Pip Quotes

“Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney-corner of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone out of it for ever. Don’t tell him, Joe, that I was thankless; don’t tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust; only tell him that I honoured you both, because you were both so good and true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to grow up a much better man than I did.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 58. After learning that his two friends Joe and Biddy have just wed, Pip delivers this moving speech filled with repentance and remorse. Wishing them the blessing of children, he hopes one will remind them of Pip as a child growing up in the forge. But he asks them not tell their child of Pip’s selfishness and ingratitude, but that he honored them both for their goodness. His words are all the more poignant because Joe acted as a father figure to Pip, raising him after the death of both of his parents. Pip’s deep affection for Joe and Biddy is seen here, also his remorse and wish for redemption as he admits past failures and neglect of his true friends. This is an important step on his journey of self-improvement.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was looking along the desolate garden walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 59. When Pip revisits the site of Satis House in the misty dusk after spending 11 years abroad, only the garden wall is still standing. The house and brewery are gone. He is surprised to find Estella walking the grounds. The mist and moonlight imagery are symbolic of both uncertainty and clarity, perhaps suggesting hope for the future after the uncertainties of the past.

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.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 59. In the last lines of the novel Pip takes Estella’s hand as they walk together from the grounds of Miss Havisham’s ruined mansion Satis House. The rising mists seem to signify a brighter path and future. To some readers, this may suggest that the pair finally found happiness in marriage after their years of separation. But nothing is so clear cut. There were in fact two endings to Great Expectations. In the first Dickens has Estella quietly remarrying a country doctor after the death of cruel husband Bentley Drummle and having a chance encounter with Pip in a London street. Dickens later revised this on advise that it was too downbeat. The revised edition has an ambiguous ending with Pip meeting the widowed Estella in the grounds of the ruined Satis House and they leaving together hand in hand. Pip’s remark about seeing “no shadow of another parting from her” implies that he thinks they have a future together. But this is open to interpretation, since Estella has just told him that they “will continue friends apart.” The reader is entitled to believe that this is more of Pip’s wishful thinking and another of his “great expectations.”
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