Great Expectations is a coming-of-age story. Pip, an orphan brought up "by hand" by a much older sister, is destined to become apprentice to Joe, his brother-in-law. Joe is a blacksmith, a very decent individual, a bit coward when it comes to facing his wife, but who loves Pip and tries to avoid him too many unjust punishments. Pip also has an invaluable friend in Biddy, a young girl who taught him to read. One day, on the Kent marshes, Pip makes an encounter that will change his life forever, in unforeseen ways: an escaped convict threatens him into bringing him food and a file to get rid of his leg iron. Scared to death, Pip complies, and the day after, when the authorities find the convict and another one of his mates after a search, Pip and the convict exchange a glance where Pip is desperate to make him understand that he is not responsible for denouncing him. Some time later, Mr. Punblechook, Joe's uncle, finds an occupation for Pip until he begins his apprenticeship: he is to visit Mrs. Havisham in mysterious Satis House. Miss Havisham is a rich eccentric old woman, whose whim is to see Pip play with Estella, a young girl she raised as her adoptive daughter. Pip's life takes again a new turn, first because he is very impressed by old Mrs. Havisham's gothic environment and her strange situation: she is dressed as a bride, and has stopped all the clocks of her house. All the curtains are down and things seem to have frozen in time: a wedding cake even molds on a table. The other element of this strange house that makes an impression on Pip is Estella herself, a cold-hearted girl who scorns him and despises him for his lack of education and manners. In order to win Estella's consideration, Pip is intent on bettering himself, he wants to become a gentleman. At this point, he enrolls Biddy to help him educate himself. Pip begins working at the forge with Joe, but he is consumed by shame for Joe's lack of education, and by dreams of a more gentlemanly life. At the same time, he feels guilty about these ungrateful feelings. One day, something extraordinary happens: Pip is visited by a London attorney named Jaggers, whom he had previously seen at Miss Havisham's, and who informs him that somebody has designs for him: he has been endowed with Great Expectations: money and education will be provided to help him become a gentleman. Though nothing is to be said about the identity of Pip's benefactor until he or she makes him or herself known to him, Pip infers that Miss Havisham is behind his good fortunes. He also becomes certain that she plans to give him Estella as a wife. Miss Havisham had made apparent that she was raising Estella to take revenge for something that happened to her and to make men suffer, but Pip is convinced that after Estella will have toyed with and rejected all her suitors, she will belong to him. In the meanwhile, he will try to win her heart.

In London, Pip's roommate is Herbert Pocket, a member of Miss Havisham's family, and his father Matthew will be Pip's tutor. Pip quickly realizes that these two are not on a par with the rest of the Pockets, all bent on inheriting Miss Havisham's fortune. Matthew and Herbert are both kind-hearted, disinterested people. Pip lives a life of leisure, accumulates debts and leads Herbert, who has no "expectations" such as Pip's, on the same dangerous path. One day, Joe visits Pip to bring a message from Miss Havisham saying that Estella wishes to see him, and although he can feel his discomfort, Pip does nothing to put Joe at ease. When Joe leaves, Pip regrets his behavior and decides to visit him after seeing Miss Havisham. However, after seeing Estella, who has grown up into a beautiful woman, and to whom he professes his love, encouraged by Miss Havisham, but discouraged by Estella herself, who is as cold as ever, Pip forgets his resolutions about visiting Joe. He also realizes that Orlick, a man previously working at the forge and jealous of Pip (Pip is sure that he is guilty for an assault on his sister that happened some time before he left for London, and left her heavily handicapped) is now working as a porter for Miss Havisham, and after returning to London, he warns Jaggers against him. Pip meets Estella in London, and must accompany her to Richmont, where she is to stay with a lady. Although Estella acknowledges his gentlemanly appearance, she still refuses to add any romantic component to their relationship. But if Pip is aware of being unhappy with her, he still remains convinced that they are destined for each other. Later, Pip's sister dies. He comes back to the funeral and feels guilty again because of the distance he has put between himself and Joe. He tells Biddy he will visit Joe often, and becomes indignant when Biddy doubts his word. But of course, Biddy's doubts will prove founded. When Pip comes of age, he asks Jaggers more information about his benefactor and his great expectations . But Jaggers is still sworn to secrecy. Receiving more money, Pip decides to help Herbert settle into a career, without telling him that he is the one who helped him. As for Estella, she has a confrontation with Miss Havisham in front of Pip, where Miss Havisham reproaches her her coldness toward her. Estella replies that she has raised her so, and must therefore take her for what she is. Pip, still convincing himself that he will get her in the end, is jealous of Estella's numerous suitors, and of one of them in particular, Bentley Drummle, a lodger at Matthew Pocket's house, whom he particularly dislike for his coarse personality. One day late at night, a stranger comes to Pip's house, and Pip finally recognizes him for the convict he helped so many years ago: Abel Magwitch is his name, and it turns out he is Pip's benefactor. Grateful that Pip didn't turn him in all those years ago on the marshes, he decided to make him into the gentleman he himself could never be. Pip is devastated by the discovery that his fortune comes from a criminal. Far from being grateful, he realizes that all his expectations have come to nothing.

Magwitch risked his life to reach Pip, because he has been exiled, and is forbidden to come back to England. Pip must hide him, and puts Herbert in the confidence. He will refuse any more money from him, and wants to make sure he is escorted out of England safely, and he will come with him when the times comes. He also asks about Magwitch's circumstances, and his life. Pip learns that he is an orphan, like himself, and has been in and out of prison. He got acquainted with a man worse that himself, but with gentlemanly manners: Compeyson. From his tale, Pip understands that Compeyson is the man who took advantage from Miss Havisham: he took money from her and stood her up on the day of their wedding, which accounts for the clocks stopped in her house and her bridal outfit. Miss Havisham's life has stopped the day her lover betrayed her. Magwitch being more coarse in appearance than Compeyson, the latest took advantage of this situation by accusing him of being responsible for the felonies they had committed together: as a result, Magwitch received a longer sentence than Compeyson. Compeyson is the other convict who was taken along with Magwitch, all those years ago. Both of them were fighting and Magwitch wanted to make sure he wasn't going to escape. Magwitch doesn't know what Compeyson has become since then. Pip goes to Miss Havisham's, and reproaches her for having let him believe that she was her benefactor for the sole reward of seeing the Pockets enrage at the thought. He asks of her to at least distinguish Matthew and Herbert from the rest, and beg her to do something for Herbert's future prospects. Pip is in for another bad surprise: he learns that Estella is engaged to be married to Drummle, and tries to convince her that she will be unhappy with him, but Estella is not aiming for happiness and is set on marrying Drummle. As Pip comes back to his place, he is warned by a letter from Wemmick (Jagger's assistant, a man who has very different personalities according to whether he is at home or at work) not to go home. Magwitch has been tracked and followed by Compeyson, and, for safety, Herbert has removed him to the place where is fiancée lodges. Pip and Herbert prepare Magwitch's escape from England. One day, at Jaggers's, he is informed of Estella's wedding. He at the same time realizes that Jagger's maidservant strongly resembles Estella, and deduces she is her mother. His story is confirmed later: Molly, Estella's mother, has been accused of the murder of another woman and Jaggers won her trial. He has left her daughter in the care of Miss Havisham. For the first time, Miss Havisham expresses regrets for having transformed Estella into a tool of revenge on the male sex: "What have I done!", she repeats incessantly. Pip leaves her and returns soon after on a presentiment, to find that she has caught fire. He manages to save her, but her mental sanity is gone. A few days before Pip is to escort Magwitch out of England, a note warns him that he has to meet someone on the marshes, for information about Magwitch. Pip goes to the meeting, which is a trap set by Orlick who wants to take revenge for having lost his job at Satis House. Herbert, who has found the note, arrives on time to save Pip. On the day of Magwitch's escape by boat, Compeyson catches up with Magwitch. They fight and fall into the water: Compeyson dies while Magwitch is badly injured. Magwitch is put into prison and condemned to die, but he never recovers from his wounds and dies in Pip's arms before his execution, and Pip reveals to him that he has a daughter (Estella, he found out, is also Magwitch's daughter). Pip, who finally understood Magwitch's true value, has taken care of him until the end. All of Magwitch's money is lost to Pip, who is back to where he was before his great expectations, minus his illusions. Some time before, Pip and Herbert had parted, Herbert (whose career has been secured by Miss Havisham's help, after Pip's demand) going East with his new bride, and opening a position for Pip, should he want to join them. Pip wanted to thinks about it. After Magwitch's death, Pip falls ill, a consequence to all his recent torments: when he awakes from his feverish state, he realizes that Joe, who doesn't bear a grudge for having been snubbed for so long, is taking care of him and nurses him back to health. When Pip gets better, Joe leaves quickly, becoming shy again in front of "gentlemanly" Pip. Pip also realizes that Joe has paid off all of his debts. Humbled by all the recent developments, Pip wants to make reparations to Pip and Biddy, and ask Biddy to forgive him and marry him. Joe receives him warmly, as usual. Before Pip is able to state his designs, he understands that Biddy has finally married Joe and that they are both very happy. Pip decides to accept Herbert's proposal and leaves England.

After some years, Pip comes back to England and feels compelled to visit Satis House one last time (Miss Havisham died some time after the incident with the chimney fire). He meets Estella, who was also there by chance. She is divorced, still unhappy, and Pip once again admits his love for her. He is sure that now they can be together. Though Estella wants to continue "friends apart", the last sentence is sufficiently ambiguous to make us think that Pip and Estella will finally be together...

Apparently, Dickens, on the advice of other literary friends, changed the original ending, in which he intended Estella to be remarried, and therefore to remain still inaccessible to Pip, even though life has made her less cold hearted.

First of all, I must say that I have never struggled so much to summarize a novel. Whereas I only provide a summary of a few lines for a contemporary novel, which most people have yet to discover, I like to discuss more seriously a novel which I can safely assume most people have read. If there is a safe remark to make about Dickens's novels, it is that the plot is not easy to summarize due to the many events happening, the coincidences, and the numerous twists to the story. Relying on memory alone to summarize the story is no easy task...

The themes of the novel are numerous: one of them is the subject of pain and suffering and their consequences, such as hatred and revenge. Miss Havisham is a character who suffered greatly and spent the greatest part of her life seeking to take revenge through Estella, her adoptive daughter. But as a result, she simply managed to pass pain and suffering along, and to do wrong by the only person she admitted to love. Revenge is also at the heart of the relationship between Magwitch and Compeyson, both of them wanting to take revenge on the other (Magwitch for having been betrayed, and Compeyson for having been arrested on the marshes), resulting in the death of both of them. Revenge is a feeling which only leads to destruction.

Another theme of the novel is gratitude and his opposite. Pip is often ungrateful when he should feel gratitude instead. Although Joe has always treated him like a friend, he only feels ashamed of him, and although Biddy has showed him nothing but kindness, he becomes righteous when she tries to warn him about who he is becoming. In Magwitch, who sees him like the son he never had, and who sacrificed everything in order to make him a gentleman, he only sees the criminal who scared him once so badly. The only person Pip feels grateful to is, ironically, the only person who did nothing for him, and even used him to her own selfish ends: Miss Havisham. Towards the end of the novel, Pip recognizes his errors and repairs them, showing gratitude in the right places at last.

Another obvious theme is unrequited love. Pip is in love with Estella even though he knows from the first that he is not and probably can never be happy in her presence. From the first, when he is just a child, Estella causes him pain, and makes him cry, but in spite of this, Pip cannot forget her. Rejecting nice and helpful Biddy, Pip prefers to strive after an unreachable ideal, willing to sacrifice everything in the way. Although she never encourages him and has many suitors, he is in denial and lies to himself, although he never quite manages to fool himself completely. The ending leaves us wondering about what Estella and Pip's relationship, whether they will indeed stay together, and how they will get on if they do...

Climbing up the social ladder is another preoccupation of Pip's although he has no ambition for the sake of ambition, he only wants to be a gentleman in order to be considered worthy by Estella. Language, manners, dress and choice of leisurely activities are what distinguish a gentleman from a man of a more modest extraction. Pip understands this quickly and strives to imitates the ways of the gentlemen in order to truly become one. His uneasiness in his new clothes, bought before leaving for London, shows that the process of transformation is not an easy one. This should have served as a forewarning: aping the gentleman is no way to become a true gentleman...

What I notice in Great Expectations is the influence of a novel written in 1818: I am referring to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In Great Expectations, there are two instance of creators and their "hideous progenies": the couple Miss Havisham/Estella, and the couple Magwitch/Pip. Miss Havisham has raised Estella to be a cold-hearted creature, she has designed her to "wreak revenge on all the male sex", and finally, like Frankenstein with his creature, she loses control over her, and even becomes afraid of what she has become. "I am what you have made me" says Estella as a reproach. Miss Havisham realizes that she created a monster when she exclaims repeatedly: "What have I done! what have I done!". The parallel with Frankenstein is even more stressed in the relationship between Magwitch and Pip, when Pip shows his knowledge of Mary Shelley's novel by saying: "The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he has impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who has made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me." But in my opinion, Pip is wrong in accusing Magwitch of making him what he is. After all, Pip had gentlemanly ambitions before being endowed with great expectations, from the moment he met Estella. Magwitch's intervention only allowed him to pursue is goals. Therefore, if Pip had had the honesty to push the reflection further, he would have had to admit that he is sole responsible for whom he has become, for his own monstrosity...

Ultimately, the novel is a coming-of-age story about growing up and loosing one's illusions. As a child, Pip had his head filled with dreams of being a gentleman with education and winning the heart of Estella, but in the course of growing up he will discover several things, like the fact that being a gentleman will not help him melt the heart of an icy woman, and that appearances can be deceiving. Thus he discovers, in the end, the true meaning of the world gentleman: the gentleman is not he who talks properly and dresses fancily (Compeyton, after all, has all the appearances of a gentleman and is the worst scoundrel), but the kind-hearted man who hides under lack of education and refinement (people like Joe, or Magwitch). Maturity and true understanding of one's environment arrive at a price: the price of lost illusions and unfulfilled dreams...

Finally, although I recognize Dickens's importance in literature and his huge influence on subsequent writers, I must say reading him is a mixed experience. His writing is verbose and lacks editing (of course, like French author Alexandre Dumas, his stories were serialized, which explains this fact, but doesn't make it a less tedious experience for today's reader, in my opinion), his style affected, heavy handed on irony and caricature. However, I am glad I finally got to read Great Expectations, and recognize its many merits, the huge importance of Dickens in the history of English literature, and the influence he had on many modern writers...

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© Discussing Books, 01/25/2008