The Ending & Pip's Redemption
Magwitch’s Capture and Trial
After Magwitch’s return, Pip faces a moral choice: does he help the convict escape, or abandon him? Despite his initial revulsion, Pip’s compassion wins. He, Herbert, and Startop plan to smuggle Magwitch down the Thames and onto a foreign steamer. But Compeyson, who has been tracking Magwitch, alerts the authorities. In the dramatic river chase, Compeyson and Magwitch grapple in the water. Compeyson drowns; Magwitch is recaptured, badly injured.
Magwitch’s trial is swift and merciless. As a returned transportee, he faces automatic execution. Dickens describes the courtroom scene with devastating irony: thirty-two prisoners, Magwitch among them, are sentenced to death, and the judge delivers the sentence while sunlight streams through the courtroom windows — a cruel contrast between the beauty of the natural world and the brutality of human justice.
Pip stands by Magwitch throughout his trial, holding his hand in the courtroom. This is a crucial reversal — the man Pip once recoiled from in horror is now someone he openly acknowledges. Pip’s loyalty here marks the completion of his moral education.
Magwitch’s Death: Chapter 56
Magwitch dies in prison before the sentence can be carried out, with Pip at his bedside. In his final moments, Pip tells him that the daughter he believed was dead is alive — she is Estella, and “she is a lady and very beautiful.” Magwitch kisses Pip’s hand and dies peacefully. Pip then whispers a prayer: “O Lord, be merciful to him, a sinner!”
This scene completes the transformation of Pip’s attitude. The boy who was once terrified by Magwitch, the young man who was revolted by him, now loves him. Dickens uses Magwitch’s death to deliver one of the novel’s most powerful messages: that compassion matters more than class, and that the people society condemns may be more deserving of love than those it elevates.
Pip discovers that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and Molly (Jaggers’ housekeeper). This revelation is the novel’s final irony. Estella, who was raised to despise the common and the coarse, is herself the child of a convict. Miss Havisham’s weapon of revenge against men was, unknowingly, the daughter of the criminal underclass she considered beneath her. Dickens uses this revelation to demolish the idea that class is inherent — Estella’s supposed superiority was manufactured, not born.
Pip’s Illness and Joe’s Care
After Magwitch’s death, Pip collapses with a serious fever. He is delirious for weeks, and when he finally wakes, he finds Joe sitting at his bedside, nursing him back to health. Joe has come to London without being asked, despite everything Pip has done to push him away. He calls Pip “old chap” and tends to him with the same quiet, unconditional love he showed when Pip was a child.
As Pip recovers, Joe begins calling him “Sir” again — the formal distance returning as Pip regains strength. Joe then slips away before Pip can thank him properly, paying off Pip’s debts before he goes. Dickens makes clear that Joe’s love is the one constant in Pip’s life. Unlike every other relationship in the novel, Joe’s affection does not depend on wealth, class, or gratitude — it is simply given, freely and completely.
Joe nurses Pip back to health without being asked and pays off his debts, then quietly leaves before Pip can properly thank him. Dickens presents Joe as the moral heart of the novel — his love is unconditional and unchanging, regardless of how Pip has treated him.
The Two Endings
Dickens wrote two endings for Great Expectations. In the original ending, Pip meets Estella briefly on a London street. She has remarried after Drummle’s death, and they exchange polite words before parting forever. It is bleak but realistic — Pip has learned his lesson, and there is no fairy-tale reward.
In the revised ending — the one Dickens actually published, after persuasion from his friend Bulwer-Lytton — Pip returns to the ruined site of Satis House and meets Estella there. She has been changed by suffering: “I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.” The novel’s final line — “I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place” — is deliberately ambiguous. Are they together? Are they simply leaving the past behind?
Critics have debated which ending is superior ever since the novel was published. The original ending is arguably more consistent with the novel’s themes — Pip has learned that obsessive love is destructive, so rewarding him with Estella would undermine the lesson. The revised ending, however, suggests that both characters have been transformed by suffering and can now relate to each other as equals. The ambiguity of “I saw no shadow of another parting from her” can be read either as hope or as Pip’s continued self-delusion.
In the exam, you can discuss either ending — but if you discuss the revised ending, show awareness that it is ambiguous, not a straightforward happy ending. This demonstrates sophisticated reading (AO1).
Pip’s Redemption: “Into a Better Shape”
By the novel’s end, Pip has lost his fortune, his status, and his illusions. But Dickens presents this as liberation, not punishment. Pip returns to Joe and Biddy at the forge, only to find they have married. He is too late to make amends — but he accepts this with grace rather than self-pity. He goes abroad to work honestly for Herbert’s trading firm, and over eleven years, he pays off his debts through his own labour.
Dickens’ message is clear: true redemption is earned through suffering and honest work, not given through inherited wealth. Estella’s line — “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching” — captures the novel’s core argument. The “great expectations” of the title were always an illusion; what matters is the person you become through hardship, not the person wealth allows you to pretend to be.