Summary: Chapter 47
Pip anxiously waits for Wemmick’s signal to transport
Magwitch downriver. Despite his softening attitude toward the convict,
he feels morally obligated to refuse to spend any more of Magwitch’s money,
and his debts pile up. He realizes that Estella’s marriage to Drummle
must have taken place by now, but he intentionally avoids learning
more about it. All of his worries are for Magwitch.
Pip goes to the theater to forget his troubles. After
the performance, Wopsle tells Pip that in the audience behind him
was one of the convicts from the battle on the marsh so many years
ago. Pip tries to question Wopsle calmly, but inside he is terrified,
realizing that Compeyson must be shadowing him. Pip rushes home
to tell Herbert and Wemmick.
Summary: Chapter 48
Jaggers invites Pip to dinner, where he gives the young
man a note from Miss Havisham. When Jaggers mentions Estella’s marriage shortly
after Jaggers’s housekeeper Molly walks in, Pip realizes that Molly
is the person he couldn’t place, the person Estella mysteriously
resembles. He realizes at once that Molly must be Estella’s mother.
Walking home with Wemmick after the dinner, Pip questions his friend
about Molly, and he learns that she was accused of killing a woman
over her common-law husband and of murdering her little daughter
to hurt him. Pip feels certain that Estella is that lost daughter.
Summary: Chapter 49
Pip visits Miss Havisham, who feels unbearably guilty
for having caused Estella to break his heart. Sobbing, she clings
to Pip’s feet, pleading with him to forgive her. He acts kindly
toward her, then goes for a walk in the garden. There, he has a
morbid fantasy that Miss Havisham is dead. He looks up at her window
just in time to see her bend over the fire and go up in a column
of flame. Rushing in to save her, Pip sweeps the ancient wedding
feast from her table and smothers the flames with the tablecloth.
Miss Havisham lives, but she becomes an invalid, a shadow of her
former self. Pip stays with her after the doctors have departed;
early the next morning, he leaves her in the care of her servants
and returns to London.
Summary: Chapter 50
Pip himself was badly burned trying to save Miss Havisham,
and while Herbert changes his bandages, they agree that they have
both grown fonder of Magwitch. Herbert tells Pip the part of Magwitch’s story
that the convict originally left out, the story of the woman in his
past. The story matches that of Jaggers’s housekeeper, Molly. Magwitch,
therefore, is Molly’s former common-law husband and Estella’s father.
Summary: Chapter 51
Pip is seized by a feverish conviction to learn the whole
truth. He visits Jaggers and manages to shock the lawyer by proclaiming
that he knows the truth of Estella’s parentage. Pip cannot convince
Jaggers to divulge any information, however, until he appeals to
Wemmick’s human, kind side, the side that until now Wemmick has
never shown in the office. Jaggers is so surprised and pleased to
learn that Wemmick has a pleasant side that he confirms that Estella
is Molly’s daughter, though he didn’t know Magwitch’s role in the
story.
