Two days ago I taped, and today (Wednesday) I watched, the last two hours of this miniseries on WETA Public TV. It starts out with the grown-man Pip, around 17-years-old, coming to London in a carriage and entering the area of the Courts to see Mr. Jagger (played by David Suchet). Mr. Jagger instructs him that every Friday all the young men who are enrolled in "great expectations" will come to him to receive their weekly allowance, until their coming of age, presumably 21-years-old. Pip's personal benefactor's identity will not be revealed until he or she chooses to do that.
Pip first learns how to dance in the ballroom by dancing with his male room-mate. Pip joins an exclusive club, where he is introduced to drinking alcohol and smoking. Some of the other young men are members of that club. After some weeks, Pip's blacksmith brother-in-law comes to the club and sees Pip in a run-down state due to the drinking and smoking and reflects back to Pip how he appears. "You're ashamed," he says.
Pip goes to see Mr. Jagger on one of his weekly meetings and Jagger says, "you have a lot of bills. Debt is debt". Pip also visits Miss Havisham's estate once a week. She says to him, "Estella requires an escort to London and I am keen to see your transformation first hand." Pip tells his friend, "I am in love with Estella." His friend expresses doubts that marrying Estella is a good idea for Pip. One of the young men, Bentley Drummle, in speaking to Pip, runs down the reputation of Pip's friend.
Pip goes to a dance or a ball. Pip makes a deal with a businessman. Young women are gossiping at the ball. Estella doesn't like the gossiping. Pip accepts an invitation from Bentley Drummle to come to "another sort of club," which turns out to be a house of prostitution. When Pip finds that out, he walks out of the big house. Bentley Drummle says, "you're not one of us, and you know I know."
Pip goes on a picnic with Estella and her girl-friend-chaperone. Estella wades into the water. Pip wades in after her and kisses her, but Estella immediately leaves the water and wants to go back home. Back at Miss Havisham's estate, Estella says to Pip, "she (Miss Havisham) wants me to love her. I cannot love her; I don't have a heart." To Miss Havisham, Estella says: "You made me like this."
Pip's older sister died and Pip goes there to visit the blacksmith brother-in-law. Later, Pip says to him, "I can't stay here, I'm going to London to take Estella to the ball. Estella dances with Pip and then another man dances gaily with Estella in a fast dance. Estella goes back home from the dance escorted by Pip. Estella seems to already know that the fast dance man will marry somebody else that summer.
Somebody tells Pip that he will reach his Legal Age soon. While Pip is sleeping in his bed, Magwitch, the escaped convict that Pip met in the first hour, comes in, empties a bag of paper money on the floor, and says he is the benefactor. Pip cannot believe that Magwitch is the benefactor. Magwitch is being kind to Pip, because Pip, as a boy, gave him a piece of mutton pie when he was most in need of it---during his escape. Magwitch had gone to New South Wales, Australia, where he worked in sheep ranching and earned a huge fortune. Later, with a crestfallen heart, Pip hears that the convict is even now on the run from the law, and that if he is caught, he could be put to death. Around London the police put a thousand pound price on his head for his capture.
Later, Pip cannot believe that Bentley Drummle is about to marry Estella. Estella says to Pip, "everybody is meant to love me, but I don't love back. I told you I'd make you cry; if only you'd listen."
One of the high points of this movie is when Magwitch discovers that, instead of his daughter being dead as he was told years before by Jagger, he finds out from Pip that Estella is his true daughter and is alive. By this time, Magwitch had been severely injured while trying to escape to Australia. He dies more peacefully with Pip watching over him. One of the major themes of this movie is that it is better for the truth to be told, than secrets to be buried and hidden for years.
Another important theme of this movie and book is the importance of forgiveness:
Pip goes to Miss Havisham's estate.
Miss Havisham: "Estella left me."
Pip: "I could have made Estella happy!"
Miss Havisham: "I wanted to hurt you. Forgive me!"
Pip: "I forgive you, Miss Havisham."
(Bentley Drummle accidentally dies while trying to ride an aggressive horse.)
Here is an excerpt from Dickens' book from Sparknotes.com :
Finally, Estella’s long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop along the same lines as Pip—that is, she learns, through experience, to rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to Pip, “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.”
From Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia:
To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often cruel working conditions deeply impressed Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigors of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He would later write that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age." . . . . . . . .
Although Dickens eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London, his mother Elizabeth Dickens did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory. The incident may have done much to confirm Dickens's view that a father should rule the family, a mother find her proper sphere inside the home. "I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back." His mother's failure to request his return was no doubt a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women. . . . . . . . .
In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play The Frozen Deep, which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell deeply in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan, which was to last the rest of his life. He then separated from his wife, Catherine, in 1858 – divorce was still unthinkable for someone as famous as he was.
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