CHAPTER 10 Great Expectations

Q: What happens in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

In Chapter 10, Pip asks Biddy to tutor him so he can become "uncommon," inspired by his visit to Satis House. Dickens provides a comic portrait of the chaotic evening school run by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, where almost no learning takes place. Later that Saturday, Pip goes to the Three Jolly Bargemen pub to collect Joe and encounters a mysterious stranger who questions Joe about Pip's identity and the nearby marshes. In a moment only Pip witnesses, the stranger stirs his rum-and-water with a file — the same file Pip once stole for the convict. Before leaving, the man gives Pip a shilling wrapped in paper that turns out to contain two one-pound notes, which Joe unsuccessfully tries to return.

Q: What is the significance of the file in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

The file is the most important symbol in Chapter 10. It is the same file Pip stole from Joe's forge in Chapter 2 to help the convict Magwitch escape his leg irons. When the mysterious stranger stirs his drink with it in full view of Pip — but hidden from Joe and Mr. Wopsle — it serves as a secret signal that this man knows about Pip's role in helping the convict. The file transforms from a forgotten childhood misdeed into a living reminder of guilt and complicity. It also foreshadows the hidden connection between Pip and Magwitch that will drive the novel's central plot. Pip is so disturbed that he dreams of the file "coming at me out of a door" as he tries to sleep.

Q: Why does the stranger give Pip money in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

The stranger gives Pip a shilling wrapped in two one-pound notes as a covert payment from the convict Magwitch, who feels indebted to the boy who brought him food and a file on the marshes. The money is Magwitch's way of repaying Pip's kindness, delivered through an intermediary so that the convict's identity remains hidden. Rather than bringing Pip joy, the money becomes a source of dread and guilt. Mrs. Joe seals the notes in an ornamental teapot, where they remain "a nightmare" to Pip for many nights. This gift foreshadows the much larger fortune Magwitch will later provide as Pip's secret benefactor — money that will similarly come tangled with moral complications.

Q: What themes are explored in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

Chapter 10 develops several of the novel's major themes. Social class and ambition appear as Pip resolves to become "uncommon" and seeks education as his path upward. Guilt and secrecy resurface when the stranger reveals the file, reminding Pip of his theft and his covert aid to a convict — an episode he describes as "the guiltily coarse and common thing." The theme of hidden benefactors and secret connections is introduced through the stranger's mysterious payment, which prefigures the revelation that Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pip's true patron. Finally, innocence versus experience runs through the chapter as Pip's childlike desire for self-improvement collides with the darker adult world of crime and concealment.

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THE felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself un- common was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pur- suance of this luminous conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr Wopale's great-aunt's at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her promise within five minutes.

The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr Wopsle's great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr Wopsle's great-aunt collected her energies, and made an in- discriminate totter at them with a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling-- that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circu- late, Mr Wopale's great-aunt fell into a state of coma; arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defuced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chump-end of some- thing), more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with ironmould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could -- or what we couldn't -- in a frightful chotus; Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was under- stood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that there was no prohibition against any pupil's entertaint-ng himself with a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of the little general shop in which the classes were holden -- and which was also Mr Wopale's great-aunt's sitting-room and bed-chamber -- being but faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers.r

It appeared to me that it would take time, to become uncommon under these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by im- parting some information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.

Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.

There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off. They had been there ever since I could remember, and had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about our country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it to account.

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly at these records, but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in com- pany with Mr Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with `Halloa, Pip, old chap!' and the moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.

He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he nodded again, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit down there.

But, as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of resort, I said `No, thank you, sir,' and fell into the space Joe made for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing at Joe, and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg -- in a very odd way, as it struck me.

`You was saying,' said the strange man, turning to Joe, `that you was a blacksmith.'

`Yes. I said it, you know,' said Joe.

`What'll you drink, Mr --- ? You didn't mention your name, by- the-bye.'

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. `What'll you drink, Mr Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?'

`Well,' said Joe, `to tell you the truth, I ain't much in the habit of drinking at anybody's expense but my own.'

`Habit? No,' returned the stranger, `but once and away, and on a Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr Gargery.'

`I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,' said Joe. `Rum.'

`Rum,' repeated the stranger. `And will the other gentleman originate a sentiment.'

`Rum,' said Mr Wopsle.

`Three Rums!' cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. `Glasses round!'

`This other gentleman,' observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr Wopsle, `is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out Our clerk at church.'

`Aha! ' said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. `The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with the graves round it!'

`That's it,' said Joe.

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a flapping broad-brimmed traveller's hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half-laugh, come into his face.

`I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards the river.'

`Most marshes is solitary,' said Joe.

`No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gipsies now or tramps or vagrants of any sort, out there?'

`No,' said Joe; `none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don't fi nd them, easy. Eh, Mr Wopsle?'

Mr Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented; but not warmly.

`Seems you have been out after such?' asked the stranger.

`Once,' returned Joe. `Not that we wanted to take them you understand; we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr Wopsle, and Pip. Didn't us, Pip?'

`Yes, Joe.'

The stranger looked at me again -- still cocking his eye, as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun -- and said, `He's a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?'

`Pip,' said Joe.

`Christened Pip ? '

`No, not christened Pip.'

`Surname Pip? '

`No,' said Joe, `it's a kind of a family name what he gave him- self wh en a infunt, and is called by.'

`Son of yours?'

`Well,' said Joe, meditatively -- not, of course, that it could be in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was discussed over pipes; `well -- no. No, he ain't.'

`Nevvy?' said the strange man.

`Well,' said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, `he is not -- no, not to deceive you, he is not -- my nevvy.'

`What the Blue Blazes is he?' asked the stranger. Which ap- peared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and Joe. Having his hand in, Mr Wopale finished off with a most terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, -- `as the poet says.'

And here I may remark that when Mr Wopsle referred to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who visited at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory process under similar circum- stances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to patronize me.

All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and bring me down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes observation, until the glasses of rum-and-water were brought; and then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.

It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb show, and was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum-and-water pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum-and-water pointedly at me. And he stirred it and he tasted it: not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with a file.

He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on his settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally about turnips.

There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a quiet pause before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on Saturdays than at other times. The half hour and the rum-and-water running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand.

`Stop half a moment, Mr Gargery,' said the strange man. `I think I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy shall have it.'

He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. `Yours!' said he. `Mind! Your own.'

I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look with his aiming eye -- no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it.

On the way home, if I had been in a humour for talking, the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr Wopsle parted from us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I was in a manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could think of nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented our- selves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual cir- cumstance to tell her about the bright shilling. `A bad un, I'll be bound,' said Mrs Joe triumphantly, `or he wouldn't have given it to the boy! Let's look at it.'

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. `But what's this?' said Mrs Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the paper. `Two One-Pound notes?'

Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle markets in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure that the man would not be there.

Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental tea-pot on the top of a press in the state parlour. There they remained, a night- mare to me, many and many a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts -- a feature in my low career that I had previoualy forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to aleep by thinking of Miss Havisham's, next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake.

Frequently Asked Questions about CHAPTER 10 from Great Expectations

What happens in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

In Chapter 10, Pip asks Biddy to tutor him so he can become "uncommon," inspired by his visit to Satis House. Dickens provides a comic portrait of the chaotic evening school run by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, where almost no learning takes place. Later that Saturday, Pip goes to the Three Jolly Bargemen pub to collect Joe and encounters a mysterious stranger who questions Joe about Pip's identity and the nearby marshes. In a moment only Pip witnesses, the stranger stirs his rum-and-water with a file — the same file Pip once stole for the convict. Before leaving, the man gives Pip a shilling wrapped in paper that turns out to contain two one-pound notes, which Joe unsuccessfully tries to return.

Who is the mysterious stranger at the Three Jolly Bargemen in Chapter 10?

The stranger is never named in Chapter 10, but he is clearly an emissary sent by the convict Magwitch. He is described as a "secret-looking man" with his head tilted to one side and one eye half shut, as though "taking aim at something with an invisible gun." He wears a broad-brimmed traveller's hat with a handkerchief tied over his head, concealing his hair. His pointed questions about the marshes, convicts, and Pip's name reveal that he has been sent to find Pip specifically. The file he uses to stir his drink is Joe's file — the one Pip stole from the forge to help the convict — confirming his connection to Magwitch.

What is the significance of the file in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

The file is the most important symbol in Chapter 10. It is the same file Pip stole from Joe's forge in Chapter 2 to help the convict Magwitch escape his leg irons. When the mysterious stranger stirs his drink with it in full view of Pip — but hidden from Joe and Mr. Wopsle — it serves as a secret signal that this man knows about Pip's role in helping the convict. The file transforms from a forgotten childhood misdeed into a living reminder of guilt and complicity. It also foreshadows the hidden connection between Pip and Magwitch that will drive the novel's central plot. Pip is so disturbed that he dreams of the file "coming at me out of a door" as he tries to sleep.

What role does education play in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

Education in Chapter 10 represents Pip's first concrete attempt at self-improvement after his humiliating visit to Satis House. However, Dickens uses the evening school as biting satire of working-class education in Victorian England. Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's school is a farce: students eat apples, stomp on each other's toes, and read from battered, illegible Bibles in a "frightful chorus," while the schoolmistress falls into a "state of coma" and wakes only to box a random student's ears. Genuine learning is impossible in this environment, which is why Pip must arrange private lessons with Biddy. The contrast between Pip's earnest desire to learn and the absurd school highlights how social mobility was blocked for the poor.

Why does the stranger give Pip money in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

The stranger gives Pip a shilling wrapped in two one-pound notes as a covert payment from the convict Magwitch, who feels indebted to the boy who brought him food and a file on the marshes. The money is Magwitch's way of repaying Pip's kindness, delivered through an intermediary so that the convict's identity remains hidden. Rather than bringing Pip joy, the money becomes a source of dread and guilt. Mrs. Joe seals the notes in an ornamental teapot, where they remain "a nightmare" to Pip for many nights. This gift foreshadows the much larger fortune Magwitch will later provide as Pip's secret benefactor — money that will similarly come tangled with moral complications.

What themes are explored in Chapter 10 of Great Expectations?

Chapter 10 develops several of the novel's major themes. Social class and ambition appear as Pip resolves to become "uncommon" and seeks education as his path upward. Guilt and secrecy resurface when the stranger reveals the file, reminding Pip of his theft and his covert aid to a convict — an episode he describes as "the guiltily coarse and common thing." The theme of hidden benefactors and secret connections is introduced through the stranger's mysterious payment, which prefigures the revelation that Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pip's true patron. Finally, innocence versus experience runs through the chapter as Pip's childlike desire for self-improvement collides with the darker adult world of crime and concealment.