Great Expectations Foreshadowing Quotes

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 1. The novel has one of the greatest opening chapters in all of English literature. The story begins in a churchyard, where seven-year-old orphan Pip stands shivering and crying among the graves of his parents and family. The vivid and memorable opening paints a bleak desolate scene of where Pip grew up. The “marsh country” represents the low class, rural environment of his childhood, reflecting the important theme of social class. A less than happy childhood for Pip is conveyed with the use of words like “raw” and “bleak.” In a novel rich with dark themes and characters, the dark and dismal setting and ominous atmosphere foreshadow things to come. A series of powerful metaphors emphasize the dangerous forces of nature swirling around Pip and also his own vulnerability and isolation. The river is described as a “low leaden line,” the sea a “distant savage lair,” while Pip is a “small bundle of shivers.” The passage sets the scene for the boy’s terrifying encounter with an escaped convict, which will fundamentally shape the course of his life.

“I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!” At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, – clasping himself, as if to hold himself together, – and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 2. As he glances over the cold and wet marsh, Magwitch makes this humorous remark to Pip when the boy bids him goodbye. Magwitch may have been introduced to the novel as a threatening criminal. But his wish to be a modest water creature like a frog or eel as he limps over the graveyard to the marsh shows a weaker, vulnerable side. It also reflects his lower class status. When he hugs his cold body to hold himself together, this evokes sympathy for a man falling apart. In a vivid simile, he is seen by Pip as someone trying to escape the dead hands reaching up from their graves in an attempt to pull him in. This foreshadows the trials and dangers that Magwitch will later face.

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 3. The cold dampness of the morning is compared to the image of a goblin crying tears and using Pip’s window as a handkerchief to wipe its nose on. In the next sentence the damp is likened to spiders’ webs. These similes reflect Pip’s fears and discomfort as he sets off to bring food to convict Magwitch under threat of death. The ominous imagery foreshadows Pip’s future trouble, fears and moral conflict over stealing to help an escaped criminal.

On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village – a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there – was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 3. Pip goes into the marshes in the mist of Christmas morning to bring stolen food to the convict Magwitch. The ominous description of the weather foreshadows Pip’s troubles and the fears that lie ahead for him. This includes his encounter shortly after with the other convict Compeyson who swears at him and attempts to hit him. A simile compares the direction fingerpost to a specter directing Pip to the prison ships, known as Hulks. This highlights the depth of his guilt and worry over stealing food from his family for a convict.

My convict looked round him for the first time, and saw me…I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me that I might try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more attentive.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 5. After Magwitch is apprehended by the authorities, the convict gives Pip a look that he doesn’t understand. The boy is anxious to assure Magwitch that he wasn’t the person who turned him in. But Magwitch’s gaze is described by Pip as the most “attentive” look he has ever experienced. In that moment of connection between them, there is important foreshadowing of what will happen in the rest of the story. The first glimpses of the convict’s gratitude for Pip’s kindness are seen here, hinting at their future relationship.

She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up at heel.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 7. From Pip’s description of Biddy, he doesn’t appear to have a very high regard for the girl who works in her grandmother’s store. He highlights the flaws in Biddy’s working class appearance, grooming and dress. Biddy goes on to become a good friend of Pip’s and later helps him with his education. Foreshadowed here is the boy Pip’s future obsession with social mobility and desire to escape his working class background.

Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. On seeing Miss Havisham for the first time, the strange figure’s grotesque appearance leaves a vivid and lasting impression on the young Pip. Two powerful metaphors of entombment and death emphasize her ghastly, almost supernatural appearance. She is compared to both a waxwork and skeleton, as she seems to exist somewhere between the living and the dead. Her haunting ghostly presence is foreshadowing of the story of the living death she subjected herself to on being jilted on her wedding day.

I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. When Pip encounters Miss Havisham for the first time, he finds a decayed and ghost-like figure wearing an old bridal gown. Similes liken her withered body to her faded, yellow wedding dress and wilting flowers about her in Satis House. Like her once great mansion, described by Pip as being in a state of disrepair and decay, she is a relic from the past. Miss Havisham’s bridal dress, symbolizing her heartbreak at being jilted at the altar, foreshadows the unhappy love lives both Pip and Estella will experience. Estella enters an abusive marriage with the brutish Bentley Drummle, while Pip misses his chance of happiness with Biddy and winds up unmarried.

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close…”Let me see you play cards with this boy.”
“With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring boy!”
I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer, – only it seemed so unlikely, – “Well? You can break his heart.”
“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.
“Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.”
“Beggar him,” said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. Miss Havisham is portrayed as manipulative and vengeful in this conversation with her adopted daughter Estella. Foreshadowed is her diabolical plan to get Pip fall in love with Estella so she can break his heart. This is to be her revenge against men for her own broken heart years earlier. So she forces Estella to play cards with Pip. When Estella objects to playing with a low class laboring boy, Miss Havisham suggests using him to “break his heart.” There is irony in her telling Estella to “beggar” him, since Estella is a wealthy and beautiful girl and Pip is by contrast a poor orphan. But what she means is to emotionally ruin him. With Pip unaware of Miss Havisham’s plan to emotionally beggar him through Estella, this is also dramatic irony.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. Miss Havisham is depicted as one of the most miserable, grotesque and pathetic victims of love. Jilted at the altar years before, Pip remarks on all the objects in the room that reflect how she is frozen in time and unable to move on from the heartbreak. The stopped clock and watch. The unworn yellowed shoe and ragged silk stocking. The withered wedding dress and veil she wears, compared in similes to grave clothes and a shroud. The dress is foreshadowing of the unhappy lives Pip and Estella will experience.

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for having been won of me.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. There is heavy foreshadowing in the Beggar My Neighbor card game played between Estella and Pip. Puppet master behind it is the manipulative Miss Havisham, who plots for Pip to fall in love with Estella so she can break his heart. The game is not a match of equals. But rather it’s a power play between social classes with a disdainful Estella using it to humiliate Pip. The notion of the wealthy Estella “beggaring” the by comparison poor Pip is somewhat ironic. There is further dramatic irony in that he is unaware he is a pawn in Miss Havisham’s larger game to “beggar” him emotionally using Estella. Pip’s future emotional troubles and manipulation by various people are foreshadowed, also the cruel and controlling nature of Miss Havisham’s influence on him and Estella.

I saw a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was Miss Havisham’s, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if she were trying to call to me.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. Pip experiences this nightmarish ghostly illusion of Miss Havisham hanging from a beam of the ceiling as he walks through the abandoned brewery at Satis House. His vision provides an atmosphere of foreboding and foreshadows Miss Havisham’s death when she is consumed by fire. The brewery is a symbol of the decay and stagnation that pervade Satis House. It reflects Miss Havisham’s frozen existence and is a perpetual reminder of the love she thought was hers but was lost in the most heartless of ways.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 9. On his return to his modest home after a visit to the upper class Satis House, Pip reflects on the fateful day he met Miss Havisham and Estella. Foreshadowed is that his encounter with them will profoundly change the course of his life from that moment on. The metaphor of chains is used to show how it will improve his life (bring gold, flowers), but will also prove bad for him (iron, thorns). Signaled here is Pip’s obsession with class and desire to improve himself by scaling the social ladder.

It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb-show, and was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he stirred it and he tasted it; not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with a file…”I think I’ve got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy shall have it.” He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. “Yours!” said he. “Mind! Your own.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 10. When Pip meets Joe in the Three Jolly Bargemen tavern he sees a mysterious stranger stirring his rum and water with a file and not a spoon. Pip recognizes it as the same file he gave years earlier to convict Magwitch which he used to cut off his leg irons. The stranger gives Pip a shilling wrapped in two pound notes, a large amount of money in those days. This foreshadows Pip later learning that Magwitch has been his benefactor all along and the great shame this triggers in him.

“On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay,” stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, “was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.” She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state to crumble under a touch. “When the ruin is complete,” said she, with a ghastly look, “and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table – which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him – so much the better if it is done on this day!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 11. Dressed in her yellowed wedding dress, Miss Havisham makes this melodramatic and hyperbolic speech to a horrified Pip. She is speaking to him in the room where her wedding feast was to have taken place years before. Using a grim metaphor, she compares her grief to being eaten by teeth sharper than those of the mice that have gnawed at her wedding feast. She speaks of her “ruin” or demise, vowing that when she is laid out in her bride’s dress for the funeral, it will be “the finished curse upon him.” She is referring to her fiancé Compeyson on whom she wants revenge, hoping that he will be cursed by her death. Miss Havisham’s “withered” wedding dress foreshadows the unhappy life Pip and Estella will have. The decay of Satis House comes through strongly in this passage: the yellowed tablecloth on the table, the cobwebs, everything worn away and crumbling, including Miss Havisham.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify. Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it…I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 14. In the chapter’s opening lines, Pip confesses to being ashamed of his humble origins and simple life with Joe and Mrs. Joe. He no longer believes that Joe’s forge is his metaphorical “glowing road to manhood and independence.” Pip has been changed by the time he spent with upper class Miss Havisham and daughter Estella at Satis House, but not for the better. He now believes that being a blacksmith is beneath him, or “coarse and common,” and wants to follow a different career path. He is certainly correct when he admits that he is showing “black ingratitude” to Joe for all the love he has shown Pip. Foreshadowed in this passage is Pip’s future snobbery and social climbing.

He never even seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes, and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched, locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful, half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 15. Orlick works at a journeyman for Joe and is described here by Pip as an unpleasant, lazy and slouching character. Similes compare him to Cain and the Wandering jew, foreshadowing his later violence towards Mrs. Joe and his attempt to kill Pip. In the Bible we learn that Adam’s son killed his brother out of envy. The Wandering Jew was supposed to be one of the Jews who taunted Jesus on the way to crucifixion and was cursed to walk the earth until the second coming of Christ.

Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out, – as if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 15. The day laborer at Joe’s forge Dolge Orlick shows his capacity for violence with threatening behavior towards Pip. This is after Pip is given a half-holiday and Orlick demands one as well, but Joe refuses to entertain this until Orlick is in better temper. Foreshadowed here is Orlick’s attempt to murder Pip later in the novel.

“I wish you could put me right.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 17. Pip wishes Biddy could inspire him to love her, to put an end to his ambition to become a gentleman so he can win the unobtainable Estella. As a foil to the emotionally cold Estella, the kindly Biddy is a good friend and companion for Pip. Unfortunately Pip is too blind to Biddy’s qualities as the perfect partner for him. When Pip asks her to put him right, this suggests he realizes he may be on the wrong course, a development that is foreshadowed here.

“If I could only get myself to fall in love with you, – you don’t mind my speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?” “Oh dear, not at all!” said Biddy. “Don’t mind me.” “If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the thing for me.” “But you never will, you see,” said Biddy.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 17. Blinded by Estella’s beauty and his obsession with her, Pip has told Biddy that he wants to be a gentleman so that he can win her heart. In this exchange he rather conceitedly tells Biddy that he wishes he could make himself love her, because he knows deep down that she is better for him. When Biddy says that will never happen, she is foreshadowing that they will indeed not end up together. She marries Pip’s father figure Joe.

As Joe and Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. When Pip learns that a secret benefactor has provided him with a fortune, he is at first delighted. But as the initial excitement about the announcement calms down, he becomes strangely gloomy. Faced with the prospect of leaving his modest home in the country and moving up to a new social class in London, he confesses to being dissatisfied with himself. This reflects Pip’s internal struggle with questions about identity, self-worth, social class and where he fits in society. For Pip is driven by ambition to escape his working-class roots to become a gentleman. There is a subtle foreshadowing here of the psychological hardship that Pip’s obsession with climbing the social ladder will bring him.

I drew away from the window, and sat down in my one chair by the bedside, feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. Pip shares his thoughts from the night he learned about his “great expectations,” the fortune from a secret donor that will propel him into high society. But despite his newfound wealth and upward social mobility, he is full of inner conflict and confusion. He is about to leave for London shortly to be educated to be a gentleman. While he watches from his bedroom window Joe and Biddy quietly talking about him, he feels strangely dissatisfied. Pip should be overjoyed on this first night of his “bright fortunes.” But a sense of irony and foreshadowing are created when he speaks in the same sentence about feeling “sorrowful” and “the loneliest I have ever known.” His future loneliness is hinted at here and also foreshadowed are themes of the corrupting influence of money and social class.

Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe’s pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe – not obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we shared together. I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any more.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. As Pip goes to bed he watches the clouds of smoke from Joe’s pipe floating past his window. In a powerful simile, he imagines them to be a blessing from the good and almost saint-like Joe. The imagery and language evoke a sense of peace and family life and point to the close bond that Pip shares with Joe. But a discordant note is sounded when Pip personifies his bed as “uneasy” and says he cannot sleep easily anymore. Reflected here is Pip’s transition from a poor childhood to a more privileged adulthood, where the future troubles that will bring are foreshadowed.

“You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can’t help showing it.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. Following his newfound wealth that has set him on the road to becoming a gentleman, Pip displays his snobbery and sense of self-entitlement. In this outburst to Biddy, he is rude and harsh to the friend who cares for him, misinterpreting her words of advice on the many different kinds of pride there are. Foreshadowed here are the negative consequences of Pip’s blind pursuit of wealth and social status.

In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he went home to the family hole.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 26. The last line of the chapter uses two metaphors to describe the character of the villainous and despicable Bentley Drummle. He is the “Spider” who has crawled back to the “family hole,” suggesting he behaves like some kind of tunneling animal. Drummle returns to his ancestral home and being heir to a baronetcy it is probably a grand mansion. But Pip’s depiction of it as a “hole” shows his deep distaste for the man. Foreshadowed in the phrase is Drummle’s less than noble death later in the story.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretense of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 28. The novel takes Pip on a long journey of self-deception and eventual self-discovery. Narrator of the story is the older Pip who is able to look back on his younger self and critically analyze his behavior and decisions. In this instance the social climbing Pip decides to return to his home town when he learns that Estella is looking for him. He debates whether to stay at his old home, but life in London has given him notions about himself. After making up excuses to justify staying at the Blue Boar instead of Joe’s forge, he realizes that he is a “self-swindler.” Pip is learning that he has been living a lie. He uses the powerful metaphor of forged coins and swindlers to emphasize how self-deception is the worst deception of all. Foreshadowed here is Pip’s future disenchantment with his “great expectations.”

“Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!” She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of love – despair – revenge – dire death – it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. Miss Havisham sounds more than a little crazy as she passionately continues to persuade Pip to fall in love with Estella. She has brought her adopted daughter up to be a femme fatale to break men’s hearts. Her repeated emphasis on “love” is ironic, given that she is driven by motives of revenge on all men for the one who let her down at the altar. Pip is right when he says that the oft repeated word sounds more like a curse from Miss Havisham’s lips. His obsession with Estella leads him down the path to suffering and regret, something which is foreshadowed here.

How strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it; that it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 32. After Pip visits Newgate Prison with Wemmick while waiting to meet up with Estella, he reveals feelings of inferiority and shame. He speaks of how his life has been tainted by criminals and prisons. He uses the simile to compare his past life to a “stain.” He imagines the sophisticated and beautiful Estella coming towards him, and contrasts her refined beauty with his tainted life. Foreshadowed here is the complex relationship he will have with Estella and his unrequited love as he attempts to climb the social ladder to win her.

“Biddy,” said I, “I made a remark respecting my coming down here often, to see Joe, which you received with a marked silence. Have the goodness, Biddy, to tell me why.” “Are you quite sure, then, that you WILL come to see him often?” asked Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden walk, and looking at me under the stars with a clear and honest eye. “O dear me!” said I, as if I found myself compelled to give up Biddy in despair.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 35. After the funeral of Mrs. Joe, Pip pledges that he will visit the forge often to look after Joe. But Biddy doesn’t appear to believe Pip and questions his sincerity. Pip is offended by what Biddy says and keeps his distance from her for the rest of the evening. Foreshadowed here is Pip’s neglect of Joe following Mrs. Joe’s death because he becomes absorbed in the pursuits of a gentleman.
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