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Unit 13: Great Expectations: Detailed Study of Text-II

knows him better than anyone, both his strength and his failings. In the latter, Pip is a mere Notes
play thing to a woman who apparently, and admittedly, has been conditioned not to love.

Part II: Chapter 17

Pip “comes of age,” that is, turns twentyone, and hopes that his benefactor will present her/
himself. His hopes seem to be on the mark when Jaggers makes an appointment with him for
early that evening.
In fact, Jaggers reveals nothing about Pip’s benefactor and tells him that he does not know
when the benefactor will chose to reveal themselves. The only thing that has changed is that
Pip is now in charge of his own stipend which is now set at five hundred pounds a year.
Jaggers then dines with Herbert and Pip at the Bernard Inn. After he leaves, Herbert echoes
both he and Pip’s thoughts: When they are in Jagger’s presence, you always feel as though
you’ve committed some outrageous crime that not even you yourself are aware of.

Analysis

Once again, the irony of the title of the book is echoed in the events in Pip’s life. Expectations,
great or small, will be crushed. Pip expects his benefactor — whom he continues to believe is
Miss Havisham — will reveal themselves on his birthday. Though Herbert’s twenty-first birthday
was only a few months ago, it was not anticipated or celebrated with as much anxiousness as
Pip’s — because of the great expectations which preceded it.
The motif of expectations crushed is paralleled with the continuing theme of guilt and shame
in Pip’s life. Herbert and Pip both share in a rather humorous feeling that any conversation
with Jaggers makes you feel like your hiding something, but in Pip’s case, he has felt like he
is hiding something for most of his life.

Part II: Chapter 18

Pip goes to Wemmick’s castle for dinner and is introduced to Miss. Skiffins (whose face, like
Wemmick’s, also looks like a post office box). Pip asks Wemmick for advice on how to give
anonymously give Herbert some of his yearly stipend (one hundred pounds a year).
With help from Miss. Skiffins’ brother, who is in finance, Wemmick and Pip put together a
plan whereby Herbert will be given a job with a young merchant.

Analysis
The distinction between how we treat people in the public arena versus how we treat them
in private is made stark clear by Wemmick’s initial reaction in the previous chapter when Pip
first approaches him about helping Herbert. Pip spoke with him in Jaggers’ office, where
Wemmick told him that giving money to help a friend is like throwing money into the Thames.
When Pip approaches him about the same subject in his own home, Wemmick tells him that
the gesture is “devilish good” of him. Wemmick demonstrates that not only does society force
us to act a certain way, in a great part against our nature, it also forces us to denigrate our
fellow humans to the level of positive or negative investments. The narrator certainly doesn’t
fault Wemmick for this, but Young Pip is being given clear lessons about life in the city.

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