AQA GCSE in English Literature · Free · no account needed
Grade 9 Notes: Great Expectations
Charles Dickens · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702), and these notes are written for it. Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) also lists the novel as a Literary Heritage option, which Incandio does not yet teach · Great Expectations
Great Expectations is told by an older Pip looking back on his younger self, so almost every sentence carries two voices: the boy who wanted to be a gentleman and the man who knows what that cost. Revise it in its three stages — the forge and Satis House (Chapters 1–19), London and the expectations (20–39), and the return of the convict and its consequences (40–59) — and for any extract ask what young Pip believes and what older Pip now knows.
This page ends with Charles Dickens. Build your reading of Great Expectations, teach it, then defend it against Charles Dickens.
What is this exam testing?
Great Expectations is examined on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) in Paper 1, Section B: the 19th-century novel. You answer one question: a printed extract first, then the novel as a whole. It is closed book. Three objectives are credited — AO1, AO2 and AO3 (context). AO4 (accuracy) is credited on the Shakespeare question in Section A, not on this one.
AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — Paper 1, Section B: The 19th-century novel
Paper 1 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes for both sections, so plan on about fifty minutes for this answer. Closed book: learn short phrases from all three stages of the novel. On Pearson Edexcel 4ET1 the AO codes mean different skills; here AO3 is context.
AO1 · A personal, critical response, supported by references (15% of the GCSE on Paper 1 — level with AO2)
What the examiner wants: An argument that answers the question through the extract and the whole novel, with references from memory. On this novel that means taking a view on what makes a gentleman, how far Pip changes, and whether the ending is earned.
Scoring highly: Hear both narrators in every extract: the young Pip who feels and the older Pip who judges. Short memorised quotations — 'ashamed of home', 'I'm your second father', 'bent and broken' — carry the whole-novel half.
Top band vs the band below: The strongest answers hold an idea about the novel as something Dickens made: 'Pip is a snob' is an observation; 'Dickens lets the older Pip convict his younger self, so the novel is a confession about class' is a concept.
The common mistake: Retelling the plot in order, or confusing the novel with film versions.
In your essay: Two paragraphs on the extract, two on the novel, one argument across them, and a judgement at the end.
AO2 · Language, form and structure, with subject terminology (15% of the GCSE on Paper 1 — level with AO1)
What the examiner wants: Analysis of Dickens's methods: retrospective first-person narration, Gothic setting, dialect, symbol, and the three-stage structure.
Scoring highly: Name the narrative method and its effect: the older narrator's judgement ('a most miserable thing') sits on top of the child's feeling.
Top band vs the band below: Top answers read structure: Magwitch's return at the end of the second stage reverses the first two; Estella's mocking of Pip's hands is answered by his burned hands.
The common mistake: Calling Dickens's descriptions 'vivid' without saying what they do.
In your essay: At least one point about narrative voice in the extract, and one structural link beyond it.
AO3 · Context — how the novel relates to the times it was written in (7.5% of the GCSE on Paper 1 — half the weight of AO1 or AO2)
What the examiner wants: How the world of the novel shapes it: Victorian class and the idea of the gentleman, transportation and the death penalty for returning, prison hulks and Newgate, and Dickens's own experience of his father's imprisonment for debt. On this course AO3 is context.
Scoring highly: One clause at a time, welded to a line: Magwitch's 'I'm your second father' is spoken by a man who has risked hanging by returning from transportation.
Top band vs the band below: The best context generates a reading: Compeyson's lighter sentence shows a legal system that judged by the look of a gentleman.
The common mistake: A paragraph of Victorian history touching no line of the novel.
In your essay: Two or three precise contextual clauses, each attached to a quotation.
What to memorise for a closed-book answer
- 'Hold your noise!' (Chapter 1) and 'I'm your second father' (Chapter 39).
- 'what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!' (Chapter 8).
- 'It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home' (Chapter 14).
- 'life is made of ever so many partings welded together' (Chapter 27).
- 'I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape' (Chapter 59).
Avoid. Do not write about AO4 as if it were credited on this question; on 8702 it sits on the Shakespeare question.
The characters
Pip (Philip Pirrip)
The boy who learned to be ashamed of home — and the man who tells it
Pip is an orphan raised 'by hand' by his harsh sister and her gentle husband Joe, the blacksmith. On the marshes he helps an escaped convict; at Satis House he meets Miss Havisham and Estella, is called common, and begins to want to be a gentleman. When an unknown benefactor gives him 'great expectations', he goes to London, grows ashamed of Joe and assumes Miss Havisham is his patron. The return of the convict, Magwitch, as the real benefactor overturns everything. The novel is Pip's confession: told by an older man who judges the snob he became and records how he learned loyalty, gratitude and love again.
Chapters 1–19 — the forge and Satis House
“My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.” — Pip (narrator), Chapter 1
The novel opens with a name made smaller: Pip has shrunk himself from the start. The older narrator's amused, careful syntax looks back on an infant; the whole book is this double vision of child and man.
Methods: first-person retrospective narration · naming
“I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry” — Pip (narrator), Chapter 8
After Estella mocks his coarse hands and thick boots, the list of feelings tumbles out without pause. The asyndetic list records the moment shame is born — the seed of his ambition.
Methods: asyndetic list · emotional climax
“It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.” — Pip (narrator), Chapter 14
The older Pip judges the younger. The plain sentence names the cost of his ambition: the forge he once loved now shames him.
Methods: retrospective judgement · plain statement
Chapters 20–39 — London and the gentleman
The lawyer Jaggers announces that Pip has great expectations from an anonymous benefactor and must go to London to be made a gentleman. Pip assumes the benefactor is Miss Havisham and that Estella is meant for him. In London he lives with Herbert Pocket, runs into debt, and is embarrassed when Joe visits in his best clothes.
“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together” — Joe, Chapter 27
Joe, awkward in London, understands what has happened and leaves with dignity. His blacksmith's metaphor — partings 'welded together' — is wiser than anything Pip says in the scene, and shames him.
Methods: metaphor · dialect · pathos
Chapters 39–59 — the convict's return
“Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son” — Magwitch, Chapter 39
The convict reveals himself as the benefactor. Pip's horror is a judgement on himself: the gentleman was made with a criminal's money, and the convict's love is real. The scene inverts every assumption of the middle stage.
Methods: revelation · dialect · dramatic reversal
Pip at first shrinks from Magwitch, then comes to care for him. He tries to smuggle him abroad; the escape fails and Magwitch is sentenced to death and dies in prison, with Pip holding his hand. Ill and in debt, Pip is nursed by Joe, who pays his debts and goes home without a word. Pip works abroad for years with Herbert and returns to meet Estella, changed, in the ruins of Satis House.
How Dickens builds Pip in language and structure
Pip narrates in the first person from years later, so the voice is polished and self-critical while the events show a child's feelings. The gap between the two is the novel's main irony.
His judgements of his younger self are often short and plain — 'It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home' — set against longer passages of feeling.
Structurally his life falls into three stages, each ending in a change: leaving the forge, Magwitch's return, and the final meeting with Estella.
Pip in context
Pip's desire to be a gentleman reflects a Victorian society intensely conscious of rank, where money could buy manners but not acceptance.
Dickens had known shame of a humble past: his father's imprisonment for debt in 1824 and his own work in a blacking factory as a boy.
Relationships
- Joe Gargery — His true father-figure and friend; Pip's shame at him is the novel's central moral failure.
- Estella — The object of his love and his class longing; both are changed by suffering.
- Miss Havisham — The patron he imagines; she lets him believe it.
- Abel Magwitch — The convict he helps as a child and the real benefactor; Pip learns to love him.
What Pip (Philip Pirrip) stands for
- The would-be gentleman: Pip tests what a 'gentleman' really is.
- The double narrator: the man judges the boy.
Why Dickens made Pip (Philip Pirrip)
- To expose the snobbery of the class system through one boy's desire to rise.
- To show that true gentility is loyalty and kindness, not money and manners.
The strongest quotations
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right” — Pip (narrator), Chapter 6
The older Pip's self-judgement on hiding his part in helping the convict. The confessional tone runs through the novel.
Methods: confession · retrospective judgement
Pip (Philip Pirrip): all 12 quotations in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- A snob who redeems himself through suffering and gratitude.
- A victim of other people's plans — Miss Havisham's revenge, Magwitch's ambition.
- A narrator whose self-condemnation is itself a form of moral growth.
Essay arguments
- Dickens uses retrospective narration so that the older Pip judges the snob he became, making the novel a confession.
- Pip's shame of Joe measures how far the idea of being a gentleman corrupts him.
- Magwitch's return overturns Pip's assumptions and begins his true education.
In theme essays
- Class: 'It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.'
- Ambition: the expectations and what they cost.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Chapter 8 in which Pip first visits Satis House. How does Dickens present Pip here and across the novel?
- Read the extract from Chapter 39 in which Magwitch reveals himself. How far does Dickens present Pip as changing?
- How does Dickens use Pip to explore ideas about what makes a gentleman?
Think you understand Pip (Philip Pirrip)? Teach it, then defend it against Charles Dickens →
Miss Havisham
The jilted bride who stopped the clocks
Miss Havisham was abandoned on her wedding day and has stopped every clock at the moment she heard the news. She still wears her wedding dress, the wedding feast rots on the table, and she raises Estella to break men's hearts in revenge. She lets Pip believe she is his benefactor. Only late does she understand what she has done to Estella and to Pip, and asks forgiveness, before she is fatally burned.
Satis House — time stopped
Pip sees her in her faded wedding dress, one shoe on, the clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine, the wedding cake rotting and overrun by mice and spiders. Her house is a monument to a single moment of pain, and she has made it a prison.
“Break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!” — Miss Havisham, Chapter 12
Her instruction to Estella. The repetition and imperatives show revenge turned into a programme of education; Estella is her weapon.
Methods: imperative · repetition
Chapter 49 — remorse
“What have I done! What have I done!” — Miss Havisham, Chapter 49
Seeing Pip's suffering in hers, she understands her cruelty. The repeated cry marks her recognition — too late to save Estella's heart, and moments before the fire.
Methods: repetition · exclamation
She admits she stole Estella's heart and put ice in its place, and asks Pip to write 'I forgive her' under her name. When her dress catches fire, Pip burns his hands saving her; she dies weeks later.
How Dickens builds Miss Havisham in language and structure
She is described through Gothic detail: the yellowed wedding dress, the one shoe, the stopped clocks, the rotting cake with spiders and mice.
Her speech is imperious and repetitive — 'Break their hearts' — until remorse breaks it into exclamation: 'What have I done!'
Structurally her house is the stage for both the start of Pip's ambition and its ending in the ruins.
Miss Havisham in context
A wealthy woman jilted at the altar would have been publicly humiliated; her withdrawal makes private shame into a monument.
Her house belongs to the Gothic tradition of decaying mansions and imprisoned women that Victorian readers knew well.
Relationships
- Estella — Her adopted daughter, raised as a weapon against men.
- Pip — She uses him to practise Estella's cruelty and lets him believe she is his patron.
- Compeyson — The man who jilted her — later revealed as Magwitch's enemy.
What Miss Havisham stands for
- Time stopped: the stopped clocks and rotting cake show grief turned to stagnation.
- The corrupted mother: love turned into revenge.
Why Dickens made Miss Havisham
- To show how nursing an injury destroys the injured and those around them.
- To provide a Gothic setting that embodies Pip's false expectations.
The strongest quotations
“I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.” — Miss Havisham, Chapter 49
Her confession of what she did to Estella; the metaphor of ice completes the imagery of a heart frozen by revenge.
Methods: metaphor · confession
Miss Havisham: all 6 quotations in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- A villain who corrupts a child.
- A victim whose grief became madness.
- A Gothic figure whose stopped house embodies the novel's theme of arrested growth.
Essay arguments
- Dickens makes Satis House a symbol of time stopped, so Miss Havisham's revenge is a refusal to live.
- Her late remorse shows the cost of revenge to the avenger as well as the victims.
In theme essays
- Love and loyalty: love corrupted into revenge.
- Expectations: the false patron.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Chapter 8 describing Miss Havisham. How does Dickens present her here and across the novel?
- How does Dickens use Miss Havisham to explore revenge?
Think you understand Miss Havisham? Teach it, then defend it against Charles Dickens →
Joe Gargery
The blacksmith who is the true gentleman
Joe, Pip's brother-in-law, is a gentle, loyal, uneducated blacksmith who protects Pip from his wife's temper. Pip grows ashamed of his manners and speech, yet Joe never stops loving him: he visits Pip in London, understands that he does not belong there, and leaves with dignity; later he nurses Pip through illness and secretly pays his debts. Dickens makes Joe the novel's measure of real goodness and true gentility.
The forge
“Ever the best of friends; ain't us, Pip?” — Joe, Chapter 7
Joe's simple loyalty, in his own dialect. The phrase recurs through the novel as a touchstone of the friendship Pip betrays and later recovers.
Methods: dialect · refrain
London and the return
“I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes.” — Joe, Chapter 27
Joe recognises that he is out of place in Pip's London life. His humility contrasts with Pip's snobbery; he understands class better than Pip does, and is not ashamed of himself.
Methods: dialect · self-knowledge
When Pip falls ill after Magwitch's death, Joe comes to nurse him, pays his debts, and leaves quietly once Pip is well, with a note. Pip's gratitude completes his moral education.
How Dickens builds Joe in language and structure
Joe speaks in dialect and repeated phrases — 'Ever the best of friends', 'old chap' — that make him comic and deeply sincere.
His metaphors come from his work: life as 'partings welded together'.
Structurally he appears at the forge, in London and at Pip's sickbed, so his constancy measures Pip's changes.
Joe in context
As an uneducated working blacksmith, Joe sits low in Victorian class terms; the novel makes him its truest gentleman.
His awkwardness in London shows how class divided people even when they loved each other.
Relationships
- Pip — He loves Pip unconditionally; Pip's shame of him is the novel's central failure.
- Mrs Joe — His violent wife, whom he endures without retaliating.
- Biddy — He marries her after Mrs Joe's death.
What Joe Gargery stands for
- True gentility: goodness without wealth or education.
- The forge: honest work and home.
Why Dickens made Joe Gargery
- To set a standard of goodness against which Pip's ambition is measured.
- To challenge the idea that class makes a gentleman.
The strongest quotations
“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together” — Joe, Chapter 27
Joe's blacksmith wisdom: life joined like metal. He leaves with dignity and teaches Pip something without meaning to.
Methods: metaphor · dialect
Joe Gargery: all 6 quotations in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- The novel's moral centre and true gentleman.
- A man too passive to protect Pip from his wife.
- An idealised figure of the honest working man.
Essay arguments
- Dickens makes Joe the real gentleman of the novel, exposing Pip's idea of gentility as snobbery.
- Joe's quiet nursing and payment of Pip's debts show love that asks nothing back.
In theme essays
- Class: Joe as true gentleman.
- Love and loyalty: 'Ever the best of friends'.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Chapter 27 in which Joe visits Pip in London. How does Dickens present Joe here and across the novel?
- How does Dickens use Joe to explore what it means to be a gentleman?
Think you understand Joe Gargery? Teach it, then defend it against Charles Dickens →
Estella
The girl raised without a heart
Estella is Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, beautiful and proud, raised to break men's hearts. She mocks Pip as common and warns him that she has no heart. She marries the brutal Bentley Drummle, and the marriage brings her suffering. The novel later reveals she is the daughter of Magwitch and Jaggers's housekeeper Molly — the convict's daughter Pip thought was a lady. At the end, softened by suffering, she meets Pip in the ruins of Satis House.
Satis House — the proud girl
“He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!” — Estella, Chapter 8
Estella mocks Pip's working-class word for a playing card. A tiny difference of vocabulary becomes a mark of class, and Pip never forgets it.
Methods: exclamation · class marker
The warning and the ending
“You must know that I have no heart” — Estella, Chapter 29
Estella warns Pip honestly. Her coldness is what Miss Havisham made of her, and she knows it.
Methods: direct statement · irony
“I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.” — Estella, Chapter 59
At the end Estella uses a metalworking image — the language of Joe's forge — for her own change. Suffering has reshaped her.
Methods: metaphor · hesitation
How Dickens builds Estella in language and structure
Estella speaks in cold, direct statements: 'You must know that I have no heart.'
Her mockery of Pip's words and hands turns small details into class markers.
At the end her language changes, borrowing a forging image — 'bent and broken' — to describe herself.
Estella in context
She is raised as a lady, the kind of woman Victorian society prized for beauty and manners, and revealed as a convict's daughter.
Her marriage to the brutal Drummle shows how a woman could suffer in a marriage she could not easily leave.
Relationships
- Pip — He loves her; she warns him and wounds him.
- Miss Havisham — Her adoptive mother and maker.
- Magwitch — Her real father, revealed late.
What Estella stands for
- The star (her name): beautiful, cold and out of reach.
- The irony of class: the lady is a convict's daughter.
Why Dickens made Estella
- To show the damage done by an upbringing designed for revenge.
- To expose class pretensions: the lady Pip worships is the child of a convict.
The strongest quotations
“what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!” — Estella, Chapter 8
Her mockery of Pip's hands and boots makes him see his own body as a sign of class.
Methods: exclamation · physical detail
Estella: all 6 quotations in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- A cruel girl who learns compassion through suffering.
- A victim of Miss Havisham, honest about her own lack of feeling.
- A symbol of the unattainable in Pip's expectations.
Essay arguments
- Dickens presents Estella as the product of Miss Havisham's revenge, and her change as earned by suffering.
- Her true parentage exposes the emptiness of Pip's class longing.
In theme essays
- Class: the convict's daughter as lady.
- Love and loyalty: love without a heart.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Chapter 8 in which Estella and Pip play cards. How does Dickens present Estella here and across the novel?
- How far does Dickens present Estella as changing?
Think you understand Estella? Teach it, then defend it against Charles Dickens →
Abel Magwitch
The convict who made a gentleman
Magwitch is the escaped convict who terrifies Pip on the marshes in Chapter 1. Pip brings him food and a file. Transported to New South Wales, Magwitch makes a fortune and secretly pays for Pip to become a gentleman, out of gratitude and to prove a convict could make one. He returns to London, though returning means death if caught. Pip comes to love him; the escape fails, and Magwitch dies under sentence with Pip beside him.
Chapter 1 — the marshes
“Hold your noise!” — Magwitch, Chapter 1
The convict's first words, as he springs from among the graves. The threat makes him a monster in a child's eyes — a first impression the novel will overturn.
Methods: imperative · dialect · Gothic setting
Chapters 39–56 — the return and death
“Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son” — Magwitch, Chapter 39
His claim of fatherhood is genuine love and also ownership: he speaks of having made a gentleman. Pip's disgust becomes, slowly, loyalty.
Methods: dialect · revelation
His history reveals Compeyson — the gentleman-swindler who also jilted Miss Havisham — as the man who led him into crime and received a lighter sentence because he looked like a gentleman. Recaptured in the escape, Magwitch is sentenced to death and dies in the prison infirmary, Pip at his side telling him his daughter lives.
How Dickens builds Magwitch in language and structure
Magwitch enters among graves with a shout — 'Hold your noise!' — and is described as a man soaked, smothered and lamed.
His rough dialect contrasts with the gentleman's speech he has paid Pip to acquire.
Structurally his return at the end of the second stage reverses the novel.
Magwitch in context
Transportation to Australia was a punishment for serious crime, and returning was punishable by death.
His trial alongside Compeyson shows a court that treated a gentleman-criminal more leniently.
Relationships
- Pip — The boy who helped him; the gentleman he made; finally a son to him.
- Compeyson — The gentleman criminal who ruined him.
- Estella — His lost daughter.
What Abel Magwitch stands for
- The hidden source of wealth: the gentleman's fortune comes from a convict.
- The outcast who is loyal and grateful.
Why Dickens made Abel Magwitch
- To expose the hypocrisy of a society that judges by appearance and class.
- To make Pip's moral education depend on loving the man he once despised.
The strongest quotations
“I'm your second father.” — Magwitch, Chapter 39
The simplest form of his claim: fatherhood made by money and gratitude.
Methods: direct statement
Abel Magwitch: all 6 quotations in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Other readings
- A loving father-figure made criminal by poverty.
- A man who uses Pip to prove a point against the society that rejected him.
- The novel's test of whether Pip can love beneath his station.
Essay arguments
- Dickens makes the convict the source of the gentleman's fortune, exposing the shallowness of class distinctions.
- Magwitch's contrast with Compeyson shows the law judging by appearance.
In theme essays
- Crime and justice: Magwitch and Compeyson.
- Class: the convict who made a gentleman.
Questions that get asked
- Read the extract from Chapter 1 on the marshes. How does Dickens present Magwitch here and across the novel?
- Read the extract from Chapter 39 in which Magwitch returns. How does Dickens use Magwitch to explore class?
Think you understand Abel Magwitch? Teach it, then defend it against Charles Dickens →
The themes
Class and the gentleman
Pip wants to be a gentleman; the novel asks what a gentleman really is.
Estella's mockery of Pip's hands and boots, and his word 'Jacks', make him ashamed of being common. He tells Biddy he wants to be a gentleman, and the expectations seem to grant it. But the novel shows gentility as manners and money cut off from goodness: Pip becomes a snob ashamed of Joe; Compeyson, the swindler, looks like a gentleman and is sentenced lightly; Joe, the uneducated blacksmith, is the novel's real gentleman.
“I want to be a gentleman” — Pip, Chapter 17
Pip confides his wish to Biddy; it is born of shame, not admiration for anything gentlemen do.
Methods: direct statement
Context that changes the reading. Victorian society was intensely conscious of rank, and new wealth from trade and industry made the question of who counted as a gentleman a live one. Dickens's own family knew sudden falls: his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824, and the boy Charles was sent to work in a blacking factory.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'Dickens gives Pip the gentleman's life and Joe the gentleman's heart, and lets the novel decide between them.'
10 quotations on class and the gentleman in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Think you understand class and the gentleman in Great Expectations? Teach it, then defend it →
Ambition and expectations
Pip's great expectations are both his fortune and his hopes — and both prove false.
Pip believes Miss Havisham is his patron and that Estella is meant for him; he builds his hopes on this. The truth — that a convict is his benefactor and Estella was never meant for him — destroys both expectations. The novel's title is ironic: what Pip expects is not what he receives, and what he finally gains — gratitude, loyalty, self-knowledge — is not what he expected.
“It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.” — Pip (narrator), Chapter 14
Ambition's first cost: shame of the forge.
Methods: retrospective judgement
The expectations also shape how Pip reads everyone around him. Because he assumes Miss Havisham is his patron, he treats her house as his future and Estella as his destined wife; because he expects to rise, he treats Joe and Biddy as part of a past he must leave. Each assumption is wrong, and the novel's structure exposes them all at once in Chapter 39. In the third stage Pip's expectations are replaced by obligations — to Magwitch, to Herbert, to Joe — and the novel suggests that this is the better inheritance.
Context that changes the reading. In the period, 'expectations' was the ordinary word for an anticipated inheritance. Many young men lived on money they expected rather than money they earned, and ran into debt doing so, as Pip does in London.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'The novel's title promises a fortune; the plot delivers an education.'
6 quotations on ambition and expectations in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Think you understand ambition and expectations in Great Expectations? Teach it, then defend it →
Crime, guilt and justice
Crime runs under the respectable surface of the novel, and the law judges by appearance.
From the convict on the marshes to Newgate prison, crime shadows Pip's life. He feels guilty from Chapter 1, when he steals food for Magwitch. His fortune comes from a transported convict; Jaggers, the lawyer, deals in criminals; Wemmick shows Pip round Newgate. Compeyson and Magwitch were tried together, and the one who looked like a gentleman received the lighter sentence.
Context that changes the reading. Convicts could be transported to Australia, and a transported convict who returned to England could be hanged. Prison hulks — old ships used as prisons — lay off the marshes of the Thames estuary. These facts make Magwitch's return an act of love that risks death.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'Dickens hides a convict's money under the gentleman's coat, and makes the law's respect for appearances a crime of its own.'
6 quotations on Crime, guilt and justice in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Think you understand Crime, guilt and justice in Great Expectations? Teach it, then defend it →
Love and loyalty (minor)
The novel sets loyal love (Joe, Magwitch, Herbert) against love corrupted (Miss Havisham) and love denied (Estella).
Joe's love for Pip never wavers; Magwitch's gratitude becomes a father's love; Herbert is a loyal friend. Miss Havisham turns love into revenge, and Estella is raised without a heart. Pip learns loyalty by loving Magwitch and recovering Joe's friendship.
“Ever the best of friends; ain't us, Pip?” — Joe, Chapter 7
The refrain of loyal love that runs through the book.
Methods: refrain · dialect
The novel tests love by what people do when nothing can be gained. Joe pays Pip's debts and leaves without waiting for thanks. Magwitch risks hanging to see the gentleman he made. Pip holds the dying convict's hand and tells him that his daughter lives — a kindness that costs him nothing in money and everything in pride. By contrast, Miss Havisham's love for Estella is possessive, and Estella's marriage to Drummle is loveless. The ending, in which Pip and Estella meet again changed, asks whether love can be learned after suffering.
Use this in an essay. Frame: 'The novel's real expectations are not money but loyalty, and Pip finds them where he least expected.'
18 quotations on love and loyalty in the Great Expectations quote bank, analysed →
Think you understand love and loyalty in Great Expectations? Teach it, then defend it →
Context
Context: the world behind the novel
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) published Great Expectations in weekly instalments in his magazine All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861; it appeared in three volumes in 1861. It is told in the first person by an older Pip looking back.
Dickens knew sudden social falls: in 1824 his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea, and twelve-year-old Charles was sent to work in a blacking factory. The fear of being thought common and the shame of a humble past run through Pip's story.
Victorian society was preoccupied with class and with what made a gentleman — birth, money, education, manners or conduct. New fortunes made the question urgent. Pip's 'expectations' — the old meaning of an anticipated inheritance — make him a gentleman in money and manners before he is one in conduct.
The novel's criminals belong to a real system: convicts could be transported to Australia, and returning from transportation was punishable by death; prison hulks lay off the Thames marshes; Newgate was London's great prison. Magwitch's return is therefore an act that risks his life.
Use this in an essay. Weld context to a line: 'Magwitch's claim to be Pip's second father is made by a man who has risked hanging to return from transportation and see the gentleman he made.'
The writer's craft
Structure: three stages
Dickens divides the novel into three stages of Pip's expectations: Chapters 1–19 (the forge, Satis House, the announcement), 20–39 (London, the gentleman, Magwitch's return), and 40–59 (the truth, the escape, Magwitch's death, the return of Joe, the ending). The return of the convict at the end of the second stage is the great reversal.
The shape of the novel
| Stage | What happens | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (Ch 1–19) | Marshes, forge, Satis House, the expectations | Ambition and shame begin |
| 2 (Ch 20–39) | London, snobbery, Joe's visit, Magwitch returns | The gentleman's life, then the reversal |
| 3 (Ch 40–59) | Escape, deaths, illness, Joe, Estella | Loss and moral recovery |
Methods: retrospective narration, Gothic, dialect, symbol
- Retrospective first person: the older Pip judges the younger.
- Gothic settings: the graveyard on the marshes, Satis House with its stopped clocks.
- Dialect: Joe's and Magwitch's speech set against Pip's acquired polish.
- Symbol: clocks, the wedding cake, the forge, the marshes and mist.
- Serial structure: the novel first appeared in weekly parts, with strong chapter endings.
Symbols and motifs
- Stopped clocks and the rotting cake: time arrested by grief.
- The forge: honest work, warmth and Joe.
- Hands: Estella mocks Pip's coarse hands; Pip burns his hands saving Miss Havisham; Jaggers washes his hands.
- Mist on the marshes: uncertainty, rising as Pip leaves for London.
Key relationships
- Pip and Joe: loyalty betrayed and restored.
- Pip and Estella: love and class longing.
- Pip and Magwitch: horror turned to love.
- Miss Havisham and Estella: a daughter raised for revenge.
- Magwitch and Compeyson: the convict and the gentleman criminal.
Exam technique: from the extract to the whole novel
Place the extract in Pip's three stages and ask whose voice is speaking — the young Pip's feelings or the older narrator's judgement. Then bridge to the moment that answers it: the forge to London, Satis House to the fire, the marshes to Magwitch's return.
Reliable bridges
- Chapter 1 (the marshes) to Chapter 39 (Magwitch returns).
- Chapter 8 (Satis House) to Chapter 49 (the fire) and Chapter 59 (the ruins).
- Chapter 14 (ashamed of home) to Chapter 27 (Joe in London) and Chapter 57 (Joe nursing Pip).
- Estella's 'coarse hands' to Pip's burned hands.
Beyond the syllabus — ideas to make an essay memorable
The title has two meanings. 'Expectations' meant an anticipated inheritance as well as hopes; Pip's fortune and his hopes both prove false.
It was written in weekly parts. The novel first appeared in Dickens's magazine All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861, which is why so many chapters end on a strong moment.
The ending was changed. Dickens revised his original, sadder ending before publication in book form; the published ending leaves the future of Pip and Estella more hopeful but still uncertain.
Hands everywhere. Estella mocks Pip's coarse hands; Pip burns his hands saving Miss Havisham; Jaggers constantly washes his hands; Molly's strong hands reveal Estella's mother.
The two criminals. Magwitch and Compeyson were tried together; the one who looked like a gentleman received the lighter sentence.
The narrator convicts himself. The older Pip is harsher on his younger self than any other character is.
Thesis statements
- Dickens uses retrospective narration so that the older Pip judges the snob he became, turning the novel into a confession.
- The novel gives Pip the gentleman's life and Joe the gentleman's heart, and lets conduct decide which is the true gentleman.
- Magwitch's return reveals that the gentleman's fortune rests on a convict's gratitude, exposing the hollowness of class distinctions.
- Miss Havisham's stopped clocks make revenge a refusal to live, and its cost falls on everyone she touches.
- The title is ironic: Pip's expectations of money and Estella fail, and what he gains is loyalty and self-knowledge.
Essay plans
Read the extract from Chapter 8 in which Pip visits Satis House. How does Dickens present class here and across the novel?
Thesis: Satis House teaches Pip to see himself as common, and the rest of the novel tests whether being a gentleman is worth that shame.
- Extract: Estella's mockery — 'Jacks', 'coarse hands', 'thick boots'; class as language and body.
- Extract: the list of Pip's feelings; shame born.
- Whole text: 'I want to be a gentleman' and 'ashamed of home'. Context: Victorian class consciousness.
- Whole text: Joe in London and Compeyson's lighter sentence.
- Whole text: Magwitch's money and Joe's goodness — the true gentleman.
Read the extract from Chapter 39 in which Magwitch returns. How does Dickens present Pip's expectations here and across the novel?
Thesis: Magwitch's return turns Pip's expectations inside out, and begins the education the title ironically promised.
- Extract: Pip's horror and Magwitch's love — 'I'm your second father'.
- Extract: the collapse of the Miss Havisham assumption.
- Whole text: Chapter 1 on the marshes — the first meeting.
- Context: transportation and the death penalty for returning.
- Whole text: Pip's loyalty at Magwitch's death; Joe's return.
Think you understand it?
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- Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.
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Carry on
- The Complete Guide to Great Expectations — the whole text, told properly, in 26 chapters.
- Great Expectations key quotes — the whole quotation bank, analysed, by character and theme.
- Great Expectations · All set texts · The 4ET1 specification