Great Expectations: A Tale of Two Endings

Authors Avatar
Lauren Lindros Due: March 27, 2006

GHum 200 Turner

Great Expectations: A Tale of Two Endings

Charles Dickens wrote two different endings to his work Great Expectations. However, which ending is more appropriate depends on the way the audience views the tone and purpose of the novel. There are many differences between the original and revised endings, and these differences lead the reader to two distinct conclusions from the novel. However, with the creation of these two endings, a question arises: which ending is more appropriate for the novel? Even though the revised ending is better written, the original ending is more appropriate.

There are many differences between the two endings of Great Expectations. Some of these differences are basic differences that Dickens makes clear. The original ending has eight years between Pip seeing Joe and Biddy, proceeded by another two years before Pip and Estella meet, thus having a ten year time period. However, in the revised ending, it is eleven years before Pip sees Joe and Biddy, and when he goes to Satis House and finds Estella. Another basic difference in the endings is location. Throughout Great Expectations location has been a big part of what is going on with Pip and how he views himself and life. In the original ending, Pip sees Estella randomly while he is in London. Pip lives with Clara and Herbert in Cairo and earns himself am honest living, and is finally content with his life. In the revised ending, Pip is visiting with Joe and Biddy. He decides that, for closure, he needs to visit Satis House one last time to say goodbye to that part of his life, and to say goodbye to Estella. However, while he is there, he runs into Estella.

In both endings Estella is and always will be Pip's "poor dream," even though he has finally realized (in both endings) that they are not meant to be. Also in each of the two endings, he discusses with Biddy how "that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has call gone by Biddy, all gone by!" (482, 508). A few lines after this conversation with Biddy, another difference between the two endings occur. Pip informs the audience of what has become of Estella and the two endings have different accounts occur. In both of these stories, he starts off with, "I had heard of her leading a most unhappy life, and as being separated from her husband who had used her with great cruelty, and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, brutality, and meanness" (482, 508). Also, Pip reveals that Drummle died from an accident with a horse that he also treated badly. This is where Estella's life changes, so-to-speak. In the original ending Estella is remarried to a Shropshire doctor who had actually intervened in Drummle's ill treatment of Estella while working for Drummle. This man was not rich (showing that Estella had somewhat changed), yet they still lived off of "her own personal fortune" (508) that she received when Miss Havisham died. In the revised ending, Pip tells the reader that "This release had befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew, she was married again" (482). He does not know any new information regarding Estella, including her marital information.
Join now!


The original ending is much shorter than the revised ending. This is because the original ending has a different purpose than the revised ending does. The original ending keeps up with one of the main purposes throughout the novel, that self-improvement comes with the realizations that money and a rich lifestyle is not how to live a happy life. Pip does not get rewarded with Estella because she encompasses (in the original ending) those characteristics that separated her side of town from Joe's side of town. In the original ending, Estella says she is greatly changed but the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay