Chapter Summary.

Pip has been helping Magwitch make plans to flee, but before he travels abroad resolves (Chapter 43) to visit Miss Havisham and Estella. In Chapter 44, Pip turns up at Satis House where he comes across a scene of domesticity, Miss Havisham sitting by the fire watching Estella, seated on a cushion at her feet, knitting. Pip tells Estella, with Miss Havisham present, that he is ‘as unhappy as you can ever have meant me to be‘, and that he has discovered his real benefactor, but it is an unfortunate discovery. Pip confronts Miss Havisham for leading him to believe she was the benefactor of his fortune. Striking her stick with anger, Miss Havisham tells Pip ‘who am I, for God’s sake, that I should be kind?‘ Havisham insists that Pip ‘made your own snares‘. Pip asks Miss Havisham to continue to help Herbert Pocket. He pleads with her not to marry Drummle but she is unmoved, telling him that ‘I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it‘. She tells him he will forget her soon enough, but Pip confesses his love to Estella, telling her ‘you have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with‘. Disillusioned with his visit to Kent and not wanting to see Drummle again at the local inn, Pip returns early to London on foot, arriving after midnight. The chapter ends in a cliffhanger when Pip is handed a note, from Wemmick, warning him not to go home.

Quotations.

I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant me to be.

Great Expectations (Chapter 44).

Who am I, for God’s sake, that I should be kind?

Great Expectations (Chapter 44).

You made your own snares. I never made them.

Great Expectations (Chapter 44).

I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it.

Great Expectations (Chapter 44).

You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.

Great Expectations (Chapter 44). Pip professes his life-long attraction for Estella.