Joe has died. He returns home at once for the funeral. He meets Pumblechook, who continues to fawn over him irritatingly. He tries to mend his relations with Joe and Biddy; Biddy is skeptical of his pledges to visit more often.
Pip says goodbye to them the next morning, truly intending to visit more often, and walks away into the mist. These chapters cover a dark and humiliating time for Pip. He is humiliated in no fewer than four important scenes in this section. Second, he is frightened by the convicts in the coach, who remind him of his childhood encounter on the marsh. The difference between Pip the character and Pip the narrator becomes clear here.
As a character, Pip is in the grip of his immediate emotions, but as a narrator, he has the capacity to look at his life from a broader perspective and to judge himself. Dickens uses that contrast well, giving Pip the wisdom of hindsight without sacrificing the immediacy of his story.
More than anyone else except for Joe, Mrs. Joe raised Pip, and her death marks an important point in his maturation toward adulthood and the development of his character. He tries to rectify his behavior toward his lower-class loved ones, but they are skeptical of his promises to improve, and with good reason. Pip really does mean to visit them more, as he promises Biddy in Chapter 35 , but when he leaves, he walks into the rising mists, which symbolize ambiguity and confusion throughout Great Expectations ; even he knows he is unlikely to honor his promise.
At the end of the novel, Herbert marries Clara who is almost the exact opposite of Estella and sets up in business abroad. Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations. Herbert, like Joe, is a true friend.
He looks after Pip when he first comes to London and is never openly critical even when he sees Pip getting things wrong. Herbert also extends his friendship and support to Magwitch.
He also looks at others in a new light, acknowledging that the firm's success is due to Herbert's talents and that his original opinion of Herbert's ineptness was really his own ineptness showing. The secret of Pip setting Herbert up in business is revealed, leaving only one secret left at the end of the story that Pip holds in his heart — Estella's parentage. Dickens never does say whether the final secret of Estella's parentage is ever revealed.
Most likely, Pip takes it to his grave. Dickens provided two endings to this story. The original ending had Estella remarried to a Shropshire doctor, meeting Pip once in London and exchanging pleasantries, and then each going their separate ways. Dickens' own life had a precedent for this when he met his first love, Maria Beadnell, many years later in his life. By then she was very fat and his image of her was crushed.
Certainly here Dickens has Estella losing some of her beauty and wearied a bit by life. But overall he treats Estella kindly. Dickens, instead, took the advice of a novelist friend and changed the ending to give Pip, Estella, and the readers a chance for a happy conclusion. However, the ending is ambiguous and no one is certain if the "shadow of no parting" means they stay together or not. Previous Chapters Next Pip.
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