The Ledger
Spoilers first: this is a full summary of Great Expectations, the ending included. Pip is told he will come into a handsome property, and for more than twenty chapters he is sure he knows who is paying. He is wrong. So who paid for what, and when does Pip find out?
Here is my answer in one breath. A convict paid for almost everything. A rich, lonely woman paid for a few things, and the last of them was kind. And the bill Pip could not pay himself was paid by the blacksmith, Joe. We walk the book in Dickens’s own three stages, with my counts on screen.
Our Edition and Our Method
The text on screen is Project Gutenberg ebook fourteen hundred, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and its file labels itself the eighteen sixty-seven edition.
It has fifty-nine chapters, and Dickens marks three stages. Stage one is chapters one to nineteen. Stage two is chapters twenty to thirty-nine. Stage three is chapters forty to fifty-nine. Each stage runs close to sixty-two thousand words, so the book is built in three equal blocks.
My counts come from a script I ran over the whole text. It skips the Gutenberg header and footer and the stage end lines, and it matches whole words only. The ledger itself I built by reading each stage for every sum of money. Chapter numbers in this video are Dickens’s own, not file numbers, and I only name a sum when the text gives one.
Stage One: Two Pounds and Twenty-Five Guineas
Stage one is the poor stage. Pip is a village orphan, raised by his sister and her husband, Joe, a blacksmith. In chapter one a convict in the churchyard frightens him into stealing food and a file.
Then the money starts, and it is not from where Pip thinks. In chapter ten a stranger at the pub gives Pip a shilling wrapped around two one-pound notes. Pip’s sister seals them in a teapot. Only in chapter thirty-nine do we learn that the convict sent that man.
The second payment comes from Miss Havisham. In chapter thirteen she hands over twenty-five guineas as Pip’s apprenticeship premium, meant for Joe as his master. Pip’s sister turns it into a dinner at the Blue Boar. And on a birthday visit, Miss Havisham gives Pip a guinea, which becomes a yearly custom.
Chapter Eighteen: Do You Want Anything?
Chapter eighteen is the hinge. A London lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, turns up at the pub in the fourth year of Pip’s apprenticeship. He offers to end it, and he asks Joe if he wants anything for losing his apprentice. Joe says no.
Then Jaggers says Pip has great expectations. The rules are strict. Pip must keep the name Pip. He must not ask who the donor is. And the donor will reveal themselves in person, in time. Jaggers says only the person, never a man or a woman.
Pip decides it is Miss Havisham. Jaggers names a tutor, Matthew Pocket, who turns out to be her relation, and that feeds the hunch. He has no proof, and Jaggers never says so. Jaggers hands over twenty guineas for new clothes, and in chapter nineteen Pip leaves. Here is my first count: the word expectations appears eight times in stage one, and seven of them are in this one chapter.
Stage Two: Five Hundred a Year
Stage two takes Pip to London, and the money gets bigger. He lodges with Herbert Pocket, the pale young gentleman he once fought at Satis House, and he studies with Herbert’s father, Matthew. Mr. Jaggers’s clerk, Wemmick, keeps the cash.
On his twenty-first birthday, in chapter thirty-six, Jaggers hands Pip a bank note for five hundred pounds. From then on Pip lives on that sum a year, drawn from Wemmick as one hundred and twenty-five pounds a quarter, until the donor appears. Jaggers calls himself the mere agent.
Look at my counts. The word money appears fourteen times in stage one, forty-one times in stage two, and twenty-six in stage three. Stage two is where Pip’s life becomes a budget.
The word expectations follows the same curve. It appears fourteen times in stage two, and only four times in all of stage three, once the money has a face. And Wemmick’s advice, in chapter twenty-four, is to get hold of portable property. In my view, that is the book’s money lesson, and Pip ignores it.
The Secret Gift
Pip spends too much, and so does Herbert. But Pip also does one thing with the money that nobody asked for. In chapter thirty-seven he pays for a secret partnership for Herbert in a shipping business.
He hands over half of his five hundred pounds, about two hundred and fifty, and keeps it secret through Wemmick and an accountant. Herbert never suspects. Pip cries that night, and he says why: his expectations had done some good to somebody.
Notice what is happening to the people. Joe is named five hundred and nineteen times in stage one and only ninety-five times in stage two. Pip is spending money in London, and he is writing Joe out of his life.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Reveal
Chapter thirty-nine is the last chapter of stage two, and the ledger flips. On a stormy night a rough old man climbs the stairs to Pip’s rooms in the Temple. It is the convict from the marsh.
Pip even tries to repay the two one-pound notes. The man folds them, burns them at the lamp, and drops the ashes in a tray. Then he tells Pip the truth. He made his money as a sheep-farmer abroad, and sent it home to Jaggers, all for Pip. He says he made a gentleman of him.
Pip is crushed. Miss Havisham’s plan for him and Estella was a dream, and the money that taught him to be ashamed of Joe came from a man he fears. That night he adds up what he has lost, and he says the pain that cuts deepest is that he deserted Joe. There is a legal trap too. The convict was sent away for life, and coming back means the rope.
Stage Three: The Bills Come Due
Stage three finally gives the benefactor a name. Magwitch appears twenty-six times, and the alias Provis seventy times. In stages one and two, neither word appears at all.
Here is what Pip does with the money. He refuses to open the pocket book the man gave him, and sends it back by Herbert. He tries to get the man out of England. Miss Havisham, hearing his plea, gives him nine hundred pounds for Herbert’s partnership, and Jaggers pays it out. Pip finishes the deal.
The escape fails. Magwitch is caught on the river, and his property goes to the Crown. Pip decides never to claim it. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip tells him, before he dies, that the daughter he thought lost is alive.
That daughter is the other half of the secret. In chapter forty-eight Pip realises that Jaggers’s housekeeper, Molly, is Estella’s mother. In chapter fifty he tells Herbert that the man in hiding is Estella’s father. The girl who made Pip ashamed of his hands has the convict’s blood.
Who Paid the Last Bill
Now the bill Pip could not pay. Pip is arrested, in chapter fifty-seven, for a jeweller’s account of one hundred and twenty-three pounds, fifteen shillings and sixpence. He falls ill. When he wakes, Joe is nursing him.
Joe has paid the debt, and the receipt is in Joe’s name. Miss Havisham is dead, and her will leaves four thousand pounds to Matthew Pocket, because of Pip’s account of him. Pip sells everything, goes abroad, and works for Herbert’s firm.
So here is my ledger. The convict paid for the clothes, the lodgings and the schooling. Miss Havisham paid the premium, the guineas and the partnership. Joe paid the one debt that mattered. Pip paid only for Herbert, and in my reading, that is the one gift he gave with no strings attached.
Six People, One Ledger
These are my readings, so treat them as opinion. Six people shape Pip. Magwitch gives the money and the shame. Miss Havisham gives a dream and a wound. Estella is the reason he wants to be a gentleman, and Magwitch turns out to be her father.
Jaggers is the pipe the money runs through, and he never lets Pip thank him. Herbert is the friend Pip repays in secret. And Joe, in my view, is the one who really pays. He asks for nothing in chapter eighteen, and in chapter fifty-seven he pays up.
Count the word gentleman, with gentlemen. It appears fifty-five times in stage one, fifty-nine in stage two, and thirty-three in stage three. The word peaks in the stage where Pip believes he is one, and drops once he learns what it cost.
Which Ending Does the Text Print?
Last question: which ending is in this Gutenberg text? It prints the revised ending. Pip meets Estella on the grounds of Satis House, and the last line says he saw no shadow of another parting from her.
Two sources I checked agree on the story. Dickens first wrote a darker ending, in which Pip and Estella meet briefly and part. His friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton urged a happier one, and Dickens rewrote it in eighteen sixty-one. In the last chapter Estella says they will continue friends apart, and no wedding is stated. Whether they marry stays open. Before that meeting, the last chapter starts eleven years on, when Pip goes back to the old kitchen and finds Joe by the fire with a little boy on Pip’s old stool.
So what did the count teach me? In my reading, the book is about a gift with a hidden name on it, and about who is thanked, and who is not. If you want more of these, subscribe. Tap like if the ledger helped, and tell me in the comments who you think Pip owed the most. The full guide is at book explained dot com.
