Summary of great expectation
chapter 1
As an infant, Philip Pirrip was unable to pronounce either his first name or his last; doing his best, he called himself “Pip,”and the name stuck. Now Pip, a young boy, is an orphan living in his sister’s house in the marsh country in southeast England.
One evening, Pip sits in the isolated village churchyard, staring at his parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, a horrific man, growling, dressed in rags, and with his leg in chains, springs out from behind the gravestones and seizes Pip. This escaped convict questions Pip harshly and demands that Pip bring him food and a file with which he can saw away his leg irons.
chapter 2
Frightened into obedience, Pip runs to the house he shares with his overbearing sister and her kindly husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. The boy stashes some bread and butter in one leg of his pants, but he is unable to get away quickly. It is Christmas Eve, and Pip is forced to stir the holiday pudding all evening. His sister, whom Pip calls Mrs. Joe, thunders about. She threatens Pip and Joe with her cane, which she has named Tickler, and with a foul-tasting concoction called tar-water. Very early the next morning, Pip sneaks down to the pantry, where he steals some brandy and a pork pie for the convict. He then sneaks to Joe’s smithy, where he steals a file. Stealthily, he heads back into the marshes to meet the convict.
chapter 3
Unfortunately, the first man he finds hiding in the marshes is actually a second, different convict, who tries to strike Pip and then flees. When Pip finally comes upon his original tormentor, he finds him suffering, cold, wet, and hungry. Pip is kind to the man, but the convict becomes violent again when Pip mentions the other escapee he encountered in the marsh, as though the news troubles him greatly. As the convict scrapes at his leg irons with the file, Pip slips away through the mists and returns home.
chapter 4
As he returns home, Pip is overwhelmed by a sense of guilt for having helped the convict. He even expects to find a policeman waiting for him at Joe’s house. When Pip slips into the house, he finds no policemen, only Mrs. Joe busy in the kitchen cooking Christmas dinner. Pip eats breakfast alone with Joe. The two go to church; Mrs. Joe, despite her moralizing habits, stays behind.
Christmas dinner is an agonizing affair for Pip, who is crowded into a corner of the table by his well-to-do Uncle Pumblechook and the church clerk, Mr. Wopsle. Terrified that his sneaking out of the house to help the convict will be discovered, Pip nearly panics when Pumblechook asks for the brandy and finds the bottle filled with tar-water. His panic increases when, suddenly, several police officers burst into the house with a pair of handcuffs
chapter 5
Pip is sure that the policemen have come to arrest him, but all they want is for Joe to fix their handcuffs. The bumbling policemen tell Pip and Joe that they are searching for a pair of escaped convicts, and the two agree to participate in the manhunt. Seeing the policemen, Pip feels a strange surge of worry for “his”convict.
chapter 6
Joe carries Pip home, and they finish their Christmas dinner; Pip sleepily heads to bed while Joe narrates the scene of the capture to Mrs. Joe and the guests. Pip continues to feel powerfully guilty about the incident not on his sister’s account, but because he has not told the whole truth to Joe.
chapter 7
After the incident, some time passes. Pip lives with his guilty secret and struggles to learn reading and writing at Mrs. Wopsle’s school. At school, Pip befriends Biddy, the granddaughter of the teacher. One day, Joe and Pip sit talking; the illiterate Joe admires a piece of writing Pip has just done. Suddenly, Mrs. Joe bursts in with Pumblechook. Highly self-satisfied, they reveal that Pumblechook has arranged for Pip to go play at the house of Miss Havisham, a rich spinster who lives nearby. Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook hope she will make Pip’s fortune, and they plan to send him home with Pumblechook before he goes to Miss Havisham’s the next day. The boy is given a rough bath, dressed in his suit, and taken away by Pumblechook.
chapter 8
Over breakfast the next morning, Pumblechook sternly grills Pip on multiplication problems. At ten, he is taken to Miss Havisham’s manor, Satis House. The gate is locked, and a small, very beautiful girl comes to open it. She is rude to Pumblechook and sends him away when she takes Pip inside. She leads him through the ornate, dark mansion to Miss Havisham’s candlelit room, where the skeletal old woman waits by her mirror, wearing a faded wedding dress, surrounded by clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
The girl leaves, and Miss Havisham orders Pip to play. He tells her earnestly that he is too affected by the newness and grandeur of the house to play. Miss Havisham forces him to call for the girl, whose name is Estella. Estella returns, and Miss Havisham orders her to play cards with Pip. Estella is cold and insulting, criticizing Pip’s low social class and his unrefined manners. Miss Havisham is morbidly delighted to see that Pip is nonetheless taken with the girl. Pip cries when he leaves Satis House.
