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Unit 14: Great Expectations: Detailed Study of Text-III

Pip goes for a walk around the garden then comes back to find Miss. Havisham on fire! Pip Notes
takes his jacket and the tablecloth from the old banquet table, and puts the fire out, burning
himself badly in the process. The doctors come, announce that she will live. They put her on
the banquet table to care for her (where she said she would always lie when she died.)

Analysis

Repentance and forgiveness is a common theme among the relationships in the novel and it
is interesting to see the instances where forgiveness is given and where it is refused. We are
reminded of Mrs. Joe’s last words to Joe, seeming to imply a request for forgiveness for her
actions toward he and Pip.
In this chapter, Miss Havisham is asking for forgiveness from Pip for having been a part of
breaking his heart. She commiserates with him because her own heart had been so broken
once. Pip immediately forgives, but believes her to have been much more of a disservice to
herself and to Estella in her actions. She took away the light (both daylight and a spiritual
sense of joy) from both their lives. In so doing, she destroyed a young girl’s capacity to love,
and she herself is growing old with none to love her.
Miss Havisham’s request for forgiveness, of course, reminds Pip of his own need to reconcile
and ask for forgiveness from Joe and Biddy and his treatment of them.
Reflecting the Christian influence in Victorian morality, those that do not seek reconciliation
will sooner or later destroy themselves. We will see this in the upcoming chapters with Magwitch’s
hatred for Compeyson and Orlick’s hatred for Pip.

14.2 Part III, Chapters 11–20 (50–59)

Part III: Chapter 11
Pip goes home and Herbert takes care of his burns. Herbert has been spending some time with
Magwitch at Clara’s and has been told the whole Magwitch story.
Magwitch was the husband of Jaggers’ servant woman, the Tigress. The woman had come to
Magwitch on the day she murdered the other woman and told him she was going to kill their
child and that Magwitch would never see the baby again. And Magwitch never did. Pip puts
it all together and tells Herbert that Magwitch is Estella’s father.

Analysis

Though this chapter is short, it drops such a bomb that it takes longer to realize all the ironies
and implications of that bomb than it does to actually read the chapter. Estella is the daughter
of a convict and a murderous tigress! Pip’s idea of all that is desirable in this life — Estella,
wealthy, beautiful, uncommon Estella — is more closely related to the world of criminals and
convicts than even he. Pip has been blindly headed towards what he thought he was running
away from in the first place.
Of course, he does not feel any less respect or love for Estella. He cannot, because he knows
her to be a lady. And so he must start to reevaluate how he judges people. He has judged
himself harshly, at times, because he feels he has always been surrounded by criminals and
violence and this is a reflection of his value as a person. But he can no longer do that, now
that he sees that his benefactor is the father of the woman he loves.

Strangely, Pip feels he has not become what Magwitch had hoped for: a gentlemanly son.
Unconsciously, however, Magwitch has given the world a ladylike daughter, in all ways very
upper-class and uncommon.

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