What happens in Chapter IV of Great Expectations?
Chapter IV opens on Christmas morning with Pip returning home to find no Constable waiting and no mention of the pantry robbery. Mrs. Joe is busy preparing a grand Christmas dinner and scolds Pip for being late, saying she would have liked to hear the Carols herself. Joe discreetly signals to Pip with crossed fingers, indicating that Mrs. Joe is in a foul mood — their usual private code. Breakfast consists of hurried slices of bread and quick gulps of milk and water. Joe and Pip are dressed in their Sunday best for church, with Joe looking like "a scarecrow in good circumstances." During the service, Pip struggles with his secret, briefly contemplating confessing during the reading of the banns. The dinner guests arrive: Mr. Wopsle, the church clerk, Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and Uncle Pumblechook, who brings his customary bottles of sherry and port. At dinner, the adults take turns lecturing Pip — comparing him unfavorably to swine, recounting his childhood ailments, and insisting he should be grateful. Joe quietly adds gravy to Pip's plate as a silent gesture of comfort. When Pumblechook is offered brandy, Pip panics, realizing he had swapped the brandy with tar-water; Pumblechook takes a sip, jumps up in convulsions, and exclaims "Tar!" He quickly brushes off the incident and demands gin and water, temporarily sparing Pip from trouble. The situation escalates when Mrs. Joe announces she will serve Pumblechook's gift — a savory pork pie — and heads to the pantry. Pip bolts for the door and collides with a group of soldiers brandishing a pair of handcuffs.
Analysis
The chapter unfolds with a gradual buildup of dread, transitioning from the relief of an undiscovered robbery to a series of near-exposures that heighten the tension. Dickens expertly creates suspense through repetition and delay: the tar-water scene stretches out Pip's anxiety over several paragraphs as Pumblechook "trifled with his glass," with each small action — looking through the light, setting it down, smiling — amplifying the boy's fear before the explosive moment finally arrives. A central motif in this chapter is the table leg, which Pip clings to with growing desperation; it serves as a comic yet pathetic anchor, the only solid presence in a world filled with moral judgments and looming disaster.
The dinner-table scenes are sharp satirical moments. The adults put on a show of virtue rather than truly embodying it: Mr. Wopsle recites grace "like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third," while the guests' moralizing about gratitude and pigs reveals their self-serving cruelty, highlighted by the narrator's dry comments ("I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy"). Uncle Pumblechook is depicted with "a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes," and his identical Christmas Day ritual turns him into a comic automaton.
Joe’s quiet act of spooning gravy becomes the chapter’s most touching moment, a silent gesture of solidarity that stands in stark contrast to the adults' over-the-top moralizing. The chapter concludes on a cliffhanger that shifts Pip's sense of guilt: the soldiers with handcuffs arrive just as the empty pie dish is about to be found, merging two disparate threats into one chilling image.
Key quotes from Chapter IV
“Joe and I would often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to their legs.”
The narrator describes how frequently he and Joe exchanged the crossed-fingers signal for Mrs. Joe's cross temper.
““What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.””
Mr. Wopsle pronounces this moral at the dinner table, pointing his fork at Pip while lecturing about swine.
“I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn’t know how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow.”
Pip's panicked inner reaction after Pumblechook springs up in convulsions from drinking the tar-water.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter IV
- contumaciously
- In a stubbornly defiant or rebellious way, refusing to comply with what is expected or demanded of one.