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Charles Dickens · 1861
Great Expectations
The story of Charles Dickens’s novel in a few minutes: what happens, who is who, what it means, and its most famous lines.
- Author
- Charles Dickens
- Published
- 1861
- Setting
- Kent marshes and London
- Genre
- Coming of age
Summary
Pip, an orphan, is raised by his harsh sister and her kind husband Joe, the village blacksmith. In a churchyard on the marshes he is frightened into helping an escaped convict. He is later invited to play at the gloomy house of Miss Havisham, a rich woman jilted on her wedding day who still wears her wedding dress, and he falls for her cold, beautiful ward Estella. Ashamed of his common life, he longs to be a gentleman.
A lawyer tells him he has “great expectations”: an unknown benefactor will make him a gentleman in London. Pip believes it is Miss Havisham and grows snobbish, even towards Joe. Then the convict, Magwitch, returns and reveals that he is the benefactor. Pip comes to love him; Magwitch is captured and dies. Humbled, ill and in debt, Pip is nursed by Joe and learns the worth of loyalty and goodness. Years later he meets Estella, changed by her own suffering.
Main characters
| Pip | the orphan who tells his own story |
| Joe Gargery | the loyal, kind blacksmith |
| Miss Havisham | jilted on her wedding day, frozen in time |
| Estella | raised to break men’s hearts |
| Abel Magwitch | the convict, Pip’s secret benefactor |
Themes
- Ambition and self-improvement
- Social class and what makes a gentleman
- Loyalty, guilt and forgiveness
Read it free
Great Expectations is out of copyright. The whole novel can be read or downloaded free from Project Gutenberg.
Quotes
Famous quotes from Great Expectations
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.
Questions
About the novel
What is Great Expectations about?
An orphan, Pip, who becomes a gentleman with a secret benefactor’s money and learns what really matters in life.
Who is Pip’s benefactor?
The convict Abel Magwitch, whom Pip helped as a boy.
Why does Miss Havisham wear a wedding dress?
She was jilted on her wedding day and stopped all the clocks at that moment.