Great Expectations Study Guide- Chapters 23-31
Chapter 23
1. What is Herbert's father's chief fault? Why is he especially suitable to educate Pip?
2. In what way are Mrs. Pocket and Pip alike?
3. How do Drummle and Startop differ?
Vocabulary: “grinder" = private teacher or tutor of children of the rich; “blades" = fashionable young men; "baronet" = hereditary aristocratic title above the degree of knight, although both are addressed as “Sir" followed by Christian and surname.
Chapter 24
Note: The Old Bailey was London's criminal court.
1. What kind of training is Mr. Pocket to give Pip?
2. What earlier impressions of Jaggers are confirmed?
3. What is Wemmick's highly pragmatic philosophy?
Chapter 25
The Gothic Revival in architecture was at its height in the 1860s.
1. What does Pip share with Herbert besides the Barnard's Inn Chambers and the home in Hammersmith?
2. What other side of Wemmick does Pip find at his Walworth “Castle"?
Vocabulary: “Cracksmen" are housebreakers or burglars; “Britannia metal" is a cheap substitute for silver; “Walworth," now absorbed into Greater London, was still a village in the mid-nineteenth century; "Greenwich time" is the standard for British time, calculated from the meridian running through the Greenwich Observatory.
Chapter 26
1. What is Jaggers' warning to Pip concerning Drummle?
2. What is mysterious about Molly?
3. Why does Jaggers take such a liking of Drummle?
Chapter 27
1. Why is Joe's visit not a success?
2. Why does Joe come to London?
3. Consider the quote spoken by Joe at the bottom of pg. 223 starting with “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings.” What about this quote makes Pip rush into the streets after Joe only to find he is gone?
Chapter 28
A “Half-way House" is a roadside inn that is the mid-point of a coach journey. Dickens may mean the Earl of Warwick at Welling, Kent.
1. Who is re-introduced in this chapter, and what important conversation does Pip overhear on the coach?
2. Who is famous in his hometown as Pip's earliest companion, patron and friend? What is Pip's attitude to this supposed fact?
Chapter 29
"Tag and Rag and Bobtail"--a mob or rabble wearing ragged clothes.
1. Why does Pip say he loves Estella?
2. Who is Miss Havisham’s porter?
3. How does the reunion of Pip and Estella go?
4. What does Pip keep noticing about Estella as he looks at her?
5. Why does Pip “cry again inwardly” (237)?
6. According to Estella, what doesn’t she have?
7. What does Pip tell Miss Havisham to do regarding Estella?
8. What does Pip admit at the very end of this chapter regarding Joe?
Chapter 30
1. How did Pip “get even with" Orlick?
2. When Pip confesses his adoration of Estella to Herbert, what is Herbert’s advice to Pip?
3. How does Herbert’s love life contrast with that of Pip’s?
4. Why does Pip refer to the codfish and barrel of oysters he sends to Joe as “penitential"?
Vocabulary: “sour grapes" is an allusion to a fable by the Greek Aesop (c. 620-c. 560 BC) in which a fox consoles himself for a crow's unwillingness to help him obtain a bunch of grapes. The term indicates Herbert's wide reading, and suggests that he feels Pip is deluding himself about being intended for Estella.
Chapter 31
1. How does Pip's night at the theatre only increase his anxieties instead of assuaging them?