The first meeting with Magwitch is in the churchyard, where Pip is lost in childish absorption grappling with his family’s fate. His state of mind is very unstable when Pip is grabbed violently and the convict threatened to cut his throat if he was to make noise. Pip imagines Magwitch as a pirate and a ghost,
“ A man with no hat and with broken shoes, and with a great iron on his leg”
Pip was in shear terror initially at the time. When he was turned upside down, he imagined Magwitch would carry out the threat of,
“I’ll have your heart and liver out”
On the second meeting with Magwitch, we can understand how Pip is growing less afraid of Magwitch and looking at him through sympathetic eyes,
“Hugging and limping waiting for me. He was awfully cold to be sure” and
“You’ve been lying out on the marshes and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too”
Pip is also worried about stealing from his sister. He knows the true morality, but he is too afraid to adhere to it,
“ A boy with somebody else’s pork pie! Stop him. Holloa young thief”
Pip here is imagining things coming to life such, as the cattle and the marshland. His imagination is leading him to a guilty conscience.
The third meeting with Magwitch is again in the marshes, but this time Pip has company and also Magwitch is not alone. Pip is with the soldiers, Joe and Mr Wopsle hunting down Magwitch for the crime he has done. Magwitch is with Compeyson fighting in the marshland. Pip was in two minds, about what Magwitch would think of him,
“Would he believe I was in both imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him”
Also at the third meeting Magwitch protected Pip by not acknowledging him. He owned up to the theft that Pip had done for him and we see the convict clearing Pip of all the blame and probably thanking him for all his assistance. Pip has seen Magwitch before and he felt he should have told Joe, but if he had told Joe he feared he may have to go to ‘The Hulks’ or he felt that he will lose the trust and faith that Joe had in him. The ‘prison system’ in the 19th century was very brutal because of overcrowded cells. A human cargo was sent to Australia where they were severely punished and hard labour was enforced.
Overall there are two types of effects on Pip from the meetings with Magwitch. The first is the short-term effect from Magwitch, which involves Pip being frightened, and helplessness,
“I pleaded in terror”
The second effect is the long term. This involves his first memory of childhood,
“ ”
Pip’s first impression of ‘Satis House’ was dark, dismal and had many iron bars on it, which reminded him of the prison Hulks,
“Some of the windows had been walled up: of those that remained all the lower were rusty barred”
To Pip the wind seemed to blow a lot colder around ‘Satis House’, also, the house appeared dead, with all its surrounding which had come to a stop,
“No brewing was going in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long time”
The house’s appearance should indicate wealth but the owner lives her life surrounded by death and decay. Pip’s mind and present life is very low, dark and cold. We see another parallel between our main character and the structure of the beginning of the plot. In the ‘Satis House’ we meet Estella who is very rude ignorant and insulting. The confidence and hauteur of Estella is admired by Pip, and later we find to see admiration turned to love and frustration,
“She denounced me for a stupid, clumsy, labouring boy”
“ Don’t be ridiculous boy: I am not going in and scorned fully walked away”
We are introduced to Miss Havisham in chapter 8of the book. We see Miss Havisham in a bridal dress, which had withered away like the room she was in,
“But I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white had been white long ago. And had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow”
Miss Havisham views Pip as a male figure, a perfect candidate on whom she can exercise her revenge and torment. We are also aware of the communication between Estella and Miss Havisham because there is some form of conspiracy between them,
“Weird smile”
The whole existence of Miss Havisham we find is warped,
“ She sat corpse-like as we played cards”
“Everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock a long time ago”
The cumulative effect of Miss Havisham, Estella, and ‘Satis House’ is to make Pip feel insulted,
“ I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, affined, angry, sorry-I can not hit upon the right name for the smart”
After his visit, Pip experiences changes in his view, life and family. He does not like to be poor. Pip felt, Estella looked down on him because he was poor and not a gentleman. Pip was asked to play, but he didn’t know how to ‘play’. Estella lived in a society where her class did not have to work, and we read that Pip wanted to leave when he was told to ‘play’ because he did not understand the word ‘play’.
In chapter 9, when Pip returns home his shame will not allow him to tell the truth to his sister and Pumblechook so he is exaggerates. We see that Pip is telling Joe about his real feelings about his trip to ‘Satis House’. Unlike the theft, which he kept secret, he eventually confides to Joe because he knows Joe will keep an open mind and he is the only one person he can speak to without being punished and having a guilty conscience. What he is confiding to Joe is his shame as a working-class person and how he must change in order to win Estella.