A Christmas Carol
Dickens also follows a person learning to judge wealth and obligation differently, within a much shorter Christmas story.
Read our take
Great Expectations
An unexpected fortune gives Pip the life he wants and makes him misjudge the people who care for him.
- 1861
- 544
- Wry
- Melancholy
- voice-driven
- funny
- dark
- plot-driven
About Charles Dickens
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeCharles Dickens's novel follows Pip from the Kent marshes to a gentleman's life in London. An encounter with an escaped convict and visits to Miss Havisham's decaying house shape his desires before an anonymous benefactor offers him money. Looking back, Pip describes how ambition and his love for Estella taught him to be ashamed of home. The novel was serialized in 1860–61 and published as a three-volume book in 1861.
The story, in more detail
Pip begins by reading a world he cannot yet understand. He imagines his dead parents from the lettering on their graves, then faces a stranger whose threats turn food and a file into urgent necessities. Later, Estella's contempt gives him another frightening set of instructions: his hands, boots and manners are suddenly wrong.
Miss Havisham's house preserves a wedding that never happened. Her dress, clocks and rooms make disappointment visible, while her treatment of children allows that disappointment to shape other lives. Pip mistakes the attention he receives there for evidence that a desirable future has already been arranged.
The adult narrator can recognize errors that his younger self defends. His embarrassment about Joe, the blacksmith who cares for him, gives the comedy a painful edge. Money changes what Pip can buy much faster than it changes what he understands about affection and obligation.
The fortune and the person behind it
The lawyer Jaggers announces Pip's expectations but withholds the donor's identity. Pip assumes Miss Havisham intends him for Estella and goes to London to become a gentleman. His friend Herbert Pocket offers practical kindness while Pip is embarrassed when Joe visits.
The benefactor proves to be Abel Magwitch, the convict Pip fed as a child. Magwitch has made money in Australia and returned illegally to see the gentleman he has financed. Pip's first horror gradually gives way to concern for the vulnerable man whose life is now in danger.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Magwitch is captured and condemned, but dies in prison before execution. Pip stays beside him and tells him that his daughter, Estella, is alive. Pip loses the fortune, becomes ill and is nursed by Joe, who also pays his debts. Work abroad with Herbert gives him a more modest living.
Years later, Pip meets the widowed Estella at the ruins of Satis House. She asks for friendship, and he sees a possibility of no further separation. This revised ending leaves their future open; it does not explicitly narrate a marriage. Dickens's earlier ending is included in the selected edition's appendices.
Themes and analysis
Pip mistakes a desired story for an explanation
Pip's expectations depend on an inference nobody has promised to confirm: he believes Miss Havisham is financing his rise and preparing him to marry Estella. Her behavior encourages that belief, but his desire supplies the connections. The mystery works because a story that flatters him seems more persuasive than the gaps in its evidence.
Magwitch's arrival makes Pip reinterpret the same money and education. What appeared to be an invitation from an elegant, secluded household comes from a transported convict's labor and attachment. The revelation changes the meaning of earlier scenes without changing what actually happened in them.
Clothes and manners can misidentify a gentleman
Estella's contempt teaches Pip to feel ashamed of his hands, boots and home. In London, that shame extends to Joe, whose awkward clothes and speech embarrass him. Joe's visit exposes how quickly Pip has adopted a scale of value that makes affection subordinate to appearances.
Magwitch's account of his trial gives this prejudice institutional force. Compeyson's gentlemanly presentation helps distinguish his treatment from that of his rougher accomplice. The novel places Pip's private snobbery beside a legal system susceptible to the same signs, making the desire to look respectable more consequential than a personal vanity.
Giving someone a future can become a form of control
Magwitch imagines Pip's success as an answer to the people who have despised him. Miss Havisham raises Estella to inflict the injuries she herself received. Their projects differ in motive and harm, but both make a young person's life carry an older person's unfinished struggle.
Pip begins to act more independently when he supports Herbert without claiming the credit and helps Magwitch after the expected fortune has become impossible. Assistance no longer depends entirely on owning the recipient's future. These acts give practical form to a change that remorse alone could not establish.
The older voice preserves the younger Pip's shame
The narrator can criticize the boy and young man he once was without pretending that his earlier feelings were simple. He remembers affection for Joe alongside embarrassment, and horror at Magwitch alongside the beginnings of pity. Retrospection lets contradictory responses remain in the account.
Joe's nursing and payment of Pip's debts make his failure of judgment unmistakable. The final meeting with Estella offers a quieter relation after both have suffered, but the revised ending does not describe a wedding. Its hope leaves room for uncertainty, unlike the elaborate future Pip once treated as his entitlement.
Sources for these readings
- Great Expectations: primary text, Project Gutenberg ebook 1400
Chapters VIII, XVIII, XXVII, XXXIX, XLII, XLIV, XLIX and LVI–LIX; the final chapter is the revised ending.
Quotes from Great Expectations
I am what you have made me.
suffering has been stronger than all other teaching
Why we recommend it
Learning to see a benefactor
The source of Pip's money forces him to reconsider the connection he has made between social standing and goodness.
A house that keeps an injury alive
Satis House turns memory into dress, architecture and daily routine. Its atmosphere makes Miss Havisham's influence on the children tangible.
Comedy with an embarrassed narrator
Pip's older voice understands more than the boy or young man he describes. That distance lets affection, vanity and self-criticism coexist in a sentence.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Pip
The narrator, Philip Pirrip, whose expectations of gentility lead him to misunderstand both money and love.
Estella
Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, trained to attract love while distrusting the feelings it asks of her.
Miss Havisham
A wealthy woman whose abandoned wedding becomes the setting for an education in revenge.
Abel Magwitch
The transported convict who turns a child's gift of food into a lifelong ambition to make him a gentleman.
Timeline
December 1, 1860
The serial begins in All the Year Round; it runs until August 3, 1861.
July 6, 1861
Chapman and Hall publishes the first book edition in three volumes.
October 4, 1861
Dickens writes to Robert Lytton about changing the ending after advice from Robert's father, Edward Bulwer Lytton.
2002
Penguin Classics publishes the selected 544-page US paperback with Charlotte Mitchell's notes and David Trotter's introduction.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Chapman and Hall
- 1861
- Paperback
- Penguin Classics
- 2002
- 9780141439563
Reader reviews
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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Read our takeGreat Expectations: frequently asked questions
What is Great Expectations about?
Pip receives an anonymous fortune and hopes it will make him a gentleman worthy of Estella. Learning who supplied the money forces him to reconsider class, gratitude and his treatment of the people who raised him.
Was it published in 1860 or 1861?
The serial began on December 1, 1860 and ended on August 3, 1861. The first three-volume book appeared on July 6, 1861, so both years occur in accurate accounts of its publication.
Who gives Pip his fortune?
Abel Magwitch, the convict he helps as a child, supplies the money. Pip's belief that Miss Havisham is his benefactor is a mistaken inference that she allows to continue.
Does Miss Havisham arrange Estella's marriage to Drummle?
In Chapter XLIV, Estella explicitly says marrying Drummle is her own decision. Miss Havisham wanted her to wait. Estella's upbringing helps explain the choice without making it an arranged marriage.
Do Pip and Estella marry at the end?
The revised ending does not explicitly say so. They meet again, speak of friendship and leave together, while Pip imagines no further parting. Dickens's earlier ending gives a different meeting and is included in the selected edition's appendices.
Which edition supplies the ISBN and page count?
ISBN 9780141439563 and 544 pages identify the Penguin Classics US paperback issued December 31, 2002. Charlotte Mitchell edited and annotated it; David Trotter wrote the introduction.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Great Expectations, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Great Expectations
NovelCharles Dickens, 1861Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Great Expectations: primary text, Project Gutenberg ebook 1400
NovelProject Gutenberg transcription, 1861Used forPrimary text for the selected scenes, character readings and quotations. Chapter references do not imply the selected edition's pagination.
3Dickens timeline: Charles Dickens Letters Project
WebsiteCharles Dickens Letters ProjectUsed forExact serial and three-volume book publication dates.
4Great Expectations, volume I: 1861 Chapman and Hall edition
WebsiteUniversity of Illinois LibraryUsed forDigitized 1861 first-volume catalogue and title page, confirming Chapman and Hall and the three-volume issue.
5Great Expectations: Penguin Classics paperback, ISBN 9780141439563
WebsitePenguin Random House Library MarketingUsed forSelected ISBN, publication date, extent, editorial credits and inclusion of the earlier ending.
6To Robert Lytton, 4 October 1861: changing the ending of Great Expectations
WebsiteCharles Dickens Letters ProjectUsed forDickens's own account of Edward Bulwer Lytton's advice about the conclusion.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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