Great Expectations
Chapter 13 Summary
Pip opens his heart to Biddy.
Pip continues to visit Miss Havisham on his birthday. Pip admits that he, “continued at heart to
hate [his] trade and to be ashamed of home” (715).
Pip notices a change in Biddy nothing that “her shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright
and neat, her hands were always clean. She was not beautiful—she was common, and could not
be like Estella—but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered” (715). Do you
predict that Pip could ever like Biddy?
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He confesses to Biddy that he wants “to be a gentleman” (715) because he is “disgusted with
[his] calling and with [his] life” (716). What is a gentleman and why would Pip want to
become one?
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Pip knows he could have settle down and continue to become a blacksmith and might even have
wound up marrying Biddy, but he wants to have a better life because he is unhappy being
“coarse and common” (716). How would you predict this makes Biddy feel?
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Biddy tells Pip that whoever told him he was common is very rude, and Pip goes on to say that it
was “the beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s, and she’s more beautiful than anybody ever
was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account” (716).
Biddy, although disappointed in Pip’s unhappiness, is happy that he felt that he could confide in
her. Pip tells her that he will always tell her everything.
Pip notes that Biddy was “never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy today and somebody else
tomorrow; she would have derived only pain, and no pleasure, from giving me pain” (717).
Explain from this quote and the previous conversation, how Pip feels that Biddy and
Estella are different.
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Pip and Biddy come across Orlick as they are walking. Biddy admits that she does not like
Orlick, but she is afraid he likes her. Pip notes that he “kept an eye on Orlick after that night.”
What type of mood do we get when Orlick is discussed in the novel and the movie?
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Pip notes, “At times, I would decide that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone,
and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company with
Biddy—when all in a moment some remembrance of the Havisham days would fall upon me and
scatter my wits again” (717). Explain what Pip is feeling. What literary technique is this an
example of?
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