Summary
Trying to become less coarse to impress Estella, Pip goes to Biddy for tutoring. One evening, while at the Jolly Bargemen with Joe, Pip notices a stranger who keeps watching him. When the stranger stirs his drink with a file, the same file Pip stole for the convict on the marshes, Pip knows the man has been sent by his convict and is terrified that his secret will be revealed. Instead, before the man leaves he gives Pip a new shilling wrapped in old paper. At home Pip and Joe discover the "old paper" is really two one-pound notes. Joe tries to catch up with the man but it is too late, so Mrs. Joe sets the money aside in the state parlor. Pip is haunted, both while awake and in his dreams by convicts, files, and the coarseness of such affiliations.
He meets Miss Havisham's toady relatives who pretend to care about her, and who absolutely hate Pip. They talk about a "Matthew," who is apparently an outcast in the family. Estella taunts Pip again and when he tells her she is not as insulting as the last time, she slaps him hard trying to make him cry. He tells her he will never cry for her, but knows that is a lie. While there, Pip also meets a burly man who warns him to behave himself. Miss Havisham has Pip walk her from her bedroom to the wedding-feast room that even has a large table with a rotting bug-infested bride-cake. Estella and the toady relatives join them and Pip watches as Miss Havisham amuses herself by annoying them. She dismisses them and tells Pip it is her birthday. She continues to point out Estella's beauty to Pip, then sends him to be fed outside again. While outside he meets and fights with a pale young gentleman. Estella is ecstatic over this display and even rewards Pip for winning the fight by letting him kiss her. Pip is convinced he will be arrested because of the fight, but nothing is ever said and the pale young gentleman is not there the next time Pip visits. These visits continue every alternate day for eight to ten months, with Estella's behavior varying and Miss Havisham always taunting him with her beauty. Pip tells no one but Biddy about Estella. One day Miss Havisham tells Pip to bring Joe because it is time to set up his apprenticeship. Mrs. Joe reacts with rage because she is not invited.
Analysis
"What could I become with these surroundings?" These words, spoken in the novel by the older Pip looking back on his life, foreshadow what direction his life will take and what power these surroundings and people will have over him. It is obvious to him that even if he is apprenticed to Joe, things are not going to go the way Pip and Joe dreamed they would when he was younger. Pip's enlisting of Biddy to tutor him shows his sheer determination to rise above his coarseness and shame. Already his snobbish instincts are surfacing: When he confides all his feelings to Biddy, he never notices the intense interest she has in him. She is below his aspirations so he doesn't notice her as a person, but as a tool to gain an education.
Guilt, terror, and secrecy continue to surface, both in the scene with the convict at the Jolly Bargemen, and in Pip's fear of arrest after fighting with the pale young gentleman. The number of secrets Pip is carrying within him is increasing. The theft of food for the convict years ago continues to haunt him, especially when the man with the file shows up in the Bargemen. Pip can never seem to escape the taint of the criminal element. He has never told Joe about the convict and currently has told Joe nothing of Miss Havisham or his fight with the young man there. Secrecy rules.
Dickens works his satire of parasitic relatives through the characters of Miss Sarah Pocket, Camilla and Mr. Raymond, and Georgiana. It is particularly telling that Dickens often calls Raymond "Mr. Camilla," mocking him as a henpecked husband at the mercy of his wife. While the relatives pretend excessive concern and worry for Miss Havisham, none of them can stand each other and Miss Havisham has one of her more normal delights in taunting all of them. They are essentially vultures waiting for her to die so they can collect her money. Dickens' descriptions are superb in adding to their distasteful personalities. He paints Sarah Pocket as "a little dry brown corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut-shells, and a large mouth like a cat's without the whiskers." Sarah's character tag becomes the walnut-shell countenance; the phrase repeats throughout the book.
Mrs. Joe feels threatened when Joe is summoned to Satis House without her. Her insecurity and upset at the loss of control is evident in her angry house-cleaning that night. Mrs. Joe derives her power from knowing every detail of the world around her, running everything, and reinforcing to Joe that he could never survive without her. She does this because she fears abandonment and being alone again as she was before Joe married her. If Joe handles his visit to Miss Havisham without her, Mrs. Joe fears he will think he can handle the rest of their life without her. She becomes fierce and angry because her dominance, and hence, her security, is threatened.
The dynamic between Pip and Estella that will operate for most of the novel is firmed up in these chapters. She humiliates him and tries to make him cry. He refuses to give her that power even though she makes him cry on the inside. The interesting element is her enthusiastic response when he bests the pale young gentleman in a fistfight. She is flushed with delight and lets him kiss her. There is a streak of the wild in her, and for all her calm indifference, violent emotions touch something within her.
Miss Havisham continues to operate from her agenda of revenge, though there are moments such as when Pip sings the song, "Old Clem," that she seems to enjoy him. She seems upset when she realizes one day that Pip is getting too old for play. Her willingness to reward Pip with his apprenticeship to Joe is puzzling and one has to wonder if it was meant as a reward or a death sentence. Now that Pip is obsessed with the beautiful Estella, apprenticing him in an occupation that will only make him more coarse seems to be the ultimate revenge, especially when Pip has already expressed a desire for education.
Other elements seen before continue here. Pip's repressed anger flares when he dreams of pulling the linchpin out of Pumblechook's chaise-cart, and he rages inside whenever Pumblechook rumples his hair. The hair-rumpling tag will be repeated through the book. Gratitude for being brought up by hand, the fantasy element with Miss Havisham as the Witch of the place, Miss Havisham's finger movements, waxwork appearance, and not wanting to know about days of the week, all continue as well.
Some new elements are introduced, including the large burly man with the soap-scented hands who bites his forefinger, and the description of the wedding cake with the references to black fungus, cobwebs, spiders, and beetles. The soap-scented man will surface again shortly in the novel and it is a character tag to watch for. Pip's comment that he was unaware that the man would be important to him foreshadows the role the man will soon play in his life. The spider and web references will continue through the book, especially in relation to Bentley Drummle. Also, spiders and the webs they weave to draw in and control their victims, serve as a metaphor throughout the story for the hold Satis House and its occupants have on Pip.
Some social commentaries are evident. Just as Dickens' mother wanted him to keep working to bring in money — the greed of parents who benefit at their children's expense — Mrs. Joe is hoping to reap some financial gain from Pip's stay with Miss Havisham. Dickens notes the different behaviors of the social classes when Pip decides the burly man on the stairs at Miss Havisham's is not a doctor because a doctor would have had a "quieter and more persuasive manner." The burly man's comment about having experience with boys and that they are a bad set of fellows conveys a view in society that children are not to be valued or cherished, but punished and controlled.
Glossary
one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers dip candles were cheap, quickly burning candles that smoked a lot from the long-burned wick they left. To avoid the smoke, the wicks needed to be trimmed with a special tool called snuffers. Pip indicates that it is hard to study at Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's school even if you want to because the room is lit by only one of these candles, making a book hard to read.
public-house an inn or tavern. In Pip's time these were the hotels and restaurants for travelers.
ophthalmic steps ophthalmic means having to do with the eye in some way. The stranger in the Jolly Bargemen eyes Pip very closely and for some time. Pip does not recall anyone ever taking such ophthalmic steps with him, in other words, eyeing him so closely, before.
two One-Pound notes one-pound notes went out of circulation in England in 1821 because they were so easily and so often forged. This piece of information sets the timing for this part of the novel before 1821. It is also interesting because later in the novel the reader learns that Compeyson and Magwitch were arrested for forgery, though Dickens never confirms if they forged these notes.
pervade to pass through or spread through.
toady fawning, overly interested and obedient to someone to the point of being obviously a liar and actually uncaring.
ginger and sal volatile this was a form of smelling salts used then especially to revive ladies who passed out or became hysterical. It was a mixture of ammonium carbonate scented with dried ginger. This is used much by Raymond to calm Miss Camilla during the night when she gets so "nervous" worrying about relatives like Miss Havisham.
myrmidons of Justice this is a reference to Homer's Iliad. The Myrmidons were followers of Achilles. Here Pip simply means "policemen." He is afraid he will be arrested for fighting with the pale young gentleman at Miss Havisham's.
garden-mould dirt, soil, earth.
Old Clem an early Pope, St. Clement (who died around the year 100), who was patron saint of blacksmiths. Blacksmiths sang this song about him.
