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Plot summary

On Christmas Eve of 1812, Pip, an orphan aged 7, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard. The convict is hungry so he scares Pip into stealing him some food and a file to grind away his leg shackles. This is the first time in Pip’s life he’s felt truly guilty. This is an important event in the book because the convict will never forget the kindness (albeit forced) that Pip showed to him. The convict, however, waits many years to fully show his gratitude.

Pip lives in a small house with his extremely unkind sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and her markedly kinder blacksmith husband, Joe Gargery. Both husband and wife are referred to as Mrs. Joe and Joe respectably throughout the book. Everyone assumes that, when he’s older, he’ll follow in Joe’s footsteps and become a blacksmith. This does not please Pip at all. A while after Pip’s encounter with the convict, Pip gets invited to the house of a rich old woman named Miss Havisham, who lives in the village.

After this first meeting, Pip frequently visits Miss Havisham and her adopted daughter Estella, with whom he harbours a feeling of attraction. One day, Miss Havisham tells Pip that he must not come there again because the time has come for his apprenticeship with Joe to begin. Pip spends little time as a blacksmith though, soon after he had started the apprenticeship, a London lawyer, Jaggers, approaches Pip, revealing very startling news: Pip has inherited a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor, a condition of the reciept of said money being that he must leave for London immediately, buy some clothes and become a gentleman. Pip, because he has always wanted to become a gentleman, graciously accepts these terms.

In London, Pip studies with a tutor and lives with a newfound and close friend, Herbert. Pip is certain that his mysterious benefactor is Miss Havisham. Pip stays in London for many years. He remains ashamed of Mrs. Joe, and they grow apart and soon Mrs. Joe dies. Pip becomes more and more infatuated with Estella—who seems to get colder and colder by the day. Among the notable people he knows in London are Wemmick, a clerk in Jaggers' office who becomes a friend, and Bentley Drummle, a horrible brute of a boy who begins to become interested in Estella.

One stormy night, Pip learns the true identity of his benefactor. It is not Miss Havisham, as he had thought for a long time, but rather a petty criminal named Magwitch who had been transported to New South Wales. Magwitch is the convict Pip helped feed in the churchyard many years ago, and he left all his money to Pip in gratitude for that kindness and also because Pip reminded him of his own child, whom he thinks is dead. The news of his benefactor crushes Pip—he's ashamed of Magwitch, and Magwitch wants to spend the rest of his life with Pip. Pip, very reluctantly, lets Magwitch stay with him. There is a warrant out for Magwitch’s arrest in England, and he’ll be hanged if he’s caught.

Eventually, because Magwitch is on the run from the law, a plan is hatched by Herbert and Pip, involving fleeing the country by boat.

Meanwhile, Estella has married to Bentley Drummle, a marriage that anyone can see will be an unhappy one. Before Pip flees with Magwitch, he makes one last visit to Miss Havisham. Mrs. Havisham stands too close to the fire and the building is set on fire. Pip heroically saves her but she later dies from her injures.

Pip, Herbert and another friend, Startop, make a gallant attempt to help Magwitch escape, but instead he's captured and sent to jail. Pip by now is devoted to Magwitch and recognizes in him a good and noble man. Pip tries to have Magwitch released but he dies shortly before he's slated to be executed.

After an extended period of sickness during which he is looked after by Joe, Pip goes into business overseas with Herbert. After eleven relatively successful years abroad, Pip goes back to visit Joe and the rest of his family out in the marshes. Finally, Pip makes one last visit to the ruins of Miss Havisham's house, where he finds Estella wandering. Her marriage is over, and she seems to have children and wants Pip to accept her as a friend. When the novel ends, it seems that there is hope that Pip and Estella will finally end up together.^[4]

Original ending

Pip meets Estella on the streets. Her abusive husband Drummle has died, and she has remarried, to a doctor. Estella and Pip exchange brief pleasantries, after which Pip states while he could not have her in the end, he was at least glad to know she was a different person now, somewhat changed from the cold-hearted girl Miss Havisham had reared her to be. The novel ends with Pip saying he could see that "suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."

Revised ending

Pip and Estella meet again at the ruins of Satis House:

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench.
"And will continue friends apart," said Estella.
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.^[5]

– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations