Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Great Expectations, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Class
Ambition and Self-Improvement
Integrity and Reputation
Parents
Justice
Generosity
Summary
Analysis
Pip describes his peers, Bentley Drummle and Startop. Bentley Drummle is stupid, "idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious." Startop has been spoiled and made effeminate by an overprotective mother, but Pip much prefers his company to Drummle's. His best friend is Herbert.
Bentley Drummle may be a gentleman by birth but he definitely does not possess a noble heart.
Themes
A few weeks later, Pip arranges to take Wemmick up on his dinner invitation to Walworth. They meet at Mr. Jaggers' office and Wemmick describes some of Mr. Jaggers' personal habits to Pip: Mr. Jaggers' never locks his doors or windows at night and carries a massive, expensive gold watch, yet Mr. Jaggers is so infamous among thieves in London, that no one would ever be brave enough to rob him.
Mr. Jaggers is proud of his reputation and flaunts it among criminal circles in London. At the same time, it is suggestive about the brutal nature of the law that a lawyer, an agent of the law, can become more feared than the lawbreakers themselves.
Themes
Pip and Wemmick walk to Walworth, which is an eccentric, tiny imitation-Gothic cottage with a drawbridge, a flagstaff, a gun, and livestock. Wemmick is proud of building everything himself. Inside, he introduces Pip to his near-deaf father, the Aged, to whom Wemmick is tenderly devoted. Wemmick's manner at Walmouth is jovial and warm. He explains to Pip that he keeps "office life" and "private life" completely separate, and that Mr. Jaggers has never heard of Walworth. Walking back to Little Britain from Walworth the next morning, Pip notices that Wemmick's facial expression stiffens as he nears the office.
Wemmick's house may be modeled on Gothic period architecture but he has built it all himself in the Victorian era. The house is a model of self-sufficiency and self-improvement. In order to protect his reputation for dispassionate, rational professionalism in the office, Wemmick maintains two personalities. He is as tender and domestic at home as he is cold and business-minded in the office.
Themes
