Great Expectations Quotes

I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. This quote encapsulates Pip’s obsessive and unrequited love for Estella. It also highlights the hopelessness of his idealized romantic infatuation and the destructive powers of self-deception. He has deceived himself with the fantasy that he can have a happy future with the unobtainable Estella, despite her bringing him only misery.

She hung upon Estella’s beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she had reared.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. In Pip’s observation we see how Miss Havisham regards her daughter not as a person, but an object of beauty to be used and controlled. Note the use of the grotesque, hyperbolic, metaphorical image of Miss Havisham “devouring” Estella. She is not literally eating her daughter. But this portrays her as a possessive, controlling and obsessive parent, who sees herself as having ownership of Estella. She is the hungry animal while Estella is the food in her mad quest to use her daughter’s beauty to wreak revenge on men.

“You stock and stone!” exclaimed Miss Havisham. “You cold, cold heart!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. In this confrontation between mother and daughter, Miss Havisham upbraids Estella for her lack of affection towards her. She uses metaphorical language to compare her to the coldness of lifeless objects and having a heart without emotion. But Miss Havisham’s shock at Estella’s coldness is ironic, seeing that she is one who taught her to be without feeling and emotionally detached. Her plan to use Estella to get revenge on men has spectacularly backfired.

“I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Estella gives this blunt response to Miss Havisham when she complains about how cold and unloving her adopted daughter is towards her. The quote highlights the destructive influence the manipulative Miss Havisham has had on Estella’s life. Estella’s ice cold character and reputation result from the way she was brought up by Miss Havisham. She turned her daughter into a heartless person who can neither love nor care, instilling coldness and cruelty into her.

“Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!”
“At least I was no party to the compact,” said Estella, “for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?”
“Love,” replied the other.
“You have it.”
“I have not,” said Miss Havisham.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Miss Havisham bitterly complains about being unloved by Estella. Her daughter should be grateful that she adopted her as a child at a time when her own heart was broken, she snaps. In a metaphor describing her pain of being jilted, Miss Havisham says that she took Estella “into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs.” But Estella’s cold response is to say that she didn’t ask to be adopted and raised by Miss Havisham.

“Mother by adoption,” retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, – “mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you, what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. The damage Miss Havisham has done as a mother is highlighted by Estella’s uncompromising response to her when she demands Estella’s love. Pointedly calling her “mother by adoption,” Estella says she cannot give Miss Havisham what she never gave to her adopted daughter. It’s a painful lesson for Miss Havisham to learn the personal cost of having taught Estella not to love. Her scheme to use her daughter to inflict revenge on men has backfired.

“Did I never give her love!” cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. “Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Miss Havisham is bitter that Estella appears not to love her. She disagrees with Estella’s claim that she never taught her daughter how to love. But Miss Havisham has a distorted view on love, which is intertwined with jealousy, her own heartbreak and the desire to inflict revenge on men through Estella. So she brought her daughter up to be cold and heartless to save her from similar heartbreak.

“When have you found me false to your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving admission here,” she touched her bosom with her hand, “to anything that you excluded? Be just to me.”
“So proud, so proud!” moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her gray hair with both her hands.
“Who taught me to be proud?” returned Estella. “Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?”
“So hard, so hard!” moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.
“Who taught me to be hard?” returned Estella. “Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Miss Havisham’s experiment in raising Estella to break men’s hearts in revenge for her own heartbreak spectacularly backfires. When Miss Havisham complains that her adopted daughter doesn’t show her love, Estella tells that she learned to be hard and proud from her adoptive mother.

“So,” said Estella, “I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Here the puppet lays the blame at the feet of the puppet master. Estella tells her adoptive mother Miss Havisham that she is responsible for shaping her into the cold creature she is. Daughter to the criminal Magwitch and a woman accused of murder, Estella was adopted at an early age. Having brought up the child to be unfeeling and not express emotion, Miss Havisham demands that she show her love. But Estella calmly and matter-of-factly tells her that she cannot express what she never received.

The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. The metaphor of a spider is used to describe how Bentley Drummle patiently lies in wait to ensnare Estella in his web. The predatory nature of the despicable Drummle is conveyed here. We learn that he has been following Estella closely, but also she has been allowing him to pursue her. Foreshadowed here is their engagement and marriage later in the story.

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,” replied Estella, with a glance towards him, “hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Estella makes clear to the lovesick Pip how unconcerned she is about her suitor Drummle’s bad traits. We see the use of personification and metaphor here. The lighted candle is a metaphor for Estella, while the moths represent people like Drummle. The word candle is personified as being not to blame for attracting the moths. Estella herself as an attractive but destructive force that draws ugly characters towards her.

“Do you want me then,” said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, “to deceive and entrap you?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Estella is being very honest when she asks Pip if he wants her to “deceive and entrap” him in the matter of love. Estella cannot love anyone because of the way she was brought up, but Pip is hopelessly in love with her. While Estella is clearly warning him, we have the impression that Pip wants to deceived and entrapped by love.

We lived at the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into such a night; and when I set the doors open and looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows (opening them ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of such wind and rain), I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, and that the coal-fires in barges on the river were being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Pip describes the intensity of a thunderstorm he experiences one night while living in London. Dickens uses hyperbole, simile, personification and metaphor to emphasize the ferocity of the storm. When Pip says that “the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering” the lamps are personified by being given the human action of “shuddering.” Pip imagining the house he is in as a “storm-beaten lighthouse” is a good example of metaphor and hyperbole. There are also vivid similes that heighten the drama in this important chapter where Pip is about to learn the identity of his mystery benefactor. The wind is compared to “discharges of cannon, or breakings of the sea,” while the coal fires in the river barges are like “red-hot splashes in the rain.” The storm that rages outside the house foreshadows the tumultuous and life-altering events and revelations that await Pip.

“May I make so bold,” he said then, with a smile that was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, “as ask you how you have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering marshes?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Magwitch inquires about Pip’s success since he met him as a little boy on the marshes. The unreadable expression on the returned convict’s face is described, as he wears both a smile and a frown. Contradictory and ironic similes create a sense of mystery and unease in this crucial chapter in which Pip learns who his true patron is.

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him…All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. This is the moment Pip finally realizes that the person who is helping him and is his benefactor is not Miss Havisham but convict Magwitch. As he comes face to face with the criminal, Pip’s shock at the revelation is emphasized by the simile of his heart “beating like a hammer.” He experiences a sense of shame because his gentleman status is built on less than honorable foundations.

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. There is heavy irony in the fact that the person responsible for transforming Pip into a gentleman is the lowly convict Magwitch. Here Magwitch tells how every guinea he earned from sheep farming and stock breeding in Australia he kept for Pip. Magwitch’s generosity and loyalty in wanting to repay the little boy who helped him when he was on the run from the law many years before are shown here.

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Pip doesn’t at all appreciate Magwitch for being his secret benefactor and turning him into a gentleman. Instead he is ashamed and revolted by the fact that a criminal is the source of his recently acquired wealth and great expectations. He had thought Miss Havisham was his unknown benefactress who wanted to shape him into a gentleman so that he could marry Estella. It is ironic that Magwitch should show such affection for Pip, while Pip expresses his loathing for Magwitch using dehumanizing bestial imagery in a simile. Pip classes himself above someone like Magwitch, whom he sees as sub-human.

“Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son, – more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time, – and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens, – ‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings o’yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Magwitch dramatically declares to Pip that he is his secret patron and source of his entire fortune. Although a hardened criminal, Magwitch shows that he has a noble side to his character, as we see in his powerful loyalty and generosity to Pip. He has never forgotten the kindness Pip showed to him as a little boy on the misty marches. It is clear too that he feels a fatherly affection for Pip. In this touching scene, he tenderly refers to him as his son. Clearly proud of turning the boy who helped him into a gentleman, there is much irony in the fact that this was done by a low-class criminal.

“It was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I say? I says to myself, ‘I’m making a better gentleman nor ever you’ll be!’ When one of ’em says to another, ‘He was a convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for all he’s lucky,’ what do I say? I says to myself, ‘If I ain’t a gentleman, nor yet ain’t got no learning, I’m the owner of such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentleman?'”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. One of the great examples of situational ironies in the novel is the true identity of Pip’s secret patron. When Pip first encounters Magwitch as a child he is a frightening and menacing criminal. But he later turns out to be the generous benefactor who devotes his riches from farming in Australia into making Pip a gentleman. Magwitch admits that he could never have aspired to be a gentleman, because he wasn’t educated. But he was able to create one in Pip, so he could say to those who looked down on him: “which of you owns a brought-up London gentleman?”

“It warn’t easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn’t safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held, for I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it. Dear boy, I done it!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Magwitch shows himself to be a very determined character. Resolved to finance Pip becoming a gentleman, he risks freedom and his life to leave Australia and see Pip in England. There he witnesses the fruit of his labors and is delighted with his achievement.

“I was sent for life. It’s death to come back. There’s been overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be hanged if took.” Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after loading wretched me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked his life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping! If I had loved him instead of abhorring him; if I had been attracted to him by the strongest admiration and affection, instead of shrinking from him with the strongest repugnance; it could have been no worse. On the contrary, it would have been better, for his preservation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my heart.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. We witness Pip’s great guilt over Magwitch placing his life in Pip’s hands by returning to England from Australia. As an escaped convict it’s the hangman’s rope for Magwitch if caught, he tells Pip. Pip feels bad because instead of love he showed disgust for a man who risked his life for him and gifted him gold and silver for years.

For an hour or more, I remained too stunned to think; and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. In this pivotal chapter Pip learns the true identity of his secret benefactor. It is Magwitch, the convict he helped years ago as a boy. Pip is completely stunned by the revelation, cannot think straight and Dickens uses the dramatic metaphor of a shipwrecked sailor to describe the devastating impact the shock news has on Pip.

Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I had.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. A horrified Pip learns that convict Magwitch and not Miss Havisham is the secret patron who has been using his wealth to turn Pip into a gentleman. The novel’s direction dramatically shifts as Pip realizes for the first time the truth about his “great expectations” and attempts to socially better himself. He has been deluding himself with the fantasy that Miss Havisham had been training him to be a gentleman so that he and Estella could be together. A metaphor comparing Pip to “a model with a mechanical heart” tells us of Pip’s feelings about being used as a toy for Miss Havisham to practice on in Satis House. The mist – which appears frequently in the story especially in the marshes around Pip’s home – has metaphorically cleared for Pip.

But, sharpest and deepest pain of all, – it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and hanged at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Pip feels guilty for mistreating and abandoning his friend Joe for a convict who is liable to hanged for his crimes. He has learned that Magwitch was the source of his fortune that made him into a “gentleman” who then turned his back on Joe and home.

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration; simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort that I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but I could never, never, undo what I had done.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. After discovering that convict Magwitch is his benefactor, Pip fully recognizes how badly he has treated Joe and Biddy. Having abandoned his two true friends, he feels that the damage cannot be undone and he cannot return home.

All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. Dickens uses hyperbole, or exaggeration for effect, in this passage from Pip humorously telling us about his total lack of a plan. He could as soon “have formed an elephant,” he says. Living his new life has made him miserable.

He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had failed him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned his food in his mouth, and turned his head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old dog.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. Pip gives Magwitch food and observes the way he eats. He is repulsed by the way Magwitch devours his food and loses his own appetite as a result. In a simile Pip compares Magwitch to a “hungry old dog.”
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