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Book 2, Chapter 28
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Great Expectations, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Class
Ambition and Self-Improvement
Integrity and Reputation
Parents
Justice
Generosity
Summary
Analysis
Going to Miss Havisham's the next morning, Pip is surprised to find Orlick employed as the porter to protect the house from convicts and intruders. When he enters Miss Havisham's room, he finds Estella home from France and transformed into a beautiful, graceful woman.
Orlick and Estella have each undertaken self-improvement. Orlick has been hired as part of a wealthy household while Estella has studied abroad and acquired more refined manners.
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Pip and Estella walk in the garden and recount old times. Estella notes the changes in Pip and observes that he has "necessarily" stopped keeping company with his childhood circle. When Pip is hurt that Estella does not remember making him cry, Estella informs him that she has no heart. "I have no softness there, no-sympathy-sentiment-nonsense." Pip says he does not believe her. As they walk, Pip is bothered by the nagging suspicion that Estella resembles someone whom he cannot place.
For Estella, a rise in social class necessarily involves cutting off all connections to the lower class one rose from. Pip's admiration for Estella has led him to live by Estella's standards—he has indeed cut off his childhood circle. That Estella equates "sympathy" with "nonsense" illustrates the low value she places on compassion and love. That Estella reminds Pip of someone he can't place foreshadows future revelations about Estella...
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Back in the house, Miss Havisham speaks frenziedly to Pip about Estella, telling him to "...love her, love her!" no matter how Estella hurts him. She tells Pip real love is "blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission," surrendering oneself "as I did!"
Miss Havisham explicitly articulates the revenge motive Herbert described: she wants Pip to suffer from his love for Estella as she herself suffered from love in the past.
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Mr. Jaggers has come by on business and he, Miss Havisham, Sarah Pocket, Estella, and Pip have dinner together. Mr. Jaggers is unaffected by Estella's beauty and ignores her. Pip is disturbed by the incongruity between Mr. Jaggers' "cold presence" and his own warm feelings for Estella, resenting that the two must share space.
Mr. Jaggers' relentless professionalism does not permit him to recognize beauty or love. Pip is disconcerted by the incongruity between Mr. Jaggers' dispassionate personality and his own hot passion for Estella.
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As he falls asleep at the Blue Boar, Miss Havisham's injunction to "love her!" resounds in Pip's mind and he feels grateful, convinced that Miss Havisham is his patron and that Estella must therefore be destined to be his wife. The adult Pip narrator cringes to remember that he didn't think twice about not visiting Joe during the trip, knowing Estella would disdain him.
Pip feels grateful for Miss Havisham's generosity but the reader can see that Pip is delusional—there is no evidence of generosity in her behavior. In fact, she very explicitly just wants to bring him pain! Again, Pip blindly adopts Estella's snobbish values in avoiding Joe.
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