Universitatea “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iași

Facultatea de Limbă și Literatură

Specializare: Germană – Engleză

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ

Coordonator: Profesor universitar

dr. Codrin Liviu Cuțitaru

Absolvent:

Ciobanu Cosmin-Ionuț

2019

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The Narrator in Great Expectations

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 Content
Introduction

Chapter 1. Narrator with Identity

1.1 Historical Background

1.2 Social classes

1.3 The Churchyard

1.4 Satis House

Chapter 2. Pip follows his dream

2.1 Jaggers at the forge

2.2 Pip’s daydreaming

2.3 Pip in London

Chapter 3. The actual reality

3.1 Magwitch makes his appearance

3.2 Pip’s ultimate formation

3.3 Two endings

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 Introduction
Here we have a novel by Dickens in which the effects of industrialization have a big
influence over our protagonist. The pursuit of money or rather say the pursuit of becoming a
gentleman makes him a parasite. The title suggests the disillusion of the author and raises great
human questions, symbolic either of defeat or acceptance of things as they are. Here Dickens
attack on 19th century optimism reaches its fulfillment. The 19 th century made the illusion of
being a gentleman with no occupation living life with no worry as if everything and everyone
bows to you. Once again the main villain here is money. Pip recovers his moral dignity after he
had lost it. Pip lives as a parasite using people who love him as instruments. He makes disastrous
choices, shamefully betraying primary human relationships because the laws of the world
demand the sacrifice of those who have nothing to contribute to the desire of reaching his
expectations. Here we have two Pips, one is the young protagonist the childish one and the other
one represents the older Pip the one that tells you the story through the eyes of his younger one.
The first Pip acts as a filter, which makes the reader to wonder about Pip’s actions and decisions
moreover the reader may found himself knowing a lot more than the younger Pip. We see the
story as it was with no influence of interference from the omnipresent God ( the author). Pip
lives for a big part of the novel in a daydream, a study was made over this subject by Sigmund
Freud. Essentially Pip is deluded and everything that happens to him makes him think that he’s
the luckiest guy ever and the whole world seems to solve his problems just like that. On his
adventures in London he insults and hurts close friends, friends which loved him very much as a
blacksmith and not as a gentleman. Even the idea of betraying his real benefactor is brought up
by him which makes him more of a parasite. Throughout this novel he loses friends over the
fancy life and his new snob friends. He leaves Biddy who could easily marry in order to pursue
his dream and Estella’s aspirations. Nothing is what it seems to be and the reader may
acknowledge that but Pip is completely out of his rationality.

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 Chapter 1. Narrator with Identity

Great Expectations is narrated in the first person point of view. The narrator is Pip.
Because it is a first person narration, the reader will read Pip referring to himself as "I" and
"me."What is interesting about the point of view in the novel is that although it is told from the
first person perspective, it is a mix of the impressions of the young Pip as he experiences life and
of the older Pip looking back on the events. Essentially, two Pips tell this story. We have the
adult Pip who’s narrating the story and the protagonist Pip, the child who’s experiencing the
story and even though they are the same character they function as if they were different
characters because the adult Pip has the benefit of knowledge and experience, things that the
protagonist Pip lacks. Essentially the story is told by the adult Pip and it is not delivered to us
directly but through the eyes of the protagonist Pip. We have no influence from the author, not
anymore, we are left with the confused protagonist Pip which at that time we understand more
than him, he’ll discover more and more towards the end of the novel. Removing the author from
equation it transforms the modern text from one end to the other. The author it’s now missing on
all levels and the text is created and read in that manner with the absence of him. The tense of
pronouns is not the same anymore, the author refers to himself as the past of his own book. The
modern writer it’s being born once with his text. Once the author is removed the ambition to
decipher a text becomes useless. To give a book an author it implies that you establish certain
limits to it and the text already becomes deciphered. The classic critique never had any concern
for the reader, for them in literature there is no other man than the writer. In order to assure a
future to literature we have to switch the mentality: the price of emphasizing the reader is the
death of the author.

1.1 Historical Background

Dickens’ Great Expectations is one of several reflective books of Victorian age. It is a

very successful representative of its own time. Written in 1860 and following the story of Pip
from childhood to adulthood, the book represents the common Victorian elements like social
class difference, industrialization, Victorian houses, Victorian values and women. Basically the

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industrialization refers to the substitution of man by the machine in the economic process and the
mass production of consumption goods. Yet, from a more complex perspective, industrialization
represents the engine of the capitalist society and the premise of a long series of social, cultural,
economic and psychological transformations of the human community.

The historical effect of industrialization, the traditional English society can be imagined
in the form of a pyramid which concentrates its absolute power at the top in the symbolic
persona of the king or queen. The dominant class within this pyramid is aristocracy. At this level
of the system authority is inherited and not conquered by personal merit. The king represents
God on earth and his unnatural removal from that top may lead to chaos ( similar situations are
exemplified in “Hamlet” or “Macbeth”, where the leaders are replaced violently. Once
industrialization begins the image depicted above changes. Authority is no more inherited by
birth, but conquered through personal merits. The pyramid is transformed into a circle where
margins can have access to the center, if they are good enough to get there.

The political effect of industrialization of English society should be linked to the

beginnings of the modern democracy in Europe. The Parliament becomes more democratic
because of industrialization and opens its door to other social categories. The monarchy is no
longer absolute and authoritarian. The whole political atmosphere changes in Great Britain in the
19th century.

The social effect of industrialization represents a turning point in the life of England and
Europe. It marks the birth of a new and powerful class ( the bourgeoisie). The representatives of
this social category are the direct beneficiaries of the industrial progress and they use their
financial power to substitute the traditional aristocracy from its positions of authority.
Symbolically, the bourgeoisie is the margin of the social system that moves gradually to the
center, taking it by force the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy represents a
favourite topic in the Victorian novel, being explored by many authors from Thackeray and
Dickens to Eliot and Hardy.

The cultural effect of industrialization is self understood that the social competition
generated by industrialization has effects at the cultural level too, at the level of the collective

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mentalities in other words, at the way in which people think. Many philosophers are preoccupied
now with the mental effects of the clash between the margin and the center.

The aesthetic effect of industrialization had his main effect in literature, the
modernization of it. In a sense, industrialization marks aesthetically the beginning of Modernism.
Yet, this is of course determined by a number of transformations at the level of the artistic mind.
One may establish a connection between the disappearance of the historical pyramid and a major
change in the novel which occurs during this period of time and which will be discussed further
on. We have already said that the traditional pyramid loses its authority and turns gradually into
a circle ruled by competition. In a way, this is generated also by the alienation of the individual
inflicted on the community by industrialization ( people feel estranged in their social and
economic environments, since they have been replaced by machines and cannot control the
system anymore, do not have the authority over the system any longer). The same alienation can
be noted in the epic and should be translated not as a loss of authority, but rather as a loss of
authorship. In other words, the traditional omniscient author ( the God creator who plays with the
destinies of his characters as if they were puppets, the one who knows all about everything and
whose will is wish in the novel) dies out ( this beginning of Modernism is translated in the death
of the author) and is substituted by narrators and actual characters. This will trigger further the
metamorphosis of Realism. Narrators have their own subjectivities, their own sensitivity,
sensibility, emotional structure and level of knowledge. They cannot be objective and frequently
distort reality. Melodramas are unidirectional with a very clear cut distinction between good and
evil, whereas tragedies are complex, displaying an ambiguity of the conflict between good and
evil. These can also be considered the aesthetic consequences of industrialization.

1.2 Social Classes

At the very beginning of the book, we encounter with a typical low class family. They
live in a village among marshes. Mr. Joe is a blacksmith and his wife (the sister of Pip) is a
typical Victorian low class housewife. She sinks under the household duties and always
complains. Because of her harsh duties, she is always frustrated and often beats Pip. Then, we
encounter with high class, well dressed women like Miss Havisham and Estella through the
onwards of the book. These two different families are also the first signals of the existence of

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social classes in the society. On the one hand, Gargery family is a poor, uneducated, living in a
village. On the other hand, Miss Havisham lives in a mansion called Satis House. The house is
full of servants. Estella is a young lady who dances well and also educated. Having seen the two
different lives in early years of his life, Pip wants to shift to the upper class. He expects to
become a gentleman who has all the values appreciated by the society in order to have Estella
and an upper class lifestyle.

Pip’s awareness of social class it’s the main reason for his development throughout the
novel and I think the best place to start this is with the character Joe because he doesn’t change
very much. The Joe we see at first married with Pip’s sister is the same Joe from the end of the
novel married with Biddy. So he compared with Pip he’s like a constant he provides us a
yardstick in order for us to observe the changes of Pip.

“I determined from this that Joe’s education, like Steam, was still in its infancy” (p. 46).

This comes in contact when they talk about Joe’s difficulties in literacy so it’s interesting
because this comes from the perspective of the old Pip (narrator) and he decides to use the term
of “infancy”. This term implies the potential for future growth. Is this appropriate for Joe’s
character? Even though he comes to visit Pip and sees a social class way above him but that
doesn’t make him unhappy. I believe the entire purpose of this character is to provide some kind
of constant that can be later used to reflect on Pip. He knows about those differences and still he
is very happy with his status and doesn’t wish for a change. He’s happy for Pip he seems to
enjoy being around the good people but in the same time he doesn’t envy anyone from that
circle. He’s capable of feeling joy and affection towards Pip and his new lifestyle even though he
realized that he doesn’t belong there.

“I had never thought of being ashamed of my hand before; but I began to consider them
a very indifferent pair” (p. 60).

Pip is initially oblivious to the concept of social class. His first meeting with Estella is his
introduction to class difference. This is the seed of his class awareness but it’s not fully formed at
this stage. What we see at this early point is the Pip’s self consciousness and his sense of
inferiority is based entirely on personal and individual things and all to do on how beautiful

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Estella is in comparison with him. There is not yet a connection to a wider society because Pip is
not old enough yet to realize that but as he grows is incidents like this that provides him a
eagerly desire to change.

“Although I have used the term ‘expectations’ more than once, you are not endowed with
expectations only. There is already lodged in my hands, a sum of money amply sufficient…”
(p. 139.)

Jagger’s phrasing seems to imply that the money and the ‘expectations’ are two separate
concepts. This in turn emphasizes the significance of Pip’s social change, over the financial. The
early scene with Pip and Herbert have to be seen in this regard. There is a comedic scene where
Herbert instructs Pip in table manners but in the same time it illustrate the difference between
wealth and class. Pip has wealth but this wealth came out of nowhere and he doesn’t have a
background to know the social behavior that is expected from him to accompany that kind of
wealth. There is an expectation in this society which implies that, if you have money you have to
act in a certain way when that doesn’t happen in Pip’s case, it becomes a matter of urgency for
Herbert to school him in that manner. The implication of this is that just having money does not
get you anywhere in society unless it’s accompanied by proper forms of behavior. We see what
happens when financial greed is not accompanied with proper manners, you end up being a
buffoon of a character like we saw it happens in the case of Mr. Pumblechook.

Pip’s early impressions about London remind us the effects of Industrial Revolution and
immigration. When he comes to London, he is amazed and displeased with the unbelievable
crowd (resulting from immigration for job) and awful smell (coming from sewage due to the
factories).

“I was scared by the intensity of London. I think I might have had some faint doubts
whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.”(pg. 138) The gloomy streets of
Smithfield disturb him.

“My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had
established a great reputation with herself and the neighbor because she had brought me up “by
hand”. Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant and knowing her to

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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.

She was not a good looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she
must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand.” (Vol. I, ch. 2)

In the second chapter the protagonist Pip encountered a metaphor without understanding
what metaphors are. He depicts his older sister’s social status, being known within neighbors
because she brought Pip up “by hand” which actually means being bottle fed as a child. Seeing a
rather aggressive behavior from her sister he takes this as a face value and assumes that it means
to hit people. The humor from this extract comes from that misinterpretation but more than that it
comes from the fact that the older Pip is now in on the joke along with the reader. The narrator
Pip, years later, takes advantage of his youthful innocence in order to make a joke. The joke
works by taking the original metaphor, and using his childhood misunderstanding to extend it to
the point of absurdity. What this means is that the older Pip the narrator has a different
relationship with the reader than the protagonist Pip. The narrator doesn’t need to explain this
metaphor to the reader (it was in common use in the 1860s), in other words , the narrator expects
the reader to be in on the joke in the way that young Pip it’s not in joke. The effect of this is to
distance the reader from young Pip, we might still like him but it is hard for us to imagine
ourselves in his shoes for now compared to what we shall see in his story later and this sets up
the bildungsroman structure. Pip grows up, Pip matures and eventually the protagonist and the
narrator became the same character. In order of summing this ideea up, there is only one
character so called Pip but it functions as if there is two of them. The narrator is the same
character from the beginning of the novel to the end. The two versions of Pip converge and come
togheter throughout the story. The narrator’s adult perspective uses the contrast between the
knowledge of adults and children to accentuate Pip’s childish qualities.

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 1.3 The Churchyard

Dickens introduces us immediatly the character Pip in the churchyard. We see Pip at first
as a child who likes to izolate himself from the society and he does that at the grave of his
parents. Over there he sees a convict and he doesn’t realise that because he’s too young, we
understand more than the main character. Even when the convinct picks Pip up and questions
him about his parents names, Pip recites them exaclty as they appear on the tombstones,
indicating his youthful innocence.When the convinct takes Pip by one leg and turns him upside
down he is surprised to see the church upside down. He takes everything as a game. This convict
will turn Pip’s life just like the church turned upside down from Pip’s perspective.

„Mise en perspective” is a concept focusing on the way we see reality as individuals,

every each of us sees it differently. In the first few chapters we already see and have different
opinions and realities. Pip being a character with no influence from the author is very confused
and it has his own reality and conceptions. Despite his horror, he treats the convinct with
compassion and kindness. It would have been easy for Pip to run to Joe or the police for help
rather than stealing food and alcohol for him, but Pip honors his promise. I believed at first that
he goes through all this trouble for the convinct out of fear that he installed in Pip at first meeting
telling him about his friend that likes to eat parts of childrens body but later on the novel he even
shows compassion and worries for his safety when he learns that the police are searching for
him. Thoughts and emotions he has for a total stranger makes no sense for us. To understand Pip
as a character we have to look beyond his self description and consider his actions. Pip is not just
in a process of formation but also correction. He is not just a character but also a narrator in
transformation.

We take love as a factor towards this development of Pip or better said the love and it’s
absence. Here some examples and counter examples of love and we’ll see later that every one of
them has a twist. The most obvious one is Pip’s love for Estella but we know Estella can’t love
Pip back. Joe loves Pip but he starts to become embarrased by Joe during his tuition in London
before of course he eventually returns back to Joe. Magwitch loves Pip but Pip is horryfing by
that and again much like Joe he learns to accept it over the course of the novel. Miss Havisham
loves and she’s destroyed by love nad tries to grow Estella with the means of revenge by
destroyng herself other people by love. Then we have Mrs. Joe who is in a married relantionship
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which never seems to contain any element of love and her relantionships with the people around
her seems to be determined by fear and hatred which are the exact opposite of love. So at no
point we see a truly,honest, unambiguous love not even with Biddy. Her marriage with Joe from
the end of the novel shows us no signs of true love it is more of a convenience and security thing.

„It seems [...] that there are sentiments, fancies – I don’t know how to call them – that I
am quite unable to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of
words; but nothing more. [...] I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of
this” (ch44, p. 362).

This qutation is important for two reasons, first it demonstrates clearly Estella’s
incapacity of loving someone. She is not going through life with complete ignorance she is fully
aware of her own limitations. Secondly it indicates how Pip kids himself of thinking how this is
not the case. „ I have tried to warn you of this.” Estella spends a decent amount of time
throughout the novel telling Pip she can’t love him and he just can’t understand. I believe the
reader is led to expect a happy ending from the novel, by centering Estella in the Satis House,
Dickens is borrowing from the Gothic tradition and mostly in the Gothic novels at that time, a
Gothic heroine is more likely to find a happy ending. So base on that ideea the reader can think
that Estella may develop the ability of loving but this never really happens. Another interesting
fact about Estella is that she is a character constructed by another character within the story, Miss
Havisham has made her. Whether she is happy or not about that we can’t really tell this is very
ambigous, partly because she calls herself emotionless, so we understand that she wouldn’t be
really capable of showing her feelings towards her childhood. On the topic of love let’s take a
look at the end of the novel which makes you think that you have in front of you a conventional
happy ending and that is a perfect valid way to interpret the final it’s fine, Dickens offers you
that option. Pip end the novel by proclaiming he „sees the shadow of no parting from Estella” but
we must not forget that throughout the novel Pip has been over optimistic if not deluded about
his relantionship with Estella and she always reminded him the contrary and Pip never really
seemed to learn. Even though it sounds like a happy ending I’m not at all convinced that we have
a good reason to take Pip at his word here. Every time Pip tried to interpret Estella’s actions or
words like we would but he always got it wrong and just because Pip is the narrator I don’t think
the ending is an exception from the rule. If this is not plausible enough for some of you, by the

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end of the novel you may think that he got over Estella because of his growth. Love is always
highly troubled, if not in general at least in „Great Expectations”. So how can two good
characters have such a fine marriage, there is no indication that they wouldn’t be happy togheter
but they never show any genuine romantic sentiment. This goodness is generalised so I’m not
saying that there is hatred between them but wherever love appeared it did no good in this novel.
So in general love in the novel is presented at it’s most successful and long lasting the less it has
to do with romance. Platonic love in particular is largely presented as successful.

1.4 The Satis House

First major turning point

Pip has four major turning points, the first one is the encounter with Miss Havisham. The
story of Philip Pirrip shall be influenced by this in his journey from the shadows of society to its
peaks. Here Pip is introduced to a different kind of prison when invited to play with Estella in
exchange of money. This is Pip’s first encounter with someone with a class above his. We see
Miss Havisham in a weedding dress since the day she was left by her husband. Miss Havhisham
leads Pip into a room and points him towards a table full of dust and spiders that have spread
their webs undisturbed for decades, even the bride’s cake is still on the table since the day of the
wedding. From this scene I can only understand that Miss Havisham is living in a personal
purgatory but of course this character can be interpretated in different ways: as a self pitying
destroyer, a wounded victim, a wicked which or a mad woman. As Pip will discover Miss
Havisham’s heart was broken many years before by a shadowing figure which led towards a dark
education (paideia) for her adoptive child Estella. Estella for Miss Havisham represents a kind of
weapon in order to get revenge on mens. Unfortunatly for Pip, practice is about to begin. They
play a game of cards at first, undoubtedly Estella wins and with it Pip’s undying love. Pip has a
powerful sens that he is unworthy for her after she critics his hands but she’s everything he
wishes for. Over the years he became a regular visitor and starts feeling different about his
future, being a blacksmith like Joe it is not suitable for him anymore, now he aspires of being a
gentleman. Pip becomes so ashamed of his past and what he is that he wishes to become
something else. Because of this desire he becomes a toy for Estella’s paideia.

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 Chapter 2. Pip follows his dream
Pip’s desire to learn becomes more intense, and insofar as Satis House has increased the
desire, its influence was good upon him. But Pip in his honesty does not wish to let anything
seem to his credit when in fact it arose from base motives. He tries to impart his knowledge to
Joe, but only to make him “less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my society
and less open to Estella’s reproach.” One Sunday, after lessons, Pip raises the question of another
visit to Miss Havisham, which Joe opposes because “she might think you wanted something
expected something of her.” The word “expected” is allied to the title; if Pip already does
“expect” something from Miss Havisham, it is the more natural for him to think of her as having
provided his money when it comes. Yet she has terminated the relationship in paying the twenty-
five guineas, which are intended to show that nothing more is to be “expected,” even though they
seem to have the opposite effect of inspiring hope of some- thing more. When Pip makes his visit
“simply one of gratitude for a favour received,” he finds Miss Havisham alone, her surroundings
unchanged. Her blunt statement, “I hope you want nothing. You’ll get nothing” should have
stood as proof that she could not be his benefactor, but the sole result of the visit was to make
Pip “more than ever dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with everything…”

His shame deepens, becoming more complex and explicit, as Pip declares his misery in
being ashamed of home. He continues to be relentless in admitting the worst of himself, but
allows for the possibility that he might not have been entirely to blame at this point. Yet the
change has taken place, “excusably or inexcusably, it was done.” While his misery deepens, at
least Pip does not let Joe discover it, and Pip’s shame makes him unhappy. He is ashamed of
himself for feeling ashamed of Joe. His many kinds of fear are also involved, as the adjectives
which he increasingly applies to himself accumulate upon “restlessly aspiring discontented me”
as he dreads the thought of Estella seeing him at the forge: “I was haunted by the fear that she
would...find me out…and would exult over me and despise me.” He would suffer moments of
fancy when she seemed there “just drawing her face away” and later he “would feel more
ashamed of home than ever, in my own ungracious breast.”

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 2.1 Jaggers at the forge
Second major turning point

Pip has finished his job with Estella and he was paid. Pip is now adolescent and plans to
become a blacksmith. Four years into the apprentice of Joe, Pip gets his first chance to move up
into the world when an attorney named Jaggers came at the forge, this is his second turning
point. This encounter with Jaggers plays and importnat role in Pip’s formation. Jaggers, as a
criminal lawyer he has contact every day with the London criminal society. His way of cooping
with this is to focus on facts and nothing more, personal life or feelings are left aside. We know
that he has no personal feelings or relationships involved in the business which helps him to keep
the distance from the criminal world. Mister Jaggers is completely inhuman, we know that at
some point in the past he did intervene to rescue a mother and her daughter. When Estella’s
mother was charged with murder he found a place for her at Miss Havisham and when Estella’s
mother is released from prison, Jaggers takes her as a servant to keep her away from the streets.
So he’s capable of some compasion but he makes it absolutely clear that here is no room for
compassion at his office. He keeps human emotions and business absolutely separated and that’s
one of the ways of how Dickens comments on problems in the business world, through Jaggers.
He is an excelent lawyer who can do a great deal of good for the poor but only if they can afford
him.

He announces that Pip is to receive a small fortune from a benefactor who wishes to
remain annonymus. The money is supposed to be used for Pip’s education and the only condition
of the genrous act is for Pip to agree of the given terms. He must never try to find out the identity
of his benefactor, his only concerc should be to focus on his own education and the process of
becoming a gentleman. Despite of this odd offer he accepts it right away. The conditions being
accepted, the first sign of change must be an outfit of new clothes which must not be working
clothes. Work, that is, becomes a thing of the past; Pip’s expectations are not to be fulfilled by
anything he does for himself. They come from without, his moral reform from within. Dickens’s
early work shows as much interest in describing a man’s clothes as in telling what his actual
person looked like, as if by knowing what a man wears, we know what is necessary to interpret

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him. For Pip now, he must have new clothes proper to his new status; the clothes will imply what
he has done to obtain them, they being at once the result of, and a sign of, the price paid for his
“great expectations.” No sooner are these established than Pip does something he is ashamed of,
in his immediate, ungrateful readiness to leave Joe behind. He “was lost in the magic of my
future fortunes” and is eager to abandon his family in pursuit of illusion. But Pip must leave
home, as Jaggers reminds him: “The sooner you leave here as you are to be a gentleman the
better.”

2.2 Pip’s daydreaming

Pip assumes in an instant that the unknown benefactor is Miss Havisham who saves him
from poverty and urges to change his clothes, the great expectations got into his head. The
narrator has two elements which led him to believe that, he knows that Jaggers will be the
administrator of his money and he also knows that the lawyer also works for Miss Havisham.
The second element is Estella, Pip loves her desperately and believes that Miss Havisham want
to transform him into a gentleman so he can be fit for a potential marriage with the young
woman. Pip here demonstrates he cannot be objective, interpreting reality according to his own
subjective feelings and has limited information, developing strange theories out of it. Pip now
starts diving into daydreaming. Things he never had now he can imagine all of them.

Daydreaming is a case study made by Freud at the beginning of the 20th century in which
the basic question is where does the creative writer draw his material from and how do they
evoke amotions in us through their work. To understand this, he tries to find an activity that
comes close to that creative writing. He finds this in a child’s play. In a child’s play he creates
his own world in his mind, the child links his imagination to tangible objects in the world. Once
we grow up this infaintile imagination has to stop, we have to give up the pleasure, a thing rather
hard to do once you have acknowledged the pleasure. As an adult, you are ashamed of your
fantasies and you hide them from everyone but in the same time you don’t truly get rid of the.
You replace this child’s play with daydreaming or a fantasy. He goes further on this topic saying
that a daydream functions just like a dream at night, it has the role of fulfilling and untouchable
desire. The title of the study being „Creative writers and daydreaming” Freud now connects this
act of daydreaming to the process of writing in order to answer his first question „Where does

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the creative writer draw his material from?”. A dreamer in broad daylight is the term used by
Freud to describe the writer. He sayd that one common feature of many works stays in the main
character, the hero of the novel. Freud thinks that the protagonist of the novel is actually an alter
ego of the author and the journey of the hero is the journey of his alter ego.

Here’s the example that Freud gives us, an orphan boy which receives for the first time in
his life the opportunity to work and earn his living as an adolescent. Before meeting the new
employer the young man already dreams about the future and the new possibilities. He sees
himself working hard and earning respect from everyone. Even when he finally gets to be an
associate in the firm his dreams still don’t cease to haunt him. According to his dream he sees
himself marrying the employer’s daughter and inheriting the business. The purpose of this is to
demonstrate that daydreaming is a mental process which gives us pleasure. It replaces the
unconvenient reality with a more comfortable and convenient one. All the deficiencies of your
childhood are meant to be solved by this process. The absence of a family for example is solved
by his employer imagined as his father, the poor situation of his family is fixed by seeing him
rich, the lack of love, he solves that issue by inventing or imagining that the employer has a
daughter. Overall this is the same for Pip, he replaces reality with his desire. His admiration and
love for Estella is inexplicable, two feelings which he embreaces them before even
understanding the whole situation. At this point of the novel the reader may have some doubts
here and there but between Pip and the reader, Pip is the most confused one. He even admits
towards Biddy that he wants to be a gentleman on Estella’s account. No part of him belongs on
reality anymore, he strongly believe that all his wishes suddenly are possible. Anyway soon all
of this will change, the main character grows up and evolves into a more mature character but all
of those starts to happen only when Pip starts carrying more for his own character and less for his
class.

2.2 Pip in London

Soon after the arrival at Jaggers’s offices in a gloomy street, and waiting for the great
man in a dismal room, Pip goes for a turn in the air only to be horrified by the atmosphere of
Smithfield and Newgate Prison which gives him “a sickening idea of London.” Thus London
itself seems to become the first of Pip’s illusions to be lost, just as it will be the scene where one

17
after another illusion will be lost. It is necessary that London seem like a land of dreams if “great
expectations” are to be realized there, illusions of perfection and grandeur that are to follow from
possessing money. Later Wemmick assures Pip that London is indeed a very wicked place but
only as all places containing people are certain to be. But Barnard’s Inn turns out mournful and
dilapidated, an imperfect realization indeed “of the first of my great expectations,” as they
ascend a rickety staircase to Herbert Pocket’s door. But Pip soon realizes that if London is
“decidedly overrated,” in appearance it remains the place of destiny where everything is decided:
how one is to behave, what manners one must display as Pip accepts with patient docility
Herbert’s correction of his manners according to London standards. He finds that Herbert too has
illusions of great success in business through exploitation of a non-existent fleet of ships, only
one more of the many “expectations” comparable to his own. Pip receives a letter announcing the
imminent arrival of Joe. It leads to behavior for which he will never forgive himself, the shame
of Pip indeed. Written by Biddy, the letter adds a P.S., which contains a bitter thrust at Pip’s new
status of “gentleman.” Biddy does not doubt “it will be agreeable to see him even though a
gentleman, for you had ever a good heart and he is a worthy man.” Pip now wishes to “confess”
his exact feelings, the right term for behavior which he knows to have been sinful. He gives
explicit terms to his feelings: disturbance, mortification, for although he despises Drummle, he
does not want this high-born scoundrel to see Joe. His weakness and meanness become the more
despicable from their cause.

Pip wounds his friend where Joe is totally defenseless, and he never can, nor should he,
forgive himself for he had ever a good heart and it shows here. The episode closes with Joe’s
moving speech of renunciation and farewell. Joe sees two things at fault, beyond himself:
London and his clothes. If he and Pip “is not two figures to be together in London,” the fault lies
with the city in Dickens’s world, the scene of illusion, the goal of those pursuing “great
expectations.” Joe is in turn “wrong in these clothes”: thus the elements inseparable from Pip’s
own “expectations” are shown to be false, disastrous in their effect upon his moral being, the
cause of his profoundest shame. Now Pip makes his first journey back home, but not to see Joe
who he invents a series of cheap excuses to avoid, cheating himself by these pretences. As the
time approaches for the return to Satis House, Pip’s illusions as to his patroness and her plans for
him and Estella again become vivid. His judgment had been sound while he remained an

18
innocent child, but is now blurred by his “expectations,” the dreams of love and money
inseparable from each other, as he now repeats as clearly and firmly as possible the clue into his
“poor labyrinth,” the corrupting influence of Estella and his wild, unreasoning love for her. Pip
shares the young man’s fictional dream of a beautiful woman with whom he is to live in luxury.
In Great Expectations the dream corrupts the dreamer, and the nearer to being realized, the more
it corrupts. Pip repudiates those who have loved and aided him; he becomes idle and wasteful, he
does no work for the money he spends; he loses his dignity as a man, becoming almost unfit for
the society of others. At Satis House once more, he ascends the darkened staircase leading again
into the past, and again kisses the withered hand with the obsequious deference of one who still
“expects.” Because of the Estella’s growth now to an elegant woman, combining the effects of
France and London to come, Pip is overcome by feelings of inferiority, or retrogression, of
having made no progress since his cruder days. A sense of distance, disparity, inaccessibility
afflicts him, as Pip again chooses the terms for his condition. Estella was the cause of Pip’s first
shame of home and Joe, of the hankerings, aspirations and visions which had preceded even his
“expectations” and were to be fulfilled by them. Her power over him continues as she once again
comes between what is redeemable in his nature and Joe. Of course, she observes, Pip’s change
of fortune and prospects would necessarily demand a change of companions, invoking the
terrible refrain of “once was not now,” ensuring that he will pay no visit to Joe. Meanwhile Pip is
haunted by a resemblance of Estella to someone. If at this point he can see that Estella does not
remind him of Miss Havisham, he should give up the notion of her patronage, as he should
abandon the assurance that she intends Estella for him—he knows that Estella has been brought
up to ruin, not to fulfill, the hopes of men. When Pip is urged to love Estella, it is clear that he
will not be happy for it, the words from Miss Havisham’s lips sounding “like a curse.”
Nonetheless, that night Pip reaffirms his love for Estella “hundreds of times” and persists in the
hope “that she should be destined for me, once the blacksmith’s boy,” for once is not now. Pip is
again the fictional young man marking the distance of his rise from what once was, and as a
result he keeps away from Joe to avoid Estella’s contempt, just as he had not wished to have Joe
seen by Drummle: Pip loves one and despises the other, but betrays Joe because of them both.
Next day Pip’s complacency is shattered by the satiric comment of “that unlimited miscreant,
Trabb’s boy,” an impish little comic mocker in the tradition of Puck and English folklore. It is
fitting that the mockery of Pip’s foppish manner and appearance comes from the tailor’s boy,

19
who had made the clothes which were the first result of Pip’s fulfilled “expectations,” as Pip
records in his usual precise terminology the “terror, amazement, and indignation,” the
“aggravation and injury” and final disgrace wrought by his smirking tormentor.
In London with Herbert, Pip declares his love for Estella, revealing his inner discontent, his
sense of shame at having done so little on his own behalf, his unhappiness despite his good
fortune. Pip is now twenty-one, and Herbert’s summary of him at this point discloses unresolved
divisions and contradictions. Herbert calls him “a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation,
boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him.” Yet thinking of Estella,
he feels uncertain, at the mercy of change, his future dependent on someone still unknown. As
Herbert soberly cautions him against believing that Estella is meant for him, we are made to see
the moment as important by Pip’s reference to the wind: a feeling smites upon his heart again,
“like the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had subdued me on
the morning when I left the forge…”. Pip’s deepening mood is further disturbed by news of
Estella’s coming to London, and by the accident of his visiting Newgate with Wemmick while
awaiting Estella’s arrival. He contrasts the atmosphere of the jail with the proud and beauteous
Estella, just as he has contrasted Joe with her to his shame. But both turn out to be false
contrasts: it is ironic that the prison taint should afflict Pip with reference to Estella, as if she
were high above it, whereas she is steeped in it from birth, being more deeply rooted in crime
than he is. Pip’s expectations further lead not to Estella as she now is but back to Joe.

The return to Satis House shows once again the meaning and influence of this darkest of
the many “dark houses” in Dickens, whose forbidding gloom descends upon and is concentrated
in this “darkened and unhealthy house in which her life was hidden from the sun.” But more than
any of the others, this house declares the hero’s own situation, telling Pip the true nature of his
“expectations” as “I saw in everything the construction that my mind had come to, repeated and
thrown back to me.” Pip understands almost to the full what Miss Havisham’s perverted use of
Estella means, yet he persuades himself that she is reserved for him “assigned to me.” At night,
unable to sleep, Pip goes out to escape the haunting visions of Miss Havisham that surround him,
only to see her going up the portentous staircase, a ghostly figure uttering a moaning cry. His
unhappy mood continues next day as Pip again is made jealous and miserable by Estella’s

20
encouragement of Drummle, without so much as the satisfaction of knowing that Estella favors
the lout only in order to plague him.

2.3 Bildungsroman

Pip is what defines this novel as a Bildungsroman. A novel that follows the main
character as he or she matures throughout the plot. Great expectations is a Bildungsroman
because it follows the life of Pip from childhood to adulthood. Pip matures throughout the story
in many themes, he becomes academically educated, his love for Estella grows more and more
and he become to understand what suffering and ambition come to mean. Dickens also
demonstrates and lets Pip to see how one’s actions can affect the life of another person, either for
the better or worse, like it was the case with Estella and Miss Havisham. Another theme of this
novel is that a person’s imagined „Great Expectations” are sometimes not meant to happen in
reality. Pip’s growth doesn’t start on the right foot. His path towards education leads him to
insult both Joe and his former tutor Biddy. Pip following his „Great Expectations” also avoids
visiting and seeing Joe since Pip is no longer a part of that common crowd. If we have a look at
Miss Havisham who is frozen at the exact moment Compeyson abandoned her at the alter, even
the clocks were stopped, all of them indicating the same time, twenty minutes to nine. So Miss
Havisham instead of growing with the Bildungsroman, she remains a secret antagonist to Pip
until she begs him for forgiveness towards the end of the novel at the Satis House for all those
years she had brainwashed Estella into a weapon.Her confirmation of moving on with her life led
her to death. Her growth was not a positive one. Magwitch, after his exile he dedicates his life
for money to get Pip out of the common crow. From a convinct he grows up in wealth even
though he dedicates all of his money to Pip. This generosity however, created Pip’s „Great
Expectations” and launched his developing life into suffering over Estella. Forgiveness, another
thing that grows once with the characters, we see no trace of that at first from anyone but
otwards the end Pip accepts Miss Havisham’s forgiveness, Joe accepts Pip’s forgiveness after
Pip avoided him during his tuition period in London. Pip realizes at the end of the novel that
kindness and loyalty to those around you are the best things in life. Only then we see a positive
growth from our main protagonist, when he starts carrying more about his true friends and his
personality. When this great opportunity is offered to him he leaves the old and embraces the

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new. He leaves his best friend Joe and makes a new one, Herbert which he met him in childhood.
He leaves Biddy for Estella in order to become „a gentleman on Estella’s account”.

Although the reader may develop some kind of hatred towards character like Estella.
Miss Havisham or Compeyson towards the end, he must remind himself that classical prejudice
were abandoned (good characters or evil characters). Those characters act into moral notions
( positive or negative). In a traditional novel and drama characters are either heroes or villains,
displaying constantly their intentions or virtues. In reality people are morally ambiguous,
psychologically unpredictable and structurally dual, swinging between good and evil. The human
nature is very complex, concept in which Pip fits as well.

Irony can be defined as a conflict between what is said and what is meant, between
appearance and reality. In „Great Expectations this can be the main topic, what does Pip sees and
what it really is. With this novel Dickens announces the beginning of a new form of epic which
can be characterized as modernist. The text is somehow autobiographic because of Pip. Even
though Pip acts like a narrator because of his subjectivity, he’s not really reliable. Nothing can be
as it seen because everything is adapted to Pip’s subjectivity. Pip is just a five year old boy at
first and he observes things according to his age, so moments like when the reader might know
more than the narrator as our experience is much wider come very often. We acknowledge that
the strange man from the churcyard is an actual convinct on the other hand Pip doesn’t know
what he is. He confesses he sees the church turning upside down. This remains a metaphorical
scene with a double significance. On the one hand it anticipates the evolution of the novel and
tha fac that Magwitch will turn Pip’s life upside down. On the other hand and more importantly
it suggests that Pip is an independent narrator and we are going to see the facts through his eyes
only. I believe that in Pip’s eyes the main so called villain is Drummle, because of their contest
over Estella. An unpleasant young man and a minor member of the nobility and a sense of
superiority that gives him justice to act cruelly and harshly towards everyone around him. Such a
meaningless character that plays a very small part in the novel, and Pip develops a whole
vendetta against him while behind the stage Compeyson slowly but surely makes his appearance
in London. A character that we see but not acknowledge at first when him at Magwitch have a
fight in the water. This is the novel’s true villain, Compeyson’s actions will influence Pip’s life
and turn it upside down because of some actions that he did long before the narrator was even

22
born. Besides being a general law breaker Compeyson is the man who dumped Miss Haisham at
the altar. Compeyson and Magwitch were eventually caught but Compeyson got off easily with
only half the jail sentence that Magwitch received. His actions made Miss Havisham how we see
her in the novel and she made Estella as a weapon for revenge and then Pip comes in contact
with those two female characters. Characters which will determine Pip’s furthure actions.

The wrong doings directed against children are more painful when they come from
family members: Mrs. Gargery, a blacksmith’s wife, is a shrew of the most highly developed
order. She has a little brother, Pip, a mere baby still, whom she can use him at her leisure,
remembering always that every hardness to the child is felt still worse by that good man, her
husband. If ever she is good - tempered in the common sense of the word, she never lets it be
suspected; without any cause, she is invariably acrid and always ready to break into fury of
abuse. Mrs. Joe is a loud, angry, nagging woman. She always says how fortunate Pip should feel
about being raised “by hand” by her and how much trouble she has gone through in that
endeavour. Of course Dickens punishes her. She will be brought to quietness by a half-
murderous blow on the back of her head, from which she will never recover. Thus Mrs. Gargery
learns patience and the rights of other people.

As the climatic moment approaches, Pip reviews, with customary precision of terms, his
actual condition. At age twenty-three, he is yet unsure of his expectations. He has moved to new
chambers “down by the river.” Full of hope for the morrow, he is unable to get down to anything
but his continuously unspecified reading, and alone in Herbert’s absence on business, he is
dispirited, anxious, disappointed. The scene itself is carefully reviewed, for Dickens clearly
means to present the fatal encounter as fully charged with associations as possible, filling the
scene with “things eternal” and recalling elements from Pip’s first meeting with Magwitch on the
marshes. Night time, in the city of London, the river, wind and rain, the Bells of St. Paul’s
striking the hour, the sound upon the staircase—Dickens seems to draw together lines from the
whole of his created universe to make of this scene the highest manifestation of his artistic
capacity. Eternity comments upon the human scene, collides with what is always there, as the
narrator speaks of a heavy veil driving over London “as if in the East there were an Eternity of
cloud and wind.”

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 Chapter 3. The Actual Reality
Pip closes his book at eleven o’clock, the hour strikes with the sound flawed by the wind,
footsteps are heard on the stair, a man comes into the light of Pip’s lamp after calling him by
name. The staircase lamps were blown out, so when Pip goes to the stairhead he takes up his
reading lamp. The person had stopped on seeing Pip’s lamp, and remains invisible in the
darkness below. He then comes slowly into the light. Pip at first resents the man’s familiar tone,
as if something were assumed; then his responses mingle with the feelings that had first beset
him on meeting the criminal.

3.1 Magwitch makes his appearance

The third major turning point.

Fear, horror, bewilderment, exasperation, astonishment, and as Magwitch’s

possessiveness grows, physical revulsion: the whole of Pip’s emotional life is concentrated and
lived again in a few moments. The moment of recognition invokes the continuing wind and rain
as Pip says, “I knew him! If the wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years…I
could not have known my convict more distinctly that I knew him now…” It is as if he has seen
a ghost, one returned from the one returned from life punishment. Pip’s condition makes him
think again of a voyage ending in disaster. When alone and able to think clearly at last, “I began
fully to know how wrecked I was, and how this ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.”
In agonies of shame and remorse Pip reviews his broken dreams; he must tell himself what he
had obtained in return for his illusions, “my own worthless conduct” to Biddy and Joe. His old
fear returns, as he hears in the wind and rain the threat of nameless dangers, ominous pursuers,
sinister whispers and knocking at the door. The fear of possible violence from Magwitch himself
is calmed by seeing him asleep, and Pip falls himself into uneasy rest. The “clocks of the
Eastward churches were striking five” as he awakens in darkness intensified by the everlasting
wind and rain, these recurring elements of Dickens’s imagination having continued steadily
throughout this the greatest chapter in all of his creation, their continuance warning Pip that his
troubles must go on with no escape from the consequences of his corrupt illusions. But one cause
at least of Pip’s continual distress has been removed: uncertainty now he knows. His inner

24
problems remain however. He must recover from the influence of Satis House, whose dark
rottenness has polluted his life, and he must return to Biddy and Joe to be forgiven. To these
internal pressures Magwitch has now added the external problem of his concealment and
eventual escape. While this recreates Pip’s old fear in another form, it releases his natural energy
and resourcefulness, gives purpose and direction to his wasteful existence, letting him display
qualities as yet undisclosed in his nature. In the darkness of early morning as he goes out to get a
light from the watchman, Pip stumbles over a crouching figure that quickly disappears. The
mystery only increases the “distrust and fear” to which he is now more prone than ever, as the
presence of Magwitch in the light of day only intensifies Pip’s “insurmountable aversion” to the
man’s actions, “uncouth, noisy, and greedy” as they are. The criminal’s terrible hands again
reach out for Pip’s own as he contemplates “the gentleman what I made”; “I mustn’t see my
gentleman a footing it in the mire of the streets; there mustn’t be no mud on his boots. My
gentleman must have horses, Pip!” Pip is then to ride in carriages, or on horseback, doing no
work on his own behalf, not even walking as his meaningless life goes on unhappily. Odious as
the criminal is to him, he must be protected. He is to pass as an uncle from the country, be given
the name of Provis, and occupy lodgings in a nearby house. Having arranged this, Pip goes to
Jaggers, who confirms the dreadful truth, more ominous than ever as Pip tries in vain to disguise
Magwitch as a prosperous farmer. For the man’s criminality would not disappear; it seems to Pip
“that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to
foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man.” Knowing that he should be grateful to
Magwitch, Pip can only say that his abhorrence grew to the point of starting up out of bed one
night, intending to leave him there and “enlist for India as a private soldier.” But the long nights
must be endured “with the wind and the rain always rushing by” and Pip thinks of Frankenstein,
pursued by his impious creation, not more unhappy than himself, “pursued by the creature who
had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion” the more Magwitch loved his
“gentleman.” Pip’s disgust seems to resemble his shame of Joe, both emotions a betrayal of
someone who had been good to him.

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 3.2 Pip’s ultimate formation

The fourth turning point.

The return of Herbert enables Pip to review the details of his actual position: in debt,
without the money he had been taking from an unknown source, and incapable of earning his
own way, “bred to no calling, and I am fit for nothing.” Herbert shares Pip’s fear that if he
repudiates Magwitch, the criminal will give himself up; Pip would then be his murderer. They
resolve to get Magwitch out of England, after which Pip may safely break with his benefactor.
His fear of discovery is now constant, while his perplexity and frustration at being so ignorant of
Magwitch’s life are in part relieved when one day the man consents to tell his own story. This
however, adds another fear, lest Compeyson, faithless betrayer of Miss Havisham and
Magwitch’s companion in crime, should discover Magwitch’s presence and inform on him.
The decision to leave England with Magwitch obliges Pip to visit Satis House to see both Estella
and Miss Havisham. Pip sees clearly that his revulsion against Magwitch is inspired by thoughts
of Estella, just as she had caused his betrayal of Joe. Again Pip does something to be ashamed of:
he pretends an obligation to visit Joe in order to explain his absence from London. It is a true
obligation but never met until it is useful to Pip. He can do what he should, but not for Joe’s sake
only for his own. The day itself corresponds to Pip’s mood, as it came “creeping on, halting and
whimpering and shiver- ing, and wrapped in patches of cloud and rags of mist, like a beggar.”
After a stubborn encounter with Drummle, Pip makes his way, “heavily out of sorts,” to the dark
house, which it had been better for him never to have seen. Declaring that “I am as unhappy as
you can ever have meant me to be,” Pip gives his news without revealing Magwitch’s identity.
Miss Havisham repulses his objection that she had allowed him to think her his benefactor, and
only assumes that he has come to ask forsome material favor. In his growing maturity, Pip now
asks that justice be done within Miss Havisham’s family, and specifically that money be given to
complete his own provision for Herbert. As he declares his love for Estella, recalling the cruelty
of the trial to which he had been subjected, Estella in turn repeats her cold indifference, as if
before his arrival, she had agreed with Miss Havisham what both must say to Pip, as their joint
role in his life is played out. The revelation that the object of his love not only repudiates him but
is to marry Drummle, “a stupid brute”, sends Pip into new agonies. Weeping bitterly, he

26
confesses his long enslavement to Estella, pouring out a rhapsody that gushes out from within
him in an “ecstasy of unhappiness.” Going, he notes only that Miss Havisham’s hand covers her
heart still, while her spectral figure seems “all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.”
Unable to face the thought of seeing Drummle or speaking to anyone, Pip walks back to London,
arriving past midnight “muddy and weary” only to receive a note from the night watchman with
the warning, “Don’t go home.”In his misery and exhaustion after reading Wemmick’s message,
Pip goes to lodgings in Covent Garden where “in the gloom and death of the night,” he stares at a
pattern of Argus eyes cast by the night-light on the wall, while the silence teems with accusing
voices and the eyes on the wall repeat the warning, “Don’t go home.” Next day, Wemmick
reveals the reason for his message: Pip’s chambers are being watched, and he is advised to take
advantage of London’s vastness to lie close, not trying the escape of Magwitch too soon. Time is
gained and confusion created by finding a new hidden place for Magwitch near the river, as Pip
rests under the healing influence of Wemmick’s Castle. When the transfer is safely made, and
plans to escape by rowboat are agreed upon, Pip becomes aware of changing feelings toward the
man who had so horrified him on the staircase, this object in the human scene continuing its
significance. He takes leave of Magwitch in the new hiding place, “on the landing outside his
door, holding a light over the stair rail to light us downstairs.” Looking back at him, Pip thinks of
that night when their positions had been reversed, “when I little supposed my heart couldever be
as heavy and anxious at parting from him as it was now.” Pip cannot throw off a sense of being
watched, and his fear persists that Magwitch will be pursued and caught, the very river itself
seeming to flow toward the criminal, bearing his pursuers with it. Although now desperate for
money, Pip continues to refuse help from Magwitch, his unhappy life dominated by a terror like
that of his childhood: restless, suspended, inactive, “the round of things went on” as Pip waits.
His fears are magnified by a report from Wopsle, that Compeyson had sat behind Pip in a theatre
once. He feels a “special and peculiar terror” at the description of Compeyson sitting behind him
“like a ghost.” Now through Jaggers again and Wemmick, Pip learns that he is to visit Satis
House, that Jaggers’ servant Molly is Estella’s mother, whose story is filled in to recover more
details of the past. As the essential narrative rounds itself out, Pip remains passive, unaffected in
his emotional history, but completing for us the knowledge to make comprehensible his own
story.Pip returns to his home village “quietly by the unfrequented ways,” wishing to remain
unseen, having something to conceal. In the tolling bell’s sound, the atmosphere is of death and

27
the end of things as “the cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound…”
Once again Pip enters the dark passage, takes up the candle and goes up the staircase of this
house, himself a part of its “wrecked fortunes.” Miss Havisham has called him back to complete
his endowment of Herbert, and to offer help to Pip himself which he continues to refuse.Thus
Herbert alone finds his expectations by aid of his own effort. Pip is truly his benefactor, enabling
him to succeed by work, and at last his self-forgetfulness saves him for a decent life in the world.
Given to Pip by Magwitch, the original money had corrupted him; given to Herbert, the money
saves them both. Miss Havisham now asks forgiveness, which Pip readily gives out of a sense of
shame at his own “blind and thankless” life. Pip’s story takes on an increasingly religious tone,
along with his references and appeals to Heaven, different from the “Heaven” awaiting Little
Nell and Paul Dombey, belonging rather to the sequence of sin, punishment, and the desire for
pardon, the New Testament’s forgiveness. As Miss Havisham falls to the ground before him,
overcome by the enormity of her offenses, Pip shows the growth to maturity and largeness of
spirit toward which his suffering has moved him. Filled with compassion and understanding, he
sees more deeply beneath the surface of life, sees that the appearance of virtue may be only a
monstrous vanity, a self-absorption concealing an egotistical martyrdom. Miss Havisham’s
offense lay in her theft of Estella’s heart, and Pip delivers the moral lesson that the natural
human feelings must have their way, and the consequences accepted. When his belief that Estella
was Molly’s child is confirmed, Pip takes his leave.

It is twilight as Pip lingers for what he is certain must be his last view of the place
inseparable from his illusions. He passes by the wilderness of casks, now decayed by the rain of
years, and walks about the ruined garden. At last, about to go, he looks back and fancies again
that he sees the body of Miss Havisham hanging from the beam, inspiring with immediate force
a return of his childhood terror. Returning to assure himself of her safety, he finds her suddenly
burst into flames which he manages to control by use of his own garments and the great cloth
from the bridal table, dragging down with it the “heap of rottenness” that had lain upon it these
many years, and releasing for terrified flight the crawling things in hiding there. Assured of her
recovery, Pip gives to the corpse like figure a farewell kiss, far different from the obsequious
token to her hands on his first departure for London. There remains only the final revelation to
complete Pip’s knowledge of the past, that Magwitch is Estella’s father. When confronting

28
Jaggers with his new discoveries, obtained a determination to know the full truth, Pip displays
his mature thought for others in protecting Wemmick from Jaggers’ displeasure. He pretends to
have learned from Miss Havisham what in fact he had learned from Wemmick. Jaggers’ reply to
his plea for candor confirms all, but ends with an admonition to conceal secrets whose revelation
can profit no one, least of all Estella. Jaggers consoles Pip in that his experience has been
representative, not only his own, in making Estella the object of the “poor dreams” that have
bereaved his life, such dreams as have come into “the heads of more men than you think
likely…”

When Pip to his great satisfaction completes his provision for Herbert, he must admit, “it
was the only good thing I had done, and the only completed thing I had done, since I was first
apprised of my great expectations.” Meanwhile the plans for Magwitch go forward, Pip again
showing himself farsighted and resourceful, when he receives a mysterious letter bidding him to
come alone to a rendezvous at the marshes, offering information “regarding your Uncle Provis.”
After another journey, Pip finds himself in his home village, where he avoids the Blue Board
Inn, inquires after Miss Havisham’s improvement, and dines with the help of his landlord who
must cut the meat. Pip receives another chastisement from his conscience as he learns of
Pumblechook’s claim to be his benefactor and his charge of base ingratitude. Ungrateful he has
been indeed, but to Biddy and Joe, who now start to his mind in all their faithful goodness by
contrast to “the brazen imposter Pumblechook.” Amid his dejection and remorse, Pip hears the
clock strike as it has done at decisive moments in his life, reminding him now of his rendezvous
near the marshes.

Again it is a dark night, but the moon rises as a melancholy wind plays over the dismal
scene, and the rain begins to come down fast to complete the elements of another climactic
Dickensian scene. Suddenly Pip is seized and fastened to a ladder against the wall; he is faint and
sick with pain in his injured arm, bewildered and terrified as he presently recognizes his
assailant, Orlick. Orlick’s malice inspires a new and terrible fear: if Pip should die without a
trace, he might be “misremembered after death…despised by unborn generations…” But his
courage returns, and Pip resolves not to ask for mercy. He is defiant and resigned, asks the
pardon of Heaven, and regrets that he cannot say farewell, or ask the compassion of those he

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loves “on my miserable errors.” His resolution sustains him as he shouts and struggles until his
rescuers come to free him at last. Returning to London, Pip has only one day to recover before
the time set to free Magwitch. His terror increases, lest he be disabled by illness on the morrow,
a day “so anxiously looked forward to, charged with such consequences, its results so
impenetrably hidden though so near.” After a night of agonies approaching delirium, the day
comes up at last to illuminate the dark and mysterious river, a veil seems to be drawn and Pip
rises strong and well for the coming ordeal.
When the expedition sets forth, Pip is profoundly relieved as the river itself, in the sunlight of a
day in March, becomes a beckoning road, a benevolent accomplice to their purposes, its eternal
surface reassuring. All goes well, as Magwitch joins them without incident, but at night, when
they take refuge in a public house, Pip’s fear returns on hearing of a four oared boat at large on
the water. Meanwhile the sinister wind mutters around the house, and its ominous forewarning is
at last fulfilled, when they are overtaken by the four oared galley, Compeyson is drowned in a
struggle with Magwitch, whose arrest follows. Now Pip says farewell to his friends, takes his
place at Magwitch’s side to remain there while the criminal lives, determined to be “as true to
you, as you have been to me.” The experience helps Pip to recognize the meaning of his own
behavior, his repugnance melts away, and he sees in Magwitch “a much better man than I had
been to Joe.” When Magwitch is sentenced to death, as the April rain shows on the windows of
the court, Pip faithfully holds his hand. He then struggles to the limit of hope in order to obtain
clemency for the condemned man, but all petitions are in vain. Pip’s seemingly genuine desire
not to evade the truth of his own behavior continues as well to the final interview and the dying
man’s gratitude that Pip has not deserted him. “I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not
forget that I had once meant to desert him.”
The illness to be expected at this point in the action has been convincingly prepared. Pip has
been subjected to great physical strain from the fire, the menaces of Orlick, and the river fight,
while the end of long emotional stress makes inevitable some violent reaction. But on the return
of sanity, Pip finds himself in the gentle hands of Joe once more, and is stricken with remorse at
the kindness of his friend and his own ingratitude. He now gradually returns to the relationship
from which his illusions had withdrawn him, “and Joe stayed with me, and I fancied I was little
Pip again.” They go one Sunday by an open carriage into the country: the idealized Dickensian
rural scene once more with singing birds, wild-flowers and sunshine, accompanies Pip’s return to

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his love for Joe, the open air and daylight signifying the reality to which Pip should have been
faithful, in contrast to the illusions bred in the dark unwholesomeness of Satis House. But when
Pip tries to inform Joe concerning Magwitch and the end of his expectations, Joe invokes his
refrain “ever the best of friends.” It reminds Pip of his own failure in friendship and renews his
shame. Then as his strength returns and he become less weak and dependent on Joe, Pip sees a
change: as he returns to normal, Joe is “a little less easy” with him. It must be his own fault, as
the painful meeting in London long ago had been his fault. His feelings of remorse are perplexed
by another form of shame: he was ashamed to tell Joe of the complete ruin of his expectations, a
not unworthy reluctance, however, lest Joe try to help pay his debts. But as Pip resolves to
remove all reserve, Joe departs as no longer needed, having paid the debts after all.
Pip’s resolution to follow Joe to the forge, there to make his peace, is joined to another that had
been forming in his thoughts, showing that his education was not in fact complete, that despite
his growth in compassion, courage and humility, there still lingered in him traces of the false, the
selfish and immature Pip. He resolves to offer himself to Biddy, asking forgiveness in his
repentance, hoping that he is now worthier of her than in the days when he could have married
her but chose not to do so. It is a blunder from which he will fortunately be rescued, for the strain
between him and Joe on his recovery showed not that he was again capable of betraying his
friend, but that he is simply not the same as in childhood. Morally he has returned, but, as a
mature man of the world, he can never bear the old relationship to Joe, and by the same token he
cannot marry Biddy. It is a delicious June day amid the idealized Dickensian countryside, as Pip
is about to be reunited with Biddy and Joe. He allows himself a “tender emotion” and shows that
he is yet self-absorbed, using the terms of a self-conscious, returning prodigal who thinks of the
improvement to come in himself, “of the change for the better that would come over my
character” under the guidance of Biddy’s faith and wisdom. But Pip becomes an object of pity as
he learns that he has returned on the wedding day of his friends. It is a cruel punishment, but one
that he has deserved with more justification than any of the lessons that make up his
apprenticeship to life. It may be suggested that the proposal to Biddy is a natural result of having
given up Estella, and that it reflects a new sense of value. Pip’s design on Biddy is a mistaken
attempt to do what he would have done, had he never left the forge, and never seen Estella or
Satis House .Yet Pip has in fact had these experiences whose effect upon him, he has to absorb
and whose consequences he must accept. If he can return spiritually to the moral absolutes of

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Biddy and Joe, he cannot return to them for the conduct of his life in the world. Pip is not what
he was in childhood. He has lived in London, has read and thought and learned to know himself
and the world, so that while he can throw off the corrupting effect of his expectations, he cannot
rub off his entire style. He must cease to condemn Joe’s manners, but he has a right to improve
his own.

When Joe loses Pip’s sister and Pip himself, he gains Biddy, whom Pip had lost in pursuit
of his illusions. This may be seen as proving that the real cost to Pip of following his dreams, is
the loss of Biddy. Yet again this must suppose that in the end he is the same as he was when first
he thought of Biddy. But she is the same, as everyone in the story remains the same except for
Pip and Estella and Miss Havisham, who must change as Estella does, and whose change of heart
foretells that of her creation. Since Pip is different, that he could in his maturity be happily
married to Biddy is as much an illusion as the former one, that he could be happy with the
original Estella. He can be happy only with an Estella who has changed as he has done. But Pip’s
recovery is not final until he loses this, the last of his “expectations,” related to the rest of his old
false hopes. It is another thing that he wants or “expects” to get for nothing, simply because it is
he that desires it. This is the last taint of condescension, of selfish lack of thought for others that
marked his immaturity and his “great expectations.” The episode reveals what ails Pip even now,
it is precisely because he does think that Biddy will marry him, that she is there as always to be
his if he wishes and that she would not think of refusing him that Pip is not yet totally free of his
illusions. Now he sees how contemptible this last expectation that Biddy would marry him was,
and so he does not resent her marriage to Joe. He sees that he has deserved this by continuing to
“expect” that Biddy would still be there for him because in his superiority he assumes she would
prefer him to anyone else. He does not cry out against his fate; he has learned the final lesson.
Pip had thought himself too good for Biddy when he could have married her, only to return to
her after his expectations fail. He loses his desire and hopes to rescue himself with what he now
thinks he should have wanted. But now after seeing the radiant happiness of Biddy and Joe, Pip
performs a kind of sacrament of penance, offering forms of prayer and a firm purpose of
amendment. He thanks his friends, he promises to work so as to repay the money that kept him
out of prison, and begs them never to tell their son-to-be, how thankless, ungenerous and unjust
Pip he has been to them, as he returns to telling adjectives for summary of his misdeeds.

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A few sentences now suffice to review the sobriety of his ensuing life, his hard work, his modest
success in the world, ending with a last admission concerning himself: that he had
underestimated the qualities of Herbert, seeing as in the times of his uneasiness with Joe, that
“the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.”

3.3 Having two endings

Eleven years passed, and Pip is now in his thirty-fifth year “when, upon an evening in
December, an hour or two after dark” he touches the latch of the old kitchen door. The room
discloses a new little Pip amid a scene of ideal domestic happiness so far denied to his mature
namesake. When Biddy raises the question of Pip’s old love for Estella, the transition is natural
to Pip’s own return to Satis House, although it does not ensure Estella’s being there. The final
scene takes place at an hour most favored by Dickens, the end of day. Pip finds the place of
illusion now in ruins, but a solitary figure inhabits the desolate garden walk on which the rain of
years has fallen, keeping the scene as awaiting their return. The ensuing brief dialogue discloses
that Pip does well indeed he works, and therefore does well “expecting” nothing, and therefore
no longer afraid, ashamed, or repentant. For Estella, suffering teaches, and we come to the
celebrated “second” or “happy” ending, which on examination may seem to be neither second
nor happy.

Dickens wrote 2 endings actually. In the movies, Pip and Estella always live happily ever
after but in fact Dickens struggle with the actual ending.
“I am greatly changed I know, but I thought you would like to shake hands Pip. In her
face and in her voice and in her touch she gave me the assurance that suffering had been
stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching and had given her the heart to understand what my
heart used to be.”
So this is how the text originally ended. I see a more mature Pip with the power of
analyzing someone but he still loves her because that’s simply who Pip is. Dickens thought
people won’t stand for this one and once again he put pen to paper.

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 “I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists
had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the
broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from
her.”
Now this one can be interpreted in many ways. I believe Dickens wanted to leave the end
in mystery so the reader can come up with a theory for himself. As Pip and Estella leave the
ruins of the Satis House they may go on to a happy ending or maybe they won’t. Only one thing
is certain, in Dickens work as in life the future rarely turns out as we expected to. Great
expectations is an ironic novel that deconstructs the idea of the traditional authorship. The text
practically writes itself, by means of one of its textual components, Pip the narrator. Everything
starts with his subjectivity and is shaped out according to his wish, without the intervention of
the author. Pip’s love for Estella is like an axis of the epic. On this axis, other craracters appear,
again, in accordance with Pip’s fantasy or experience. Miss Havisham looks initially like a good
mother and a benefactor. Later on, Magwitch replaces her as the actual father and benefactor.
The whole text becomes a clash between reality and appearance. In the middle we have Jaggers
who knows all about everything and everyone. He turns out to be the actual alter-ego of the
omniscient author. However he doesn’t interferes with the lives of his creatures. This is one of
the strongest pre-modernist metaphors about the lost authorship in the English literature.
Therefore the novel is in fact a pyramid articulated from bottom to top.

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 Annotated Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. American Journal Aspen, 1967.

Sigmund, Freud. Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming. 1908

Codrin, Liviu Cuțitaru. The Victorian Novel. Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Press, Iași 2004

Charles, Dickens. Great Expectations. All the Year Round, 1860-1861

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