Great Expectations

Where to find it: The third paragraph of the novel and the two that follow: from “Ours was the marsh country” to “as he seized me by the chin.”

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard¹, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea²; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip³. “Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!⁴” A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.⁵ A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled⁶; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

1. 1“the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard” A “wilderness” is a place outside human order, and the marshes lie beyond even the churchyard, the last sign of settled life. The flat, dark land has no shelter in it, so the setting makes the child look exposed before anyone appears.
2. 2“the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea” Personification turns the sea into a wild animal and the wind into something hunting, so danger is building before the convict arrives. The word “lair” prepares us for a man who will later growl like a beast.
3. 3“the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip” The long sentence has listed graves, marshes, river and sea with “and that”, and it ends on the smallest thing in the landscape. The older narrator sees his younger self from outside, as an object, with gentle irony and pity at once.
4. 4“Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!” After a slow, winding sentence, two short imperatives break in. The shock is in the rhythm as much as the threat, and the reader is jolted exactly as Pip is.
5. 5“A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.” A minor sentence with no main verb, like a child taking in details in the order he sees them. “Fearful” works both ways: the man causes fear and is full of it. The leg-iron starts the novel's chain of iron images, and “coarse” is the word Estella will later use of Pip's hands.
6. 6“who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled” Polysyndeton piles up verbs of suffering (limped, shivered) beside verbs of threat (glared, growled). Dickens lets the reader feel the child's terror while noticing that this man is cold, hurt and hunted, which prepares for the sympathy the novel will later ask for.

The question: Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents fear. Write about how he presents Pip's fear in this extract, and how he presents fear, and the people who cause it, in the novel as a whole.

Where to find it: Pip's first visit to Satis House, just after he enters the candlelit dressing-room: from “Whether I should have made out this object so soon” to “had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.”

Whether I should have made out this object so soon if there had been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see¹. She was dressed in rich materials,—satins, and lace, and silks,—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white². Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on³,—the other was on the table near her hand,—her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass. It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. 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. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers⁴, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me⁵. I should have cried out, if I could.⁶ “Who is it?” said the lady at the table. “Pip, ma’am.” “Pip?” “Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come—to play.” “Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.” It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine⁷, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

1. 1“the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see” The older narrator speaks across the whole of his life, past and future, and fixes Miss Havisham as unique. The tense shift to “shall” reminds us that this is a memory told by a man who knows what she will mean to him.
2. 2“but her hair was white” The paragraph repeats “white” for bridal purity, then turns it with “but”: the white of her hair is age, not innocence. One word carries both the wedding day and the years that have passed since it.
3. 3“she had but one shoe on” The half-finished dressing freezes a single moment: she stopped mid-action and never went on. The detail is almost comic, and that makes the idea of a life halted at one instant more unsettling.
4. 4“had withered like the dress, and like the flowers” The simile puts the woman on the same level as her clothes and her bouquet. She has become one more decaying object in the room, which is the novel's first image of what refusing to let time move does to a person.
5. 5“waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me” Gothic imagery of the living dead: Pip joins two childhood memories, a fairground figure and a body dug from a vault, and they come alive in her. The horror is that the corpse-like figure is watching him.
6. 6“I should have cried out, if I could.” After long, piled-up sentences, a short one. Pip is struck still, as frozen as the room itself, and the reader feels his paralysis in the sudden stop.
7. 7“had stopped at twenty minutes to nine” The stopped watch and clock are the scene's central symbol. Miss Havisham has halted time at the moment of her humiliation, and the rest of her story shows the cost of living inside one moment for decades.

The question: Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents Miss Havisham as a woman trapped by the past. Write about how he presents her in this extract, and in the novel as a whole.

Where to find it: Near the middle of the chapter, after Magwitch guesses the first letter of Jaggers's name and Pip nearly faints: from “Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you!” to “and beat ’em!”

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it!¹ I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work.² What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in³, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!” The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast⁴. “Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father.⁵ You’re my son,—more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep⁶ till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time,—and I goes out in the open air to say it under the open heavens,—‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!”

1. 1“I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it!” Dialect (“on you”, “wot”) and exclamations give Magwitch's voice its rough energy. The verb “made” matters: he speaks like a craftsman proud of a finished object, which is how Miss Havisham treats Estella, and which Pip experiences as horror.
2. 2“I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work.” Balanced antithesis gives the sacrifice a moving dignity. It is also ironic: the novel values honest work, as Joe's forge does, so being “above work” is the very thing that has made Pip idle and in debt.
3. 3“that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in” Magwitch describes himself in the language society used against him, an animal lower than a dog. The phrase also reminds Pip, and the reader, that his own childhood act of feeding a starving man is where this fortune began.
4. 4“could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast” The narrator records his younger self's reaction without softening it. The three nouns (abhorrence, dread, repugnance) build to “beast”, just after Magwitch has called himself a dog: Pip accepts the label that Magwitch was trying to rise above.
5. 5“I’m your second father.” A short, simple claim of kinship. The reader knows Pip already has a father-figure in Joe, whom he has neglected, so “second” is painfully ironic, and the novel will test which kind of father counts.
6. 6“not seeing no faces but faces of sheep” The double negative is Magwitch's dialect, but the image is of extreme loneliness in the colony. Pip's remembered face kept him going, which makes Pip's disgust in this scene all the more cruel.

The question: Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents the relationship between Pip and Magwitch. Write about how he presents it in this extract, and how it develops in the novel as a whole.