Chapters 40 to 49 — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Chapters 40 to 49
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The third stage: hiding Magwitch, his story and Compeyson's, Estella's choice of Drummle and Pip's declaration of love,
the warning not to go home, Estella's mother found in Molly, and Miss Havisham's repentance and the fire.
Key quotations: 'The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me', 'I'll show a better gentleman than the whole kit on you put together!', 'He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson', 'I am going to be married to him', 'You are part of my existence, part of myself', 'sitting behind you there like a ghost', 'I looked at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair', 'What have I done! What have I done!', 'I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her', 'Take the pencil and write under my name'.
Structure: how the secrets of the novel's past (Compeyson, Miss Havisham's jilting and Estella's parentage) come together in these chapters.
Context: Compeyson the gentleman swindler, and why his looks and schooling earned him a lighter sentence than Magwitch's.
