Great Expectations

Throughout the novel, Dickens uses Pip’s close first-person perspective to examine and interrogate Pip’s shifting sense of right and wrong. He questions the moral efficacy of all his decisions, from the choice to steal food for an escaped convict in Chapter 2, to the various steps he takes to avoid seeing Joe when he becomes a gentleman. Pip’s deep first-person point of view also allows the reader to access his interiority, including the feelings of shame, embarrassment, and personal turmoil that influence his decisions. As he significantly notes when reflecting on his changed gentlemanly habits in Chapter 34 that not all the changes have been good for him.

Dickens also encourages the reader to evaluate Pip’s morality through the way he spends his money. Pip spends questionably at times, making lavish purchases of furniture that land him in debt, and he spends generously at other times, anonymously funding his friend Herbert’s dreams. When Pip learns that Magwitch—rather than Miss Havisham—has been his benefactor, he refuses to continue spending the convict’s money on moral grounds, though it could be that Pip is just bitter that Miss Havisham won’t unite him with Estella.

When Pip becomes a gentleman, he notably makes several false promises regarding Joe. He promises to send Joe money, to make Joe a gentleman, and to visit Joe more often, but he does not follow through on any of these promises. It is telling, therefore, that Pip experiences his most profound convergence of guilt and shame when Joe arrives in London to nurse him to health and pay off his accumulated debt.

Over the course of Great Expectations, Dickens reveals how benefactors often treat their wards as “creations,” attempting to shape them with their own morals, values, and ideas. In so doing, he encourages the reader to question the efficacy of this creative process and the “creator” mentality that frames wards as passive subjects rather than autonomous human beings.

In the beginning of the novel, Pip’s sister often guilts him about the sacrifices she has made to raise him, frequently claiming she’s brought him up “by hand.” Pip’s Uncle Pumblechook likewise claims to have brought him up “by hand” with his pedantic lessons and preachy lectures on paying gratitude. Because Pumblechook initially arranges Pip’s meetings with Miss Havisham, he also takes credit for being Pip’s original benefactor and the source of his eventual gentleman status, even though he has nothing to do with it.

Likewise, Magwitch speaks of Pip as his “creation,” describing himself as his “maker.” Magwitch explains that the knowledge that his money would go toward the “making a gentleman” (724) drove his hard work in Australia. He drew personal satisfaction from the idea that even though he might be “ignorant” and “common,” his money could facilitate Pip’s development. Thus, Dickens illustrates how Magwitch perceives Pip as an extension of his own goals and aspirations: A surrogate gentleman who rises up in ways Magwitch feels incapable of.

Estella is similarly the “creation” of her benefactor, Miss Havisham. Estella not only receives the finery and education Miss Havisham’s wealth affords her, but the distorted values and perceptions Miss Havisham conditions her to embody. As Herbert aptly explains, the jilted and embittered Miss Havisham raises Estella to “wreak revenge on all the male sex” (396). No longer young, beautiful, and capable of breaking men’s hearts, Miss Havisham uses Estella as a surrogate heartbreaker, much in the way that Pip is Magwitch’s surrogate gentleman.