Great Expectations: A Final Wrap-Up

Wherein The Dickens Chronological Reading Club wraps up our final weeks (Weeks 5 & 6) with Great Expectations, our 22nd read; with a chapter summary, discussion wrap-up, final thematic wrap-up, and a look-ahead to our break between reads and our optional next read, The Uncommercial Traveller.

(Banner Image: On the Marshes, Approaching the Lime-Kiln, by F. A. Fraser. Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham for Victorian Web.)

by the members of the #DickensClub, edited/compiled by Rach

Friends, can you believe that we are completing the second-to-last of Dickens’s finished novels? As we approach the end of our chronological reading journey–though we still have 3 more reads to go, for those who are joining in for the whole thing–we have been a quieter, smaller group, but Boze and I hope you have been enjoying reading or rereading this late Dickensian masterpiece.

If you have time for nothing else today, I hope you have a moment to take a look at the final thematic wrap-up, where I have tried to pull together the various themes we’ve discussed, as well as bringing forward/continuing some of the themes that have haunted our reading since the beginning of the Club, and how they relate to Great Expectations.

But first, a few quick links:

1. General Mems
2. Great Expectations, Chs 43-59: A Summary
3. Discussion Wrap-Up (Weeks 5-6)
4. Great Expectations: A Final Thematic Wrap-Up
5. A Look-Ahead to Our Break Between Reads (23 April to 6 May, 2024) and Beyond

General Mems

SAVE THE DATE: We will have our Zoom chat on Great Expectations on Saturday, 4 May, 2024! 11am Pacific (US)/2pm Eastern (US)/7pm GMT (London). It is an informal chat with no set agenda; feel free to bring a favorite passage or topic to discuss! The Zoom link will be sent out prior to the chat; please feel free to message Rach here on the site or on twitter if you’d like the link.

If you’re counting, today is Day 840 (and week 121) in our #DickensClub! Today we are finishing Great Expectations, our twenty-second read as a group. Please feel free to comment below this post for any final thoughts/impressions, or use the hashtag #DickensClub if you’re commenting on twitter. For a link to Boze’s marvelous introduction to Great Expectations and The Uncommercial Traveller, click here. Chris shared some wonderful supplemental materials, which can be found here.

No matter where you’re at in the reading process, a huge “thank you” for reading along with us. Heartfelt thanks to our dear Dickens Fellowship, The Dickens Society, and the Charles Dickens Letters Project for retweets, and to all those liking, sharing, and encouraging our Club, including Gina Dalfonzo, Dr. Christian Lehmann and Dr. Pete Orford. Huge “thank you” also to The Circumlocution Office (on twitter also!) for providing such a marvellous online resource for us.

And for any more recent members or for those who might be interested in joining: the revised two-and-a-half year reading schedule can be found here. If you’ve been reading along with us but aren’t yet on the Member List, we would love to add you! Please feel free to message Rach here on the site, or on twitter.

Great Expectations, Chs 43-59: A Summary

(Illustrated by Marcus Stone for the “Library Edition” of 1862. Images below are from the Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery.)

“Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from Provis might be traced to Estella?”

Whatever Pip’s personal repugnance towards Magwitch/Provis, he faces a decision: how to act towards the man who has been his benefactor all along. He realizes that in order to save the life of his unlikely benefactor—both from the authorities and from Compeyson, if the latter were alive—he must leave the country with him…otherwise, Magwitch would never leave.

First, however, Pip decides to visit Joe. On the way, he sees Drummle, who is paying court to Estella. Pip visits Satis House, both to warn Estella off Drummle—if she can’t love him, Pip, she could at least choose a worthier suitor. Estella, however, has been trained in coldness by Miss Havisham, and now wants to escape her benefactor by marrying. Even Drummle. Pip forgives her; Miss Havisham begins to regret her actions. Pip inquires as to whether Miss Havisham intended to punish him and his relatives, and if she meant to lead him on in assuming that she herself was his benefactor.

“‘It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But i think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.’

I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.”

Pip asks now only that Miss Havisham help Herbert Pocket, who still does not know of Pip’s part in securing his current position.

When Pip returns he is greeted by a letter from Wemmick, advising him not to go home. Pip rents a dingy room for the night and then visits Wemmick, who tells Pip that his rooms are being watched, as Magwitch/Provis’ disappearance has roused suspicion. Pip also learns that Compeyson is in London—but they are reluctant to mention this to Magwitch, in fear that the latter will go after his old enemy. Herbert, who is staying with Clara’s family and who knows the situation, is keeping an eye out for Magwitch, who is now staying at Mrs Whimple’s lodgings—a widow connected with Clara’s family—near the docks, to ease their escape. Pip begins the habit of taking out a boat regularly, so that the habit of it will not arouse suspicion if he should need to use that means of escape, and he becomes known at the Customs House, where the boat is docked. Pip pawns some jewelry for his various expenses, not wanting to take any more from Magwitch.

One evening, Mr Wopsle, having seen Pip at one of his plays, wonders who the man was sitting behind Pip, who looked like one of the convicts of their former days.

When Pip dines with Jaggers and learns that Miss Havisham wishes to see Pip, Pip also notices the familiarity of the tamed servant at Jaggers’s place, to Estella. Jaggers had managed to get her acquitted of murder, and there was a child mentioned—supposed to have been killed: a girl.

Miss Havisham intends to help Herbert, as Pip had requested, and Jaggers is to be the vehicle. But she also shows true remorse for what she has done to Pip and Estella; Pip says that if she can repair anything for Estella, she should.

“‘What have I done! What have I done!’ She wrung her hands, and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry over and over again. ‘What have I done!’”

While Pip is walking around Satis House, he returns to find a flame catch Miss Havisham’s dress, and he puts is out, pulling the ancient tablecloth down along with its vestiges of a wedding that never took place. His hands are burned, and she continues asking forgiveness.

Meanwhile, as Herbert tends to Pip, he tells Pip that Magwitch’s wife had killed another woman, been acquitted by Jaggers, and threatened to kill their child. Magwitch believed the deed had been carried out. Compeyson was blackmailing Magwitch for having not only protected the woman, but that he had gone into hiding himself so as to avoid being a witness at her trial. Pip is now sure that his suspicions are correct: Magwitch and Jaggers’s servant, Molly, are the parents of Estella. When Pip questions Jaggers about this, the latter confirms it in a roundabout way, not committing himself, and advises Pip not to make this known to Estella, as no good can come of bringing these poor, violent souls back together.

With Miss Havisham’s money, Herbert’s position at the company is assured, though Herbert will soon be transferred. Wemmick advises that Pip leave with Magwitch early in the week, and they hire Startop, as Pip’s burned hands prevent him from being able to row the boat. First, however, Pip returns to his old haunts at the marshes, not only to check on Miss Havisham—who is slowly recovering—but to answer an anonymous letter that asks Pip to meet him at the marshes alone, as the writer has information about Magwitch.

It is Orlick who meets Pip and attacks him from behind. Pip has been in his way from the beginning, causing him to lose Biddy’s good opinion and his place at Miss Havisham’s. Orlick admits to having attacked Mrs Joe. He’d long been waiting for revenge on Pip; knowing that Magwitch/Provis was supposedly Pip’s “uncle” but that Pip had no uncle, he began to spy. Pip, knowing he is about to be killed and all those who had relied on him would think he had abandoned them, cries out for help. Of all people, Trabb’s boy appears—and with him, Herbert and Startop. Pip had accidentally dropped the letter back at his flat—the letter which asked Pip to meet the unknown writer at the marshes—and they had followed. Trabb’s boy had showed them the way to the marshes.

That night, after returning to London, Pip tries to help Magwitch escape, hoping to catch a steamer to get them out of the country. They are stopped, however, by a galley; a voice calls out that they are there for Abel Magwitch. Compeyson is there on the galley and he and Magwitch fight one another in the water; Magwitch has received an injury from one of the boats as the two men struggled. Pip accompanies Magwitch to London, feeling that his injury is a mercy. Magwitch states that he doesn’t regret coming to see his gentleman, whatever the outcome now. Pip doesn’t tell him that he can no longer retain his status as a gentleman, as all of Magwitch’s money will be seized. Pip stays at his old benefactor’s side.

“My repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe.”

Compeyson, who had hoped to get a reward for finding Magwitch, is dead, and his body is found. Herbert will soon be leaving for Cairo’s branch, and hopes that Pip will consider a clerkship there, leading eventually towards a partnership. Pip says that if the position can be held for him without inconvenience, he will consider it. Meanwhile, Clara is caring for her ill father, and will marry Herbert after her father’s death. Pip visits Wemmick on a Monday that the latter has off, and Pip becomes a witness at the marriage of Wemmick and Miss Skiffins.

Magwitch who has been found guilty and sentenced to death, is declining from his injuries. Pip reads to him, sits with him, and writes letters of appeal for him. Pip is able to assure his benefactor that Magwitch’s child lives, and that he, Pip, loves her, and she has found friends. Magwitch dies.

Pip, now greatly in debt and with a warrant out for his arrest due to a debt to a jeweller, he is cared for in his fever by Joe, and the two reconnect, almost as of old. But as Pip begins to recover, he wakes one day to find Joe gone back home, and his own debt paid—by Joe. Pip returns to his old hometown, to confess all to Joe, and he considers asking Biddy—whose true value he has only begun to know—to marry him.

Miss Havisham has died, and has left Estella her heir, though Satis House is to be auctioned off. Orlick has been arrested for attempting to attack Pumblechook.

Biddy, who is now a schoolteacher, is found by Pip dressed up—it is her wedding day to Joe. Pip is relieved that he never declared his intentions to Joe, for no one could better deserve such a loving wife. Pip reconciles with Joe and Biddy, heartily congratulating them, and telling them of his own plans to go abroad and join Herbert in the business. He hopes to repay them.

“I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a composition with my creditors—who gave me ample time to pay them in full—and I went out and joined Herbert.”

Pip not only fills the vacant clerk position, but quickly takes charge while Herbert returns to England to marry Clara, eventually becoming a partner.

“Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the House; but, I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, and paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspondence with Biddy and Joe.”  

Years pass, and Pip sees Joe and Biddy again; they now have a son named Pip.

Pip visits the old property at Satis House, where all is now gone, having heard that Estella’s unhappy marriage to her abusive husband had ended on her husband’s death two years ago. Pip meets with Estella, who owns the land and intends to build there. Her suffering has instilled in her the realization of what she had thrown away. Pip sees no shadow of another parting from her*.

*NOTE: The original ending included Pip’s talking to Estella in her carriage while he was out with the younger Pip. Estella’s abusive first marriage had ended with her husband’s death, but she is now married to a Shropshire doctor who had been good to her. She has learned from her suffering, and now has a heart to understand better what Pip’s own heart had been.

Discussion Wrap-Up (Weeks 5-6)

Miscellany & What We Loved–and Didn’t: The Imaginary “Tulkinghorn & Jaggers” Law Firm; Characterization

Chris loves the idea of a Tulkinghorn & Jaggers firm in London–and the Stationmaster shares that other Dickensians have clearly wanted to see the same thing:

Here, the Stationmaster considers whether the “Aged P” might be the best parent in the book. He also wonders why various adaptations of this novel make Pip less forgiving towards Miss Havisham than he actually is:

And a few other preferences/likes/dislikes:

Character Spotlight: Estella

The Stationmaster grapples with Estella’s choice of Drummle. Is it even “in character,” even for an “abnormal” psychology such as has been fostered in her?

Chris responds:

So, is it an ultimate act of rebellion towards Miss Havisham, the woman who had both made and unmade her?

Perhaps she just wants to use marriage as a means to an end–an independence, of sorts, from the woman who has imprisoned her, psychologically.

Character Spotlight: Miss Havisham

The Stationmaster considers Miss Havisham at length, especially in relation to Madame Defarge:

Character Spotlight: Jaggers

I try and grapple with the enigmatic and amoral Jaggers, trying to figure out where he fits into the moral universe of Dickens, and what he says of Pip and of the Law:

He surely, as the Stationmaster argues, cannot represent the “complete neutrality of the law,” as he maneuvers and manipulates for his own ends as for his clients’s:

And “just” cannot be rightly and fully attributed to him either, for the same reasons, as Chris argues here. He is a master manipulator. As Chris says, he perhaps represents more the failure of the justice system than anything else:

Dickens’s “Writing Lab”: The Reader in Dickens; Great Expectations as Bildungsroman

Though Chris would like to have more information on some of our side characters, it is also clear that “the brevity of this novel is perfect.” She comments on how Dickens portrays with such accuracy the growth of Pip, and how Great Expectations, bildungsroman that it is and as much as it is read in high school, almost takes a more mature worldview, emerging from the experience of years, in order to appreciate it fully:

The Stationmaster considers when he himself read it, and some of the valuable lessons that can be gained from it, even at a younger age:

“A State of Pleasing Uncertainty”: On the Ending of the Novel

The Stationmaster tackles the controversial dual ending of the story, beginning with the unconventional choice not to allow Pip to marry the one he perhaps, in hindsight, “should” have loved, Biddy:

Chris would lose respect for our dear Biddy, however, had she accepted Pip:

And so begins the real controversy: the updated (Bulwer-Lytton-influenced) ending, versus the original:

Misplaced Love

And a note to continue the theme that the Stationmaster had brought up during our former section, that of “undeserved” or misplaced love:

Class Distinctions & Pip’s Reaction to Magwitch

As a reader, how to we react to Pip’s reaction to Magwitch’s revelation? Why would it be so different, had it been Miss Havisham, as Pip had imagined? Is it the class difference/prejudice? Moral qualms? Personal repugnance? Being a “puppet” of another? Some combination?

Is it possible that Pip is our lowest-born Dickensian protagonist up to now? The Stationmaster asks the questions, and poses Pip’s rivals for the position:

Great Expectations: A Final Thematic Wrap-Up

1. Contrasts: Light & Dark; Comedy & Tragedy; Life and Death (This has been a key theme from the beginning of our chronological journey. Here expressed in atmosphere, location, and theme. Things going to seed and withering, as in Satis House. Interior death in Estella and Miss Havisham.)
2. Self-Definition Through Characterization; Dickens as the “Haunted Man”; “Misplaced Love” (Though not as semi-autobiographical as Copperfield or Little Dorrit, there is self-reflection here, and guilt, in Pip’s misguided ambition; perhaps a reflection of Dickens’s own ultimate aloneness in the original ending. Opportunities missed–e.g. with Biddy. Several characters love those that they shouldn’t, for their own peace.)
3. Dickens and Theatricality (Dickens is at his most comical when he is spoofing the theater; Mr Wopsle’s failed Hamlet, and the audiences’ reaction. The important moment in the theater revealing Compeyson’s presence later.)
4. The Joys of Reading Dickens Aloud (Boze and I have included audio performances of this in our readalong: Simon Prebble’s and Anton Lesser’s. Frank Muller also has a version, as does our own Rob Goll!)
5. Dickens and the Law; Jaggers and Dickens’s Moral Universe (Jaggers as a kind of amoral part of the moral universe of Dickens, and the inhuman, ruthless face of the law and its intimidation–yet also its tendency to not commit itself, and to wash its hands of those it affects.)
6. What is a true “gentleman”? (“Gentleman of the heart” versus gentleman-in-status. E.g., perhaps Joe vs. Pip.)
7. “Expectation & Stagnation”: Class Envy; Disappointments; “Commonness” (Just as Miss Havisham’s own expectations have turned to stagnation, disappointment, and a kind of living death, so do Pip’s, when all is revealed.)
8. The Women in Dickens: Mrs Joe, Estella, Biddy, Miss Skiffins; the “Sisterhood” of Dickensian Women (Understanding, though not wholly sympathetic, views of Mrs Joe as the remaining mother figure in a constrained and over-responsible situation vis-a-vis her family. Estella as another Edith Dombey figure, belonging to the Esther Summerson and Miss Wade tradition and sisterhood. Biddy as a far more relatable version of Agnes and Dickens’s more “angelic” female characters. Miss Skiffins as belonging to the sisterhood of Miss Tox.)
9. Doubling, Foils, Dickensian Parallels (Mrs Joe and Miss Havisham; Pip and Estella; dual “benefactors” in Magwitch and Miss Havisham; duality and foils in what a true “gentleman” is in Pip versus Joe.)
10. Responsibility and Debt (What do we owe to one another? Pip’s acquisition of debts as soon as he becomes a “gentleman”; his ultimate, and far greater, debt to Joe. His debt to Magwitch.)
11. Dickens’ “Writing Lab”: Atmosphere, Characterization; Theme/Imagery; a “Sensation Novel” (The atmosphere–e.g. of the marshes, of Satis House, etc–represents the interior states of the characters. Each of our recent Dickensian narrator characters, too, perhaps has their own delusions. Dickens interest in writing a “sensation” story in order to get sales of All the Year Round back up.)
12. Dickens & Parentless Children (Pip, Estella, Mrs Joe.)
13. Forgiveness and Repentance (Pip’s healing forgiveness of Miss Havisham and Estella; reconciliation with Magwitch; Joe and Biddy’s forgiveness of Pip.)
14. Dickens, Romanticism, and the Imagination (Continuing this theme here to keep the continuity, although here we have a darker vision, and a more jaded outlook of “great expectations.” Rather than the peace of the country and unrest of the city, the country too is full of unfulfilled ambitions–Pip’s–and a sense of having gone to seed. E.g. Satis House.)
15. Dickens and Fairy Tales (Particularly since The Old Curiosity Shop, we have discussed the influence of fairy stories on Dickens’s unique imagination. Here, his atmosphere and vision is sometimes “hallucinatory,” as was noted in our introduction; we have an ogre-like character ultimately prove to be a kind of unlikely test for our hero, resulting in his change of fortunes.)
16. Imprisonment, Interior and Exterior (Continuing this theme from the very beginning of our journey, with Sketches and Pickwick in the Fleet prison; more immediately, from Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities. Here, Pip is imprisoned in a life that he doesn’t want–blacksmithing. Shackled to Magwitch in his purchased status as “gentleman.” Estella’s imprisonment, interior.)
17. Time, Memory, Circularity, Legacy (Continuing this from our whole journey, and most immediately from A Tale of Two Cities. Here, Pip has a new self, both interiorly and in his legacy–Joe and Biddy’s child, Pip–at the end.)
18. A “Pilgrim’s Progress” From One Novel to Another (Part of the darker phase of Dickens’s works. A Copperfieldian bildungsroman, but with Pip as antihero, yet with a true character arc.)
19. Psychology, Mental Illness, and Trauma (Estella and Mrs Joe as victims of a traumatic childhood? Miss Havisham’s own mental illness and unresolved trauma. The tiger restrained in Molly, caged by Jaggers.)
20. The Controversial Ending (The original ending, one of more melancholy but wiser bachelorhood for Pip, was altered from the original at the suggestion of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Dickens is adept enough at making us believe it, with its note of hope, that this later version is usually the accepted/read one.)

A Look-Ahead to Our Break Between Reads (23 April to 6 May, 2024) and Beyond

This week and next, the #DickensClub will be on a break between reads. We would love to hear what you are reading during the break, Dickens-related or otherwise! We hope to see you on 4 May for our Zoom chat on Great Expectations!

You might have a far longer “break” if you decide not to join in the optional read of the essay collection The Uncommercial Traveller, which at least Boze, Chris, and Rach will be reading between May 7-27, 2024. Note: We will not have regular/final wrap-ups nor a Zoom chat for it unless we have a lot of participation and interest. If you’re joining in for The Uncommercial Traveller, see you in the comments when we post a placeholder on 7 May!

Whether or not you’re joining in for The Uncommercial Traveller, we look forward to seeing you for our next novel–and Dickens’s final finished novel–Our Mutual Friend! Boze’s introduction will be posted on 28 May!