Page 185 - DENG404_FICTION

Unit 15: Great Expectations: Plot Construction

and her memory. Furthermore, her “temper was greatly improved, and she was patient.” To Notes
help with the housework and to take care of Mrs. Joe, Biddy, a young orphan friend of Pip’s,
moves into the house.
The years pass quickly. It is the fourth year of Pip’s apprenticeship and he is sitting with Joe
at the pub when they are approached by a stranger. Pip recognizes him, and his “smell of
soap,” as a man he had once run into at Miss Havisham’s house years before.
Back at the house, the man, Jaggers, explains that Pip now has “great expectations.” He is to
be given a large monthly stipend, administered by Jaggers who is a lawyer. The benefactor,
however, does not want to be known and is to remain a mystery.
Pip spends an uncomfortable evening with Biddy and Joe, then retires to bed. There, despite
having all his dreams come true, he finds himself feeling very lonely. Pip visits Miss Havisham
who hints subtly that she is his unknown sponsor.
Pip goes to live in London and meets Wemmick, Jagger’s square-mouth clerk. Wemmick
brings Pip to Bernard’s Inn, where Pip will live for the next five years with Matthew Pocket’s
son Herbert, a cheerful young gentleman that becomes one of Pip’s best friends. From Herbert,
Pips finds out that Miss Havisham adopted Estella and raised her to wreak revenge on the
male gender by making them fall in love with her, and then breaking their hearts.

Pip is invited to dinner at Wemmick’s whose slogan seems to be “Office is one thing, private
life is another.” Indeed, Wemmick has a fantastical private life. Although he lives in a small
cottage, the cottage has been modified to look a bit like a castle, complete with moat, drawbridge,
and firing cannon.

The next day, Jaggers himself invites Pip and friends to dinner. Pip, on Wemmick’s suggestion,
looks carefully at Jagger’s servant woman — a “tigress” according to Wemmick. She is about
forty, and seems to regard Jaggers with a mix of fear and duty.
Pip journeys back to the Satis House to see Miss Havisham and Estella, who is now older and
so much more beautiful that he doesn’t recognize her at first. Facing her now, he slips back
“into the coarse and common voice” of his youth and she, in return, treats him like the boy
he used to be. Pip sees something strikingly familiar in Estella’s face. He can’t quite place the
look, but an expression on her face reminds him of someone.
Pip stays away from Joe and Biddy’s house and the forge, but walks around town, enjoying
the admiring looks he gets from his past neighbors.
Soon thereafter, a letter for Pip announces the death of Mrs. Joe Gragery. Pip returns home
again to attend the funeral. Later, Joe and Pip sit comfortably by the fire like times of old.
Biddy insinuates that Pip will not be returning soon as he promises and he leaves insulted.
Back in London, Pip asks Wemmick for advice on how to give Herbert some of his yearly
stipend anonymously.
Narrator Pip describes his relationship to Estella while she lived in the city: “I suffered every
kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me,” he says. Pip finds out that Drummle,
the most repulsive of his acquaintances, has begun courting Estella.
Years go by and Pip is still living the same wasteful life of a wealthy young man in the city.
A rough sea-worn man of sixty comes to Pip’s home on a stormy night soon after Pip’s
twenty-fourth birthday. Pip invites him in, treats him with courteous disdain, but then begins
to recognize him as the convict that he fed in the marshes when he was a child. The man,
Magwitch, reveals that he is Pip’s benefactor. Since the day that Pip helped him, he swore to
himself that every cent he earned would go to Pip.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 179