Confronting Miss Havisham

Pip finds Miss Havisham and Estella in the lit room at Satis House. He speaks plainly to Miss Havisham: he knows she is not his benefactor; he knows she allowed him to believe she was; he wants her to understand that people who trusted her have been damaged by the misapprehension she permitted. Miss Havisham, visibly disturbed, does not deny the charge. She expresses something that looks, for the first time, like genuine remorse.

Pip then turns to Estella and confesses his love — not in the oblique, half-formed way of his earlier declarations, but clearly and fully. He tells her he loves her, has always loved her, and will go on loving her regardless of what she says or does. Estella receives this with what Pip cannot help recognizing as genuine feeling — not the feeling he wants, but something real. She is sorry. She cannot help what she has been made. And she is going to marry Bentley Drummle.

The announcement undoes what remained of Pip's composure. He argues; she listens; she does not change her answer. She explains that she is not under illusions about Drummle — she knows exactly what he is — but that she has no better or worse option available, since she cannot love anyone and Drummle at least does not ask her to. Pip walks out into the dark and the misery of the walk back to London that night is one of the most honestly described passages in the novel.