At the beginning of the novel we find Pip is remembering his first meeting with Magwitch in the church yard near the marshes. Everything about the scenery is bleak and scary. The river is described as a “ low leaden line” and the sea as “ a distant savage lair” . The marshes are well known as a place where evil things happen and criminals hide. The soldiers came straight to the marshes to search for the prisoners who had escaped from the prison ships. Pip was about to cry because he was looking at the gravestones of his parents and siblings when he was grabbed by Magwitch who was described as “a terrible man” . Magwitch uses violent language to frighten a small boy and says “ hold your noise and keep still you little devil or I’ll cut your throat”. Magwitch behaves in a stereotypical way for a criminal using strong language and even saying he might eat Pip because he was so hungry. “ What fat cheeks you have got… Darn me if I couldn’t eat them”! He goes on frightening Pip to try to force him to help him by saying “ If you fail your heart and liver shall be torn out and ate”. When Pip took the food and file to him although he was wet, shivering and starving he showed he was human not a rough animal by being grateful. Pip felt sorry for him and tried to make conversation “I made bold to say.. I am glad you enjoy it” Magwitch says “thankyee my boy I do”. This was a normal kind statement and the opposite of all the rough threats he had said to Pip before. He had obviously been very desperate, nearly starving, before he ate.
When Magwitch was caught by the soldiers he showed again how human and decent he was by making sure he took the blame for stealing the food and file so Pip would not get blamed . “I took some wittles up at the village over yonder… from the blacksmith”. Dickens has Magwitch using common vocabulary like ‘wittles’ to show he is low class and uneducated. Magwitch was overcome with emotion and nearly crying when Joe says “ God knows you are welcome to it (the food) we don’t know what you have done but we would not have you starve to death for it, poor miserable fellow creature, would us Pip?” Magwitch has maybe never before been shown such kindness, he has had a rough life and a bond is formed between him and Pip. A year later a stranger in the pub gave Pip £2 and he knew it came from Magwitch who was trying to show he never forgot a favour. Dickens shows us that the lower classes are just as good as everyone else and sometimes better.
Magwitch, never forgets Pip’s generosity and when he makes money farming in Australia he sends money to England to turn Pip into a gentleman. He breaks the rules and comes back to England to see how Pip is getting on. He turns up at Pip’s flat calling himself Mr Provis and shocks Pip by telling him he is the mystery benefactor. Pip is disgusted at first because he is so common. Pip tries to help get him out of England but it all goes wrong and Magwitch is arrested, condemned to death but dies in the prison hospital before he can be executed. Despite the fact that all Magwitch’s property has been seized by the government and Pip is now poor he goes on visiting Magwitch and is with him when he dies. Magwitch dies happy because he finds out he has a beautiful daughter and feels it was worth it coming to England to see Pip again. Dickens is using the book to tell us that everyone has good in them and we should never judge people by their class, how they speak or dress.
Miss Havisham lives in a huge, decaying house with her adopted daughter Estella. She is rich but she has let the house crumble around her because she is bitter and angry with life because she was left on her wedding morning by someone who was actually already married and couldn’t have married her anyway. She hates all men and ruins Estella’s life by making her treat men badly as well, in Chapter 12 Miss Havisham tells Estella to “ break their hearts and have no mercy” The house is called Satis House which is meant to mean satisfied and she should have been satisfied with a beautiful house but she is not. To show that she has never recovered from being betrayed by a man the whole house is in a time warp “Her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine and the clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine” , the exact time she heard she wasn’t getting married.
The front door of Satis House is never used and has chains across it as though she is in prison. She has made her own prison . She is still wearing her wedding dress which hangs loose on her because she has withered away and she is like a living ghost.. This is exaggerated by Dickens to show she is rich but not hardworking and good like Pip and Joe Gargery. No one would really keep their wedding dress on for thirty years but it gives a picture to the reader that they cannot forget. In the house everything is filthy and dusty and backward looking. The picture Dickens paints is a creepy one of mice and cobwebs and candlelight with wild overgrown gardens and the ruined brewery next door.
When Pip is invited to visit Satis House to play with Estella he misunderstands why he has been invited. He falls for Estella and thinks Miss Havisham’s plan is to leave him her money and he and Estella will get married. Miss Havisham has no such plan and no interest in Pip other than for Estella to make a fool of him. When her solicitor Jaggers tells Pip he has ‘great expectations’ she lets Pip go on thinking she is his benefactor and when he visits her just before he is leaving for London she even repeats the words Jaggers said about always keeping the name of Pip just to confuse him. When she is dying she realizes the harm she has done both to Estella and to Pip and keeps crying “What have I done!” she asks Pip for forgiveness and he gives it to her.
Satis House unlike the marshes are an image all the way through the book and when it ends Estelle and Pip meet by accident in the gardens. They have both come to say their goodbyes and to relive their memories, good and bad.
Jaggers is a lawyer and is hated and feared by criminals and magistrates and everyone. When Pip arrives at his office the cab driver is afraid to cheat Pip on the fare when he knows he has come to see Mr Jaggers. He says “I don’t want to get into trouble. I know him! He darkly closed an eye and at Mr Jagger’s name and shook his head”. His office is surprising. You expect to see a rich and comfortable office for a successful lawyer but it is the reverse. It is a very secret room with only windows in the roof so no one can look in. The window is distorted and the view through the roofs looks crooked possibly telling us that Jaggers is crooked. There are not many legal papers around but weapons “an old rusty pistol and a sword in a scabbard and two very scary death masks of criminals that have been executed. Mr Jaggers’ office chair “ was of deadly-black horse-hair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin”. This was maybe a reminder that many of Mr Jaggers’ clients were found guilty and executed. After a while Pip can’t bear to stay in the office and leaves to get some fresh air.
Dickens sets Great Expectations in a slightly earlier time than he was living in and pretends that there were no railways and everyone had to travel by stage coach. Journeys took much longer and it is more dramatic and mysterious to travel for hours through the mists in darkness with only a few people and the clip-clopping of horses hooves, than to travel quickly in a lighted train full of people. On a long journey in the dark anything can happen, whereas on a busy train nothing unusual is likely to happen. When Dickens wrote the book there were no films, videos or Television and he had to have much more individual characters and give more small details of description to make them come to life when the story was read. In Victorian times ghost stories and stories with mystery were very popular and Great Expectations has some scary parts to it especially at Satis House, on the marshes and in the dirty crowded London streets.
The names of many of the characters in Great Expectations are strange and unbelievable. Dickens uses this technique because it is funny, especially when read aloud and funny names are easier to remember than normal ones. Magwitch sounds like it was made up from Magpie, a bird that is known to steal and witch an evil person. It is unlikely that anyone was ever really called Magwitch. Miss Havisham’s name sounds more like a real name but sham is when you invent something so maybe it is also an invented name. Jaggers’ name sounds like something sharp and dangerous, just like his tongue. The name of Miss Havisham is remembered for funny old women who dress in ancient clothes and live in messy houses. There is even a modern poem called Havisham , based on Miss Havisham and written in 1998 by Carol Ann Duffy, which is in the GCSE Poetry Anthology and studied by many pupils.
Dickens creates sympathy for some of his characters such as Joe, Biddy, Magwitch and Pip but not much for others such as Miss Havisham, Mrs Joe, Compeyson, Estelle and Drummle. This is a good technique as when the story was sold in episodes everyone would have a favourite character, a goody or a baddy and would want to find out what was happening to them, which would make them buy the story.
The ending is a traditional happy one. We are told it is not the ending Dickens wanted but his friends advised him a happy ending was best. Many of the people who read, or were read aloud the instalments, had difficult lives living in poverty and they needed a happy ending to give them some happiness and relief from their own poverty and misery.
