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Great Expectations
Criticized for its excessive use of words due, it is said, to the fact he was paid by installment for his serialised work
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Principal character of the book. Brought up "by hand" by his sister, Mrs Joe Gargery, twenty years his senior, who mistreats him along with her husband, Joe Gargery. Pip meets Magwitch on the marshes after his escape from the prison ship and brings him food. Magwitch is recaptured and sent away to Australia where he prospers. Pip is introduced to Miss Havisham, an eccentric old woman, and her charge, Estella, who Pip falls in love with. Estella has been taught by Miss Havisham to break men's hearts as restitution for Miss Havisham's having been left at the altar years before. Pip begins to receive money through an unknown source. He becomes a gentleman, goes to London, and drifts away from early friends. Pip eventually learns that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham, as he believes, but the convict, Magwitch.
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A very rich and grim old woman who lives in seclusion at Satis House. She is the adopted mother of Estella who she teaches to break men's hearts to avenge her own being left at the altar by Compeyson years before. She continues to wear her wedding dress and her room contains the yellowing remnants of the wedding day including the mouldy wedding cake. Pip goes to Miss Havisham's to play and meets Estella. Pip believes Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor as he goes to London and becomes a gentleman, finding out later that the convict Magwitch has supplied his "Expectations". Miss Havisham dies when her house burns down and leaves her fortune to Estella.
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A servant boy hired by Pip. Pip has such a hard time finding things to keep him busy "that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park Corner to see what o'clock it was."
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Herbert Pocket's fiancee, she cares for her invalid father, Old Bill Barley, in a waterside house at Mill Pond Bank where Magwitch is hidden. After her father's death she marries Herbert.
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Mr Wopsle's great aunt's granddaughter. She loves Pip but he ignores her as his fortunes improve. When Pip realizes that he loves her too she has married Joe Gargery.
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Widowed society woman and old friend of Miss Havisham with whom Estella is "placed" in Richmond to be sponsored in London society. She has a daughter several years older than Estella.
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Con man who deceives Miss Havisham, with the help of Miss Havisham's brother Arthur, to get her money with a promise of marriage, and then leaves her at the altar. He is an accomplice of Magwitch in the original prison break. He later exposes Magwitch and accidentally drowns when Magwitch is recaptured.
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Pip's fellow student at Matthew Pocket's. He marries Estella for her money and abuses her. He is killed when kicked by a horse that he has mistreated.
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Adopted as a child by Miss Havisham who teaches her to break men's hearts as revenge for Compeyson having left Miss Havisham at the altar years before. Pip meets Estella at Satis House and falls in love with her but she is cruel to him. Pip goes to London and becomes a gentleman and continues to adore Estella but she warns him that she is incapable of love. She later marries Bentley Drummle who mistreats her and she leaves him. Drummle dies and Estella and Pip meet two years later and vow to remain together. Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and Jagger's maid Molly.
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Blacksmith and friend to Pip, Joe is the husband of Pip's sister, who badly mistreats both Joe and Pip. After his wife's death Joe comes to London and nurses Pip through an illness. Later Joe marries Pip's friend Biddy.
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Wife of Joe Gargery and sister of Pip who cruelly mistreats them both, frequently going "on the rampage" and employing "the tickler" to beat them with. She is beaten by Orlick and later dies.
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Lawyer who serves Miss Havisham and Magwitch. It is through Jaggers that Pip receives the benefits of the great expectations that he assumes are from Miss Havisham but in reality the convict Magwitch is his benefactor.
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A convict who Pip helps in the marshes after his escape from the prison ship. He is recaptured and transported to Australia where he gains a fortune which he secretly uses to increase Pip's "expectations". He secretly returns to England as Provis and confronts Pip with the secret source of his good fortune. Magwitch is recaptured and dies before he can be executed. Magwitch is also the father of Estella.
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Joe Gargary's journeyman blacksmith, he quarrels with Mrs Joe and later attacks her leaving her with injuries of which she later dies. He falls in with Compeyson and tries to murder Pip.
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Pip goes to London to begin his education and meets Herbert, whom he discovers is the "pale young gentleman" with whom he fought with at Miss Havisham's as a child. Pip and Herbert become best friends and share chambers at Barnard's Inn and at the Temple. Herbert helps teach Pip "city manners". Pip helps Herbert become a partner in the firm of Clarriker and Co. which enables Pocket to marry Clara Barley. "What a hopeful disposition you have!" said I, gratefully admiring his cheery ways. "I ought to have," said Herbert, "for I have not much else".
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Father of Herbert and cousin of Miss Havisham. He is the only one of Miss Havisham's relatives who speaks honestly of her and has been banished from her presence. Matthew is Pip's tutor in London. He has no control over his large family and has a habit of pulling himself up by his hair in frustration. Pip tells Miss Havisham of Matthew's good character and she leaves him 4000 pounds in her will. Matthew's wife, Belinda, is obsessed with social position, having been the daughter of a knight, and pays no attention to housekeeping or her young children who are left to "tumble up" by themselves. Many believe Dickens modeled the Pocket household after his own large family.
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Joe Gargary's uncle ("but Mrs Joe appropriated him"), hypocritical and well-to-do corn-chandler in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. He takes Pip to meet Miss Havisham and takes credit for arranging Pips "great expectations". "A large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked".
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Wemmick's particular friend, a woman of wooden appearance in an orange gown with green gloves. Wemmick later surprises Pip on an outing by suddenly ("here's a church, lets go in") marrying Miss Skiffins.
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Pip's fellow student at Matthew Pocket's. He helps Herbert rescue Pip from Orlick and helps Herbert row the boat during the attempt to get Magwitch out of the country.
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Jagger's confidential clerk, friend of Pip who lives in a delightfully strange house with the Aged Parent. "A dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen ... He had glittering eyes-small, keen, and black- and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years."
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Landlady of the house at Mill Pond Bank where Old Bill Barley and his daughter, Clara, live. Magwitch is kept secretly in the house waiting for the escape out of Britain.
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Parish clerk and friend of the Gargerys. He aspires to enter the church but instead becomes an actor with the stage name of Waldengarver. Pip sees him perform Hamlet in London.
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My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. - Charles Dickens
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Literature - Opening Lines
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