Great Expectations: The two endings.

There is more to the ending of Great Expectations than one would gather from simply reading the book. The published ending of Great Expectations was in fact Dickens’ second attempt at an ending for the novel.

The original ending of Great Expectations takes place two years after Pip’s conversation with Biddy in which he confides that he has “forgotten nothing” about Estella. Before the dialogue between the pair begins, Pip tells us Drummle treated Estella with “great cruelty” throughout their marriage however they are now separated due to Drummle’s death. We also discover that she has remarried to a country doctor in Shropshire. The “interview” takes place whilst Pip is “walking along Piccadilly with little Pip”; they shake hands and converse briefly of their current situations. Estella thinks Pip has moved on after assuming Joe and Biddy’s child is Pip’s and tells that she is “greatly changed”. Pip sees that for Estella “suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching and had given her a heart to understand” what his heart used to be.

Dickens changed this originally conceived ending after a fellow novelist and friend argued the ending was too disappointing for the reader who would want a ‘happy ending’. To satisfy the reader Dickens changed the ending and it was now situated at Satis house when “the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark”. There Pip sees the silhouette of a woman and later discovers that it is Estella. The pair reminisces on old times and discovers that it was a huge coincidence that they were both at Satis House since neither had visited in a long time. It could be argued that ‘fete’ had brought them together. Estella tells Pip that she is now owner of the derelict Satis House and she says ironically that it is the only good thing she has done despite the fact it was the very thing that