Great Expectations, Chp. 40-42

[Tristram]

Dear Fellow-Curiosities,

We are now in the third part of Pip’s great expectations, and I think that matters are now coming to a head. In Chapter 40, the narrator tells us about the five days he spends in the company of his old convict, who introduces himself as Abel Magwitch but who has adopted the name of Provis in order not to be detected in England. The presence of his benefactor is not only a disappointment with regard to his being somebody else than Pip always imagined, but it also proves a practical problem because Pip somehow has to account for the stranger’s arrival, and get him out of the way – lest he should arouse the suspicions of his two servants, an old woman and her niece who look after the apartment, and who are described as follows:

”True, I had no Avenger in my service now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, and to keep a room secret from them would be to invite curiosity and exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted; indeed that was their only reliable quality besides larceny.”

This little comment on Pip’s part is not only funny, but it also had me wondering again why on earth Pip hires servants who later prove a burden to him in that they make his life rather more difficult than easy. Is this simply more proof of Pip’s naïve view of the world, or does it mean to imply that wealth is not necessarily a fountain of pleasure and well-being? Does this little detail, maybe, mirror the nature of Pip’s expectations in a small measure?

Be that as it may, Pip is at a loss as to what to do, and the narrator puts this into a wonderful simile:

”As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant.”

To Pip’s horror, Magwitch seems to have come to the intention to stay in England for good and enjoy the sight of the gentleman that he has created – again, we have lots of references pointing that way that in making Pip a gentleman, Magwitch also did something for himself to be proud of – and whom he expects to spend even more money in order to lead a life befitting his rank and position in society. For Pip, however, living on the money earned by Magwitch now seems out of the question and his main aim is to find some sort of hiding-place for his benefactor. At the same time, this man about whose well-being and safety he now has to worry, fills him with abhorrence and repugnance. We learn, for instance, that Pip finds Magwitch to have a “ravenous way” of eating and to be altogether uncouth in his manners and that the ex-prisoner again reminds him of an old dog – but which also reminded me of Pip’s old table manners.

Does this not seem like a parallel to Pip himself, who was looked down on, for his manners, by Estella, and who felt like a dog when he was offered something to eat at Satis House?

Like Estella, who could not see anything but the blacksmith’s boy in Pip, Pip now cannot see anything but the convict in Magwitch, and he even thinks that the new clothes he is given and the way he has his hair now only increase this dismal impression. Magwitch himself also has a way of swearing people to secrecy on “a greasy little clasped black testament”, whose only purpose seems to be that of swearing people in. I noticed this particular, because the two pound-notes that Pip received from Magwitch, were also described as greasy.

Then I found the following passage, which I found interesting inasmuch as Peter made a congenial remark in one of the earlier threads:

”The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me.”

So Dickens himself was thinking of Frankenstein, as it seems, but he had Pip slip into the role of the persecuted part although Pip regards himself as the creature rather than the creator.

Do we have to agree with Pip, though? Is he simply the creature, or might the choices he made also have contributed to the position he finds himself in now?
What do you think about the following parallel: Miss Havisham as the creator of Estella, and Magwitch as the creator of Pip? What are their respective motives?
What do you think of Jaggers’s glib way of dealing with Pip in this chapter, and of the practice of doublethink he uses here?

The Chapter ends with Herbert’s coming from his journey, and Magwitch’s swearing him into silence and, oddly, promising that Pip shall also make a gentleman of Herbert.

Is Pip more likely to make a gentleman of Herbert, or is it rather the other way round?

[Tristram]

Chapters 41 and 42 don’t take long in recapping because they mainly fill some gaps in our knowledge of things that happened prior to the story told by Pip. In Chapter 41, we see Pip and Herbert discuss the question what to do with Magwitch. Pip realizes the Magwitch’s

”boast that he had made me a gentleman, […] was made for me quite as much as for himself”,

and he tells Herbert that he can no longer accept to be the object of Magwitch’s benevolence. At the same time, he painfully realizes that he has learnt no trade and acquired no knowledge so that the only thing he could possibly do is become a soldier. Herbert quickly talks him out of this, offering him to help him to a place at Clarriker’s, not dreaming of it that it is actually due to the money paid by Pip (and provided by Magwitch) that he was given the chance of a partnership with Clarriker. Still, Pip the narrator remembers that at that time Herbert’s behaviour made him feel what a blessing it was to have a true friend in life. Reading that, I could not help thinking that Pip is rather thankless in not considering Joe in that light and context. After all, Joe is his oldest friend and has done a lot for him – such as giving him a home in the first place, offering him to learn a decent and respected craft and protecting him from Tickler – and now Pip only thinks of Herbert when he thinks about friendship.

In Chapter 42, we learn about Magwitch’s antecedents, and finally the character is fleshed out more and more. Just consider the way he starts his story:

”’I’ve been done everything to, pretty well—except hanged. I’ve been locked up as much as a silver tea-kittle. I’ve been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town, and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I’ve no more notion where I was born than you have—if so much. I first become aware of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me—a man—a tinker—and he’d took the fire with him, and left me wery cold.

‘I know’d my name to be Magwitch, chrisen’d Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know’d the birds’ names in the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as the birds’ names come out true, I supposed mine did.

‘So fur as I could find, there warn’t a soul that see young Abel Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took up, took up, to that extent that I reg’larly grow’d up took up. […]’”

In this vein, we learn about the deprivations young Magwitch had to deal with and how this paved his way into crime. While the author does not excuse Magwitch’s crime – we actually hardly ever learn about any of his crimes, as he keeps saying that whatever he did, “is worked out and paid for” –, he at least allows the reader to form some idea of how a man like Magwitch could have become the man he is. If I compare this life-story with the story of the parish boy told in Oliver Twist, I think there is some development in Dickens as a writer.

Magwitch tells his two listeners – and us – how he fell in with Compeyson, who is the other convict, the one that Magwitch fought on the marshes and whose face he smashed. He describes Compeyson the following way:

”’He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too.’

What might this characterization have taught Magwitch with regard to his project of making a gentleman by providing young Pip with money? What else might Dickens want to tell his readers?

Magwitch also tells about the episode of a dying accomplice of Compeyson’s, a man called Arthur, who on his deathbed is haunted by the vision of a woman whose heart he says he has broken. After the convict has finished his story, Herbert pushes Pip a book into which he has written that Miss Havisham’s step-brother was called Arthur, and that Compeyson is the name of the lady’s unfaithful suitor. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t help wondering that Magwitch, not knowing anything about Miss Havisham and the possible interest she could hold for his two listeners, should dwell in so much detail on this single episode of his eventful life while he did not say a lot about other episodes that might have affected him more.

We are also told that Magwitch seems to have genuine affection for Pip, probably as the only person who ever stood by him, and that this fills Pip with abhorrence although he felt great pity for Magwitch when the convict told his story.

[John]

This is a general comment and I thought at this point in GE it seems more apparent to me. I’ve noticed in this book that Dickens’ prose is more self-assured. There is a dramatic flow and a readability flow. I assume this comes from experience, given GE is a later work. But it also seems more singular in this book than previous ones. Surely when I think back to reading The Pickwick Papers it is very noticeable.

[[deleted user]]

The more I read about Magwitch, the more I actually like him. Especially compared to Miss Havisham. Magwitch was just as much troubled and used by Compeyson as Miss Havisham was. But instead of pitying and pining and doing no more than he had to when he came to Australia, he worked hard. In a way Pip gave him something to live for, because apart from revenge on society he really thought he would help Pip and pay him back for not leaving him to starve on the marches. Meanwhile Miss Havisham never seemed to think on how she could help Estella, only about how she could use her.

My mind couldn't stop comparing the two it seems. For Miss Havisham living the way she did, having the money to use Estella the way she did even after letting the brewery fall to ruins etc. must mean she also got money through other ways. It is never disclosed where her money comes from, apart from her father being a brewer. Did he own property somewhere f.i.? Usually the money from the English super-rich, especially those in that time, didn't come from being kind to people. There would have been blood on Miss Havisham's money. Pip never thought about looking down on getting hers, no matter where she might have gotten it, or how, and no matter how she treated him. But when it turns out that his benefactor was Magwitch, who turned his life around overseas, and earned that money with hard and honest work he suddenly feels too good to accept it because Magwitch had been a convict down on his luck once. Pip would rather accept money gained over the back of the common people, given out of spite, than money gained by hard work, given out of care, because of the giver's social standing.

Pip still shrinks back from someone 'inferior'. He does not seem to have learned a bit. He treats Magwitch exactly the same way he treats Joe.

[Kim]

There aren't many illustrations this week and the ones we have usually concentrate their drawing time on Magwitch. Some of the illustrators I don't know who they are, but I'm looking.



"To judge from appearances you're out of luck.

Chapter 42

Harry Furniss

Text Illustrated:

“At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted wi’ a man whose skull I’d crack wi’ this poker, like the claw of a lobster, if I’d got it on this hob. His right name was Compeyson; and that’s the man, dear boy, what you see me a pounding in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade arter I was gone last night.

“He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the night afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a booth that I know’d on. Him and some more was a sitting among the tables when I went in, and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called him out, and said, ‘I think this is a man that might suit you,’ — meaning I was.

“Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of clothes.

“‘To judge from appearances, you’re out of luck,’ says Compeyson to me.

Commentary:

Other illustrators prior to Furniss had not realised these reminiscences of Abel Magwitch's relationship with the gentleman-swindler and confidence man Compeyson. Here, then, Furniss operates without precedents as he depicts a young, physically fit Magwitch standing, hands in his pockets, chatting with the lithe and angular criminal whose schemes will prove his downfall. In the background, as figures in a smoke haze (perhaps to suggest that this is a twenty-year-old and distorted memory), Furniss sketches in some masculine members of the racing crowd who are Compeyson's prey. Furniss does not merely give Compeyson a handsome suit of clothes; he gives him a handsome face and speculative expression, in contrast to the blunt-nosed, square headed Magwitch: "he looked at me very noticing" has prompted Furniss's characterization of the cool, calculating youth.

[Kim]

""When I says to Compeyson,'Once out of this court, I'll smash that face o' yours!' Ain't it Compeyson as prays the judge to be protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us?"

F. A. Fraser

1910

Library Edition

"Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of clothes. 'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck,' says Compeyson to me." [A slightly condensed form of the text in Chapter 42.]

Text Illustrated:

“At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted wi’ a man whose skull I’d crack wi’ this poker, like the claw of a lobster, if I’d got it on this hob. His right name was Compeyson; and that’s the man, dear boy, what you see me a pounding in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade arter I was gone last night.

“He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the night afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a booth that I know’d on. Him and some more was a sitting among the tables when I went in, and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called him out, and said, ‘I think this is a man that might suit you,’—meaning I was.

“Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of clothes.

“‘To judge from appearances, you’re out of luck,’ says Compeyson to me.

“‘Yes, master, and I’ve never been in it much.’ (I had come out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have been for something else; but it warn’t.)

“‘Luck changes,’ says Compeyson; ‘perhaps yours is going to change.’

“I says, ‘I hope it may be so. There’s room.’

“‘What can you do?’ says Compeyson.

“‘Eat and drink,’ I says; ‘if you’ll find the materials.’

“Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me five shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.

“I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson took me on to be his man and pardner. And what was Compeyson’s business in which we was to go pardners? Compeyson’s business was the swindling, handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson’s business. He’d no more heart than a iron file, he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned."

Commentary:

One might easily label Magwitch's inset narrative about his relationship with the "gentleman-criminal" Compeyson "Magwitch's Complaint." At every stage of his story, the teller indulges in self-pity and recriminations against a judicial and social system that consistently plays favourites, and denies Magwitch, as a member of the urban proletariate, what he regards as his basic civil rights: the system, he argues, is stacked against him. Fraser is the first illustrator to emphasize Provis's complaint about the class system, a theme which Harry Furniss pursues in his 1910 sequence.

Fraser emphasizes Pip's response by turning Herbert away from the viewer. We judge that Pip is more guarded than Herbert, though equally attentive, because Herbert looks directly at the tale-teller. For his part, Magwitch throws himself emotionally into the retrospective narrative, gesturing as if he would indeed have punched Compeyson in the face and broken his nose. However, his vilification of a member of the gentlemanly class seems to contrast with the surroundings in which he tells the elegantly dressed young gentlemen his tale: a beautifully furnished flat, with a brass fender for the fireplace, the mantelpiece's artwork, and the ornately framed oil-painting on the wall behind Magwitch all emphasize the class background of his auditors.

[Kim]

Here's one I haven't found who the artist is, not yet anyway.



Chapter 42

Text Illustrated:

“Dear boy and Pip’s comrade. I am not a going fur to tell you my life like a song, or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I’ll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you’ve got it. That’s my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend.

“I’ve been done everything to, pretty well—except hanged. I’ve been locked up as much as a silver tea-kittle. I’ve been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town, and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I’ve no more notion where I was born than you have—if so much. I first become aware of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me—a man—a tinker—and he’d took the fire with him, and left me wery cold.

“I know’d my name to be Magwitch, chrisen’d Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know’d the birds’ names in the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as the birds’ names come out true, I supposed mine did.

“So fur as I could find, there warn’t a soul that see young Abel Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took up, took up, to that extent that I reg’larly grow’d up took up."

[Kim]

Here is one of Magwitch, also a new one for us.

[Kim]

And now "Provis" by Harry Furniss:


"Provis"

Harry Furniss

Commentary:

The name "Abel Magwitch" suggests that Pup's convict is "handy" or competent (to say nothing of being the shepherd who was murdered by his brother Cain in the "Book of Genesis"), and that he seemingly possesses supernatural or magical powers. However, to elude the authorities he has travelled back from Australia under an assumed name which Furniss uses as the caption for his portrait of Pip's providential visitor: "Provis." His arrival turns Pip's comfortable life upside down, and leads to a series of sensational revelations, including the identities of Estella's parents, and Magwitch's death in prison after his accepting the justice of his sentence for dispatching his evil genius, Compeyson. "Provis" has within it echoes of "Providence," that, is the Divinely ordained plan for humanity. In particular, it seems to suggest that he is Pip's fate or destiny. Now much older and rather worn out by a hard life through which he has supplied Pip with Great Expectations, Magwitch, ex-convict, transported felon, and wealthy sheep-herder, returns to see the result of his largesse. Furniss makes him ill-suited to his middle-class clothing, and infinitely older than in his initial appearance in the narrative-pictorial sequence, "Pip's Struggle with the Escaped Convict"; indeed, he is a changed man.

[Kim]

I could have shared this illustration earlier, but it has the convict's name on it "Magwitch", and I didn't want to give that away until Dickens tells it to us. The best thing about it is that it is by Kyd, and it seems obvious to me that it came from those long ago days when Pip and Magwitch were in the marsh together.



Abel Magwitch

J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd")

Watercolor

c. 1900

Dickens's Great Expectations, Garnett edition, frontispiece.

[Kim]

Wow! another one by Kyd!:





Abel Magwitch

Kyd

[Peter]

Kim wrote: "Here's one I haven't found who the artist is, not yet anyway.



Chapter 42

Text Illustrated:

“Dear boy and Pip’s comrade. I am not a going fur to tell you my life like a song, or a story-book. B..."

Kim

This illustration is painful to look at. We want Phiz!

[Kim]

It is my least favorite from the bunch this week. I've found a few more I'll post a little later. After supper and dish washing and such things. :-)

[Kim]

Peter, I promised you more illustrations. Most of them are of different chapters than this installment so I'll go back and post them where they belong. This one just made me smile:

[Peter]

Kim wrote: "Peter, I promised you more illustrations. Most of them are of different chapters than this installment so I'll go back and post them where they belong. This one just made me smile:

"

Thank goodness it is not by Kyd.

[Tristram]

Jantine wrote: "The more I read about Magwitch, the more I actually like him. Especially compared to Miss Havisham. Magwitch was just as much troubled and used by Compeyson as Miss Havisham was. But instead of pit..."

Jantine,

I heartily agree with your thoughts here: Pip's disgust with finding himself indebted to Magwitch not solely comes from the realization that Havisham never intended him for Estella and never gave him those expectations as a prelude to a happy future with Estella. Instead, he turns up his nose at Magwitch as a person of humble origins and the fact that he earned his fortune through honest work did nothing to efface his social qualms about Magwitch. We can really say that Pip has turned into and out-and-out snob and quite a heart- and thoughtless individual.

[Peacejanz]

I agree - I was tryiing to explain to my brother that I was angered?frustrated? with Pip and his mean attitudes - my brother (71 now - probably read GE 55 years ago) swore to me that Pip was a star, had groomed himself with the money, etc. So a schoolboy's memory of Pip is that he is nice, great, got the money, etc. I am liking him less and less - the way he treated his sister and brother-in-law, his groveling for Miss Haversham, his continual desire for attention/love from Estella. And now his dislike for magwitch. The rest of this book is going to have to redeem Pip in my mind.

[Kim]

Peacejanz wrote: "I agree - I was tryiing to explain to my brother that I was angered?frustrated? with Pip and his mean attitudes - my brother (71 now - probably read GE 55 years ago) swore to me that Pip was a star..."

That makes me wonder how I would have felt about Pip if I had first read GE when a teenager. I wonder if I would have thought of him as a star, nice, great, etc. I certainly don't think of him like that right now.

[Peacejanz]

I agree. And GE is required reading in many US high schools now - good European/Internatioal fiction. peace, janz

[Tristram]

Kim wrote: "Peacejanz wrote: "I agree - I was tryiing to explain to my brother that I was angered?frustrated? with Pip and his mean attitudes - my brother (71 now - probably read GE 55 years ago) swore to me t..."

I first read the book when I was about 15 years old and I remember that I actually shared Pip's excitement about the unhoped-for prospects. It seemed more like a fairy tale to me than a story of inner maturation and of lost opportunities.

[Kim]

"True, I had no Avenger in my service now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, "

So where is the Avenger, does anyone know?

[Peter]

Kim wrote: ""True, I had no Avenger in my service now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, "

So where is the Avenger, does anyone k..."

Kim

Good question. I can’t recall anything being said.

[Kim]

So Peter, you are the one I go to whenever I need an explanation for the illustrations I find but don't get. Explain these please: