What happens in Chapter XX of Great Expectations?
Pip arrives in London on a four-horse stagecoach, entering the city at the Cross Keys on Wood Street, Cheapside. While he's struck by the size of London, he privately considers it ugly, crooked, and dirty. A hackney coachman takes him the short distance to Mr. Jaggers's offices in Little Britain, near Smithfield. The coachman seems uneasy about Jaggers, charges him a shilling, and leaves with a noticeable sigh of relief. Inside, a clerk tells Pip that Jaggers is in court and asks him to wait in Jaggers's inner room, where a one-eyed man named Mike is already seated. Mike is soon shown out, leaving Pip alone to absorb the unsettling surroundings: a skylight, odd items like a rusty pistol and a sword in its scabbard, and two swollen-faced casts on a shelf, along with a black horsehair chair surrounded by brass nails, which reminds him of a coffin. Feeling overwhelmed by the atmosphere, Pip steps outside to check out Smithfield's grimy meat market, then walks past Newgate Prison, where a shabby court official offers to show him the gallows and mentions that four condemned men will be hanged the day after tomorrow. As Pip heads back to Bartholomew Close, he notices a crowd of anxious clients waiting for Jaggers, all clearly in awe of his power. When Jaggers arrives, he quickly dismisses each person who approaches him, making it clear that settling accounts with his clerk Wemmick is the only business he intends to handle. Back in the office, Jaggers reveals Mike's attempt to produce a coached witness, and then informs Pip during a standing lunch that he will stay at Barnard's Inn with young Mr. Pocket, visit Mr. Pocket's father on Monday, and has been given a generous allowance along with tradesmen's credit cards. Jaggers's clerk Wemmick then leads Pip to his new destination.
Analysis
The chapter unfolds like a series of expanding circles as Pip moves from the coach to Jaggers's office, then to Smithfield, Newgate, Bartholomew Close, and back again, each place deepening his confusion. Dickens creates the atmosphere through accumulation: the hackney coach is described in absurd, degrading detail ("an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags"), while Jaggers's room is filled with precise details—like a pistol, a sword, odd boxes, and death masks—that make these items feel like trophies from a predatory profession. The two "dreadful casts" of "faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose" heighten the room's menace and capture Pip's attention until he feels compelled to leave.
Jaggers is introduced through his reputation even before he appears: the coachman's knowing wink, the clerk's air of "detrimental mastery," and the crowd's almost worshipful reverence ("O Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth") frame him as a figure with nearly supernatural power. When he finally arrives, his speech is completely commanding and dismissive; he avoids sharing information, routes all payments through Wemmick, and warns clients that he will abandon them if they speak out of turn. The Mike episode brings in dark humor: Jaggers reprimands the client for stating the obvious, while the clerk's whispered "Spooney!" emphasizes the gap between legal performance and reality.
The detour to Newgate introduces the gallows and public whipping as part of Pip's welcome to London, giving the city an atmosphere of institutionalized violence that sharply contrasts with the liberal allowance Jaggers casually dispenses moments later.
Key quotes from Chapter XX
““O Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!””
An excitable Jewish man performs a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post in Bartholomew Close while waiting for Jaggers to arrive.
“Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed chair was of deadly black horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin”
Pip describes the furniture of Jaggers's inner office while waiting alone for his guardian to return from court.
“Of course you’ll go wrong somehow, but that’s no fault of mine.”
Jaggers delivers this remark to Pip at the end of their meeting, after explaining the credit arrangements he has made.
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