Online Exhibition: Character Sketches from the World of Charles Dickens
This exhibition celebrates one of the most enduring legacies of Charles Dickens's genius: the unforgettable characters he brought to life.
Pip is the narrator and central figure of the novel. “My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Great Expectations.
Joe Gargery’s first wife is actually Pip’s sister, who bullies both Joe and Pip mercilessly. Pip describes her as having “such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg grater instead of soap.”
FOC Darley. Illustrations from the Household Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens.
Abel Magwitch escapes from a prison ship docked in the marshes near Pip’s house. He encounters Pip and demands that he bring him food and a file to break his chains. Magwitch becomes rich after escaping to Australia and becomes Pip’s secret benefactor.
F. W. Pailthorpe. Illustrations to Great Expectations, 1885.
Joe Gargery is Pip’s blacksmith brother-in-law, who tries to protect Pip from the raging Mrs. Joe. “He was a mild good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow — a sort of Hercules in strength and also in weakness.”
FOC Darley. Illustrations from the Household Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens
A once-beautiful heiress who was jilted at the altar, Miss Havisham has lived ever since in her bridal gown. “I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Great Expectations.
Jaggers is a lawyer employed by both Miss Havisham and Magwitch. Pip receives the benefits of his great expectations through Jaggers. “He was a burly man with an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a correspondingly large hand.”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Great Expectations.
John Wemmick is Jaggers’s law clerk, who befriends Pip and Herbert Pocket and helps them as they try to smuggle Magwitch out of the country. “I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen…”
Kyd. Illustrations of Character s in Dickens's Great Expectations.