Chapter Summary.

Chapter 3 of Great Expectations concluded with Pip slipping off from meeting the escaped prisoner on the marshes and delivering food and a file to him. Chapter 4 begins with Pip back at home, wracked with guilt, and expecting to find a constable waiting for him but no one appears to have noticed the ‘robbery‘. Mrs. Joe asks Pip where he has been and he tells her he went to hear Carols. Preparations are being made for the Christmas Day dinner, consisting of ‘pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls‘, along with a ‘handsome mince-pie‘. Pip and Joe visit Church, where Pip feels even more guilt, returning to find the dinner table prepared. The Gargery’s are joined at the forge for Christmas dinner with Mr. Wopsle (the church clerk), Mr. Hubble (the wheelwright) and his wife, Mrs. Hubble, and Mr. Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle and local seed merchant). Pip humourously describes some of the eccentric appearances and mannerisms of the guests. Sat down to dinner at a cramped kitchen table, the guests turn on Pip with their moralistic conversation so much that he compares himself to ‘an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena‘. At the end of the main course, Mrs. Joe suggests Pumblechook has a brandy. Pip, with worry, watches as he drinks it before jumping up out of his seat, and the house, in a coughing fit before shouting out ‘Tar!‘. Pip tells the reader that he topped up the brandy he took (to the escaped convict) with tar water. Pumblechook dismisses Mrs. Joe’s worrying about how it got there, much to Pip’s relief. Mrs. Joe suggests that her guests taste a savoury pork-pie, given by Pumblechook. Pip (who took the pie) can’t bear his worry anymore and bolts for the door in fear of being discovered. As he does so, he runs right into a party of musket-carrying soldiers standing at the Gargery doorstep. Chapter 4 ends with one of the soldiers holding out a pair of handcuffs to a guilt-ridden Pip.

Quotations.

What I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within.

Great Expectations (Chapter 4).

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Great Expectations (Chapter 4).

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.

Great Expectations (Chapter 4).

A large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked.

Great Expectations (Chapter 4).

A tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.

Great Expectations (Chapter 4).

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses.

Great Expectations (Chapter 4).

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Great Expectations (Chapter 4).