Chapter 46
Original Ending to Great Expectations
List of Illustrations
"With you—Hob and Nob," returned the Sergeant.
In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table.
Orlick was very soon among the coal-dust.
He bit the side of a great forefinger.
Lightly touched my shoulder as we walked.
We stood in the inn yard.
"Now, my young friend," my guardian began.
I made him some hot rum-and-water.
"Do you know this?" said he.
List of Characters
Pip: The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip begins the story as a young orphan boy being raised by his sister and brother-in-law in the marsh country of Kent, in the southeast of England.
Miss Havisham: A wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called Satis House near Pip’s village.
Estella: Miss Havisham’s beautiful young adopted daughter.
Abel Magwitch (“The Convict”): A criminal whom Pip first encounters in the cemetary where his family are buried.
Joe Gargery: Pip’s brother-in-law, the village blacksmith.
Jaggers: A powerful, foreboding lawyer who becomes Pip's guardian.
Herbert Pocket: Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a pale young gentleman, Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in London, and Herbert becomes Pip’s best friend and companion.
Wemmick: Jaggers’s clerk and Pip’s friend.
Biddy: A simple, kind-hearted country girl.
Dolge Orlick: Joe's journeyman, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of evil. He is malicious and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it.
Mrs. Joe: Pip’s sister and Joe’s wife, known only as “Mrs. Joe” throughout the novel. Mrs. Joe is a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls “Tickler.”
Uncle Pumblechook: Joe's pompous, arrogant uncle. A merchant obsessed with money and a hypocrite.
Compeyson: A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated, gentlemanly swindler and cheat.
Bentley Drummle: An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with Pip at the Pockets’ house
Molly: Jaggers’s housekeeper.
Mr.. Wopsle: The church clerk in Pip’s country town; Mr. Wopsle’s aunt is the local schoolteacher. Later, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and becomes an actor.
Startop: A friend of Pip’s and Herbert’s.
Miss Skiffins: Wemmick’s beloved, and eventual wife.
Chapter 1
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. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first
