe for the rest of his life and eventually marrying Biddy.And then everything changes.

CHAPTER 18 SUMMARY

Pip has been apprenticing for four years when, one Saturday night at the Three Jolly Bargemen, something happens.Pip and the boys are sitting around the fire listening to Mr. Wopsle give a dramatic reading about a recent murder when a mysterious man butts in and asks the group who they believe to be the murderer.After some very lawyerly cross-examination, the man says that he wants to speak with a blacksmith named Joe Gargery and his apprentice, Pip. Whaaaa?Pip, Joe, and the strange man walk home, where we find out that Mr. Mystery #2 is Mr. Jaggers, a London lawyer, who has come to tell Pip about his "great expectations."He's about to inherit a huge fortune and will be made into a London gentleman.!!!Mr. Jaggers offers Joe money to compensate for losing an apprentice, but he refuses—and he's not too happy about being offered it, either.Pip's benefactor will remain unknown to him until he/she chooses to reveal himself/herself, but in the meantime, Pip needs an education. How about Mr. Matthew Pocket, Miss Havisham's estranged relative, as a potential tutor?Pip accepts.Pip and Joe are speechless throughout this entire encounter.Mr. Jaggers gives Pip twenty pounds to buy new clothes, offers Joe money again, gets rejected—quite violently—again, and then heads off.Everyone is kind of blown away by this whole thing, but they try to be happy for Pip.In bed, he overhears Joe and Biddy saying nice things about him, and, for some reason, he's lonelier than he's ever been before in his entire life.

CHAPTER 19 SUMMARY

Pip feels better in the morning. He can't wait to get to London—and then come home and show off his new fancy gentlemanly self to the village.In a moving moment, Pip tells Joe he'll never forget him, but it feels a little contrived and insincere.Things go downhill, when Pip and Biddy get in a fight after Pip asks Biddy to teach Joe everything she knows so that he might be worthy of his society.Biddy tells Pip Joe is proud and that he might not want to be improved.You're just jealous, Pip says, and how Biddy keeps from slapping him we do not know.Pip gets himself all dressed up and decked out, and then visits Miss Havisham who already knows his situation. (Pip obviously thinks that this mysterious benefactor is Miss Havisham.) She flaunts him in front of Sarah Pocket to heat her jealousy.That night, Pip has wild anxiety dreams, but he holds it together until he's in the carriage—and then he starts crying. Hard.

CHAPTER 20 SUMMARY

It's a five hour carriage ride to London, and when Pip arrives in the big city, the country boy thinks that London is decidedly overrated. Everything is dirty, labyrinthine, and abrasive.The carriage driver delivers Pip to Jaggers' office, but not without mentioning how afraid he is of Jaggers. This perplexes Pip, but it also means that he doesn't have to tip the driver, since the driver is afraid of what Jaggers might do if he overcharges.Pip is greeted by a clerk who lets him know that Mr. Jaggers is in court, but that Pip can wait inside.There are lots of people around, all waiting for Mr. Jaggers.Pip waits in Mr. Jaggers' office, which is full of such delightful things as Mr. Jaggers' chair, which look likes a coffin, and two casts of gruesome, twitchy faces.

CHAPTER 21 SUMMARY

Wemmick comes to take Pip off. Wemmick is a square-looking man with a post-office mouth.He's a bit gruff and wears lots of "mourning" rings which makes Pip think that he's lost a lot of friends or family members.Wemmick and Pip arrive at Barnard's Inn, Pip's new London digs, and Pip is crestfallen. He was imagining his new apartment would put the Blue Boar to shame, but this place is more like a graveyard.They go up to Pip's apartment and see that Mr. Pocket, Junior has left a message for Pip saying he'll be right back.Pip says goodbye to Wemmick and shakes his hand. Wemmick is surprised by the handshaking, but leaves Pip pleasantly.Ugh, this place is dirty.Mr. Pocket, Junior arrives, bringing strawberries for Pip. Pip is flabbergasted by this random act of kindness.Turns out, Mr. Pocket, Junior is really cool and gives Pip a warm welcome. He can't afford anything better than this apartment, because his father doesn't make much money, but he promises to give Pip a tour of the city in the morning.Suddenly both men realize that they know each other: they got into a fight at Miss Havisham's many years ago. Remember?

CHAPTER 22 SUMMARY

Whoa!Herbert rewrites history a little bit and asks Pip to forgive him for beating him up, and Pip decides not to correct him.Herbert, like Pip, was brought to Miss Havisham's all those years ago to serve as a playmate for Estella, but they didn't exactly get along. In fact, Estella was brought up to make men miserable.What? It's cool; Herbert will fill him in on the juicy gossip at dinner.Herbert's dad is going to be Pip's new tutor and teacher.Herbert's a nice guy: he's honest and cheerful, but Pip is pretty sure he'll never be rich or successful. Still, he's a gentleman, and he agrees to help teach Pip how to be one, too.He even comes up with a new nickname for Pip—Handel, based on "The Harmonious Blacksmith," by composer Handel.Get it? Because Pip was a blacksmith?The boys have dinner, and Pip is thrilled beyond belief. There are no grown-ups around, he lives in London, and he has a new BFF. What could be better than this?Pip reminds Herbert to tell him Miss Havisham's story.This is Herbert's account of Miss Havisham:She was a spoiled little only child until her dad (a country gentleman who owned a brewery) secretly married a cook. When the cook died, he told Miss Havisham that she had a half-brother named Arthur. Miss Havisham didn't like this too much.Arthur grew up to be a real pain in the rear, and a rebel too. He lived the high life, spending lots of money and creating havoc everywhere he went.He and Miss Havisham did not get along very well. In fact, they hated each other's guts.When their dad died, he left Arthur a nice fortune, but he left Miss Havisham the big dough.Since Miss Havisham was rich and pretty, she was considered quite a catch.But it just so happened that she fell in love with the wrong man. The seriouslywrong man.He wasn't a gentleman at all; he was a rake who convinced her to buy Arthur out of his share of the brewery at a huge cost.Herbert's dad, Mr. Pocket, warned his cousin that her beau was up to no good, but she didn't believe him. In fact, she ordered him out of the house and out of her life.On the day of her wedding to the gentleman, she received a letter from him calling the whole thing off. No one knows what the letter said, but Miss Havisham went a little crazy after reading that letter and fell very ill. She let the mansion go to ruin, and that was that.Apparently, Arthur and the gentleman were in cahoots with each other all along and had meant to rob Miss Havisham of her fortune. They also wanted to embarrass her publicly.This ends Herbert's account of Miss Havisham's story, and, yeah, we feel pretty sorry for her.But Herbert doesn't know much about Estella.Like Pip, Herbert assumes that Miss Havisham is Pip's benefactor and wants Pip to know that he's totally not jealous.Pip asks Herbert what he does for a living, and Herbert tells him he's a "capitalist—an insurer of ships" (22.70). Herbert's lifelong dream is to become a shipping merchant and to strike it rich. He dreams of moving to the Far East where life is profitable. As of right now, however, Herbert is waiting for his big break. He works in a counting house, hoping everyday that an opportunity will come his way.Pip loves Herbert's idealistic demeanor, but again he can't help but think that Herbert will never strike it rich or be successful.London is amazing. It's glittery and delicious and full of all kinds of interesting people and so, so, so much better than the stinky marsh.Still, Pip can't help thinking about Joe.The boys decide to go to the Pocket home next in Hammersmith. When Pip arrives, he finds Herbert's seven brothers and sisters tumbling every which way on the lawn.Mrs. Pocket, Herbert's mother, is reading a book very intensely, and we're not sure how she manages to find time to read with that many kids, but it's cool.She asks Pip how his mother is doing, and Pip is saved from having to answer when her youngest child is placed on her lap and she can't figure out how to handle or hold it.Ah, this is how she has time to read: her servants, Miss Flopson and Miss Millers, are pretty much like drill sergeants, ordering everyone (including Mrs. Pocket) around.Mrs. Pocket is like the Bermuda Triangle of tumbling. Every time one of her children goes near her, they fall. Even the servants trip over her.Mrs. Pocket orders naps for everyone (Shmoop too?), and the kiddiewinksare marched inside.When Mr. Pocket finally arrives, he looks exactly like what you would expect him to look like: disheveled, grey-haired, and a little discombobulated.

CHAPTER 23 SUMMARY

Mr. Pocket welcomes Pip warmly, but his wife is not so interested. The only thing Mrs. Pocket is interested in is her daddy, because her daddy was a knight who believed he was meant to be a baron.Mrs. Pocket was raised to be decorative and ornamental, which is not really the kind of lady who you'd think would go off and have eight kids,but, whatevs.Pip meets the two other young men he will be studying with at Mr. Pocket's house: Drummle, "an old-looking young man, who was whistling" (23.4), and Startop (a young man who was reading a book while holding his head as though it were about to explode.)Pip soon figures out that the Pocket household is run by its servants; namely Flopson and Millers. The servants wear the pants. They have parties and get drunk in the kitchen, they forget to take care of the baby, they order Mrs. Pocket around.It's a weird place—very Alice in Wonderland, if you ask us.Mr. Pocket is a brilliant scholar and he makes a living teaching and writing books.Pip learns from the "toady" neighbor, Mrs. Coiler, that Mrs. Pocket hates that Mr. Pocket has to make a living by teaching others.Mrs. Coiler is a snake-like lady who likes to compliment everybody about everything. She's a bit slimy, to be honest.Pip learns that Drummle's first name is Bentley and he most likely will become a baron one day. He and Mrs. Pocket hit it off by commiserating about their nobility.A Sound of Music moment arrives when the seven Pocket children are summoned to the dinner table. Flopson lines them up, army style.Mrs. Pocket wants to hold the baby, but she's really bad at being motherly and, well, careful. The baby almost slips under the table, and then its head crashes on top of the table.While she talks to Drummle about her daddy the knight, the baby starts to cry. Jane Pocket, a little, teensy girl, sneaks over to soothe the baby, but Mrs. Pocket yells at her and tells her to go lie down.Now the baby is playing with a nutcracker! That's safe!Mr. Pocket gives his children each a shilling.Despite all this craziness, it's good times in the Pocket household. The boys (Pip, Startop, Drummle, and Herbert) go rowing every evening.One night, Pip witnesses yet another domestic crisis while sitting with Mr. and Mrs. Pocket in the living room. A servant tells Mr. Pocket that the cook is drunk and passed out in the kitchen. Mr. Pocket goes down to the kitchen to investigate. He also finds a bunch of pilfered butter grease.When he reports back to his wife, Mrs. Pocket is super mad and defends the cook's honor and sobriety. Apparently the cook had always told her she was fit to be a duchess.Mr. Pocket is about to go crazy up in here.