I Don't Know

I really need to keep up with this. Now it's TWO-hundred-odd pages. Joy.

When we last left off, Pip had just been told he had come into "Great Expectations" and would eventually receive a large sum of money. He then left for London.

Once in London, he met his cartaker Mr. Jaggers, a feared lawyer, and Wemmick, who works under Mr. Jaggers.

After making friends with a boy named Herbert (whom he knocked out in a fight going home from Miss Havisham's earlier in the book and is looking for an openingto make a living when he's older) and enemies with a boy named Bentley Drummle, he is told he will receive 500 pounds a year (a seemingly huge amount of money in those days) until his benefactor (whom he still believed was Miss Havisham) chooses to reveal him or herself to Pip.

In the following chapters, he mostly just works up a debt, and convinces Herbert (who does not have similar great expectations) to also work up a debt. He then reflects on how he would have been happier had he not come into such great expectations.

Skipping several unimportant chapters, he is now 23, when his benefactor is revealed. In the dead of night, he hears footsteps leading up to his room. The man who enters is........Magwitch; the convict Pip once fed out of his family's cupboards. He has been exiled (I think; on any case it's death for him if he's caught in London) for his crimes (conterfeit money, escaping prison, etc.), so Pip must hide him.

Unfortunately for Pip (from his point of view), this means Miss Havisham had no part in his fortune, and has no intentions of marrying him to Estella, who, after Pip breaks into tears after going to her and being told she will marry Bentley Drummle, is revealed to have few feelings left at all, not for Miss Havisham (her adoptive mother) and especially not for Pip. Pip then blesses her, and tells her not to marry Drummle but rather one of her countless other suitors, perhaps even one that loves her as much as he.

Miss Havisham is touched by Pip's true feelings (and Estella's complete lack of feelings) and is currently confessing something to Pip (which I have not read yet).

Meanwhile, Pip begins to suspect Mr. Jagger's servant (who had been accused of killing a woman in competition with her for a man and her own small daughter by that man, many years ago) of being Estella's mother, and after going back to London after his visit to Estella, receives an foreboding note saying, " DON'T GO HOME."

As it turns out, Pip, Herbert, and Magwitch have been watched by a second convict who was in the marsh all those years ago, and who was the mastermind in the crimes that got Magwitch a death penalty but got off easy due to his more gentlemanly demeanor.

They move Magwitch to an rented room near Herbert's girlfriend's house, and begin preparations for going to New South Wales (I think; that was where Magwitch was coming from, so it could also be the British prison site). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_wales

Oh, oh, and it turns out that the second convict was Miss Havisham's former lover, so she wasn't really rejected by him-he just got sent to jail.

As to my opinions:
Well, it seems Pip really did love Estella, though I was correct in saying that she did not love him. Also, Miss Havisham truly does seem "eccentric." To quote her, "I'll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion,unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart to the smiter - as I did!" and "If she favors you love her. If she wounds you love her. If she tears your heart to pieces, love her, love her, love her!" Not the musings of a sane woman I'd say.

I also can't help but be disappointed in Pip for having worked himself into so much debt that shop owners have actually threatened legal action, and even worse, getting Herbert in a similar position, even though he won't be able to pay it off near as easily (in his favor though, he has been covertly paying Herbert's). He's like America! http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

But I have to wonder; just how much was the pound worth in those days comapared to today's dollar? Today, there's no way someone could be considered well-off with an income of 500 pounds