Большие ожидания

Charles DICKENS

GREAT  

EXPECTATIONS

CLASSICAL LITERATURE

УДК 372.881.111.1
ББК 81.2 Англ 
 
Д45

ISBN 978-5-9925-1532-9

Диккенс, Чарльз.

Д45      Большие ожидания : книга для чтения на английском языке / Ч. Диккенс. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 
2021. — 480 с. — ( Classcical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1532-9.

Чарльз Диккенс — всемирно известный английский писатель, создатель множества живых образов. Роман «Большие 
ожидания» продолжает тему становления молодого человека. Диккенс рассказывает историю Пипа, мальчика-сироты 
из бедной семьи, которому выпадает шанс стать «настоящим 
джентельменом», историю о том, как случайная встреча может изменить всю жизнь. 
Диккенс часто объявлял стремление выбиться в «приличное» общество проклятьем страны, делающим людей 
рабами бездушной системы. Но возможность простого счастья и простых радостей существует, как существуют в романе герои, олицетворяющие собой доброту и достоинство.
В книге представлен неадаптированный сокращенный 
текст на языке оригинала, снабженный комментариями и 
словарем.

УДК 372.881.111.1 
ББК 81.2 Англ 

© КАРО, 2021
Все права защищены

Chapter I

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name 
Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer 
or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be 
called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his 
tombstone and my sister, — Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the 
blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never 
saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before 
the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they 
were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The 
shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he 
was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the 
character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of 
the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was 
freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot 
and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their 
grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of 
mine, — who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in 
that universal struggle, — I am indebted for a belief I religiously 
entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their 
hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out 
in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the 
river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and 
broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have 

been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At 
such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown 
with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of 
this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead 
and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, 
and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and 
buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, 
intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered 
cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line 
beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which 
the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of 
shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up 
from among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep 
still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. 
A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag 
tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and 
smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and 
stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, 
and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head 
as he seized me by the chin.
“Oh! Don’t cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don’t 
do it, sir.”
“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”
“Pip, sir.”
“Once more,” said the man, staring at me. “Give it mouth!”
“Pip. Pip, sir.”
“Show us where you live,” said the man. “Pint out the place!”
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among 
the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside 
down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a 
piece of bread. When the church came to itself, — for he was so 
sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, 

and I saw the steeple under my feet, — when the church came to 
itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he 
ate the bread ravenously.
“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips, “what fat cheeks 
you ha’ got.”
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized 
for my years, and not strong.
“Darn me if I couldn’t eat ‘em,” said the man, with a threatening 
shake of his head, “and if I han’t half a mind to’t!”
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held 
tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep 
myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.
“Now lookee here!” said the man. “Where’s your mother?”
“There, sir!” said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over 
his shoulder.
“There, sir!” I timidly explained. “Also Georgiana. That’s my 
mother.”
“Oh!” said he, coming back. “And is that your father alonger 
your mother?”
“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too; late of this parish.”
“Ha!” he muttered then, considering. “Who d’ye live with, — 
supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t made up my 
mind about?”
“My sister, sir, — Mrs. Joe Gargery, — wife of Joe Gargery, the 
blacksmith, sir.”
“Blacksmith, eh?” said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came 
closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back 
as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully 
down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you’re 
to be let to live. You know what a file is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you know what wittles is?”

“Yes, sir.”
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to 
give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me wittles.” 
He tilted me again. “You bring ‘em both to me.” He tilted me again. 
“Or I’ll have your heart and liver out.” He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him 
with both hands, and said, “If you would kindly please to let me 
keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and perhaps I could 
attend more.”
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church 
jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, 
in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in 
these fearful terms: — 
“You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them 
wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. 
You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign 
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person 
sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words 
in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your 
liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain’t alone, as you may 
think I am. There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with 
which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words 
I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of 
getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a 
boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock 
his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the 
clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but 
that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear 
him open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at 
the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold 
that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?”
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what 
broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, 
early in the morning.

“Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!” said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
“Now,” he pursued, “you remember what you’ve undertook, 
and you remember that young man, and you get home!”
“Goo-good night, sir,” I faltered.
“Much of that!” said he, glancing about him over the cold wet 
flat. “I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!”
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his 
arms, — clasping himself, as if to hold himself together, — and 
limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his 
way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the 
green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding 
the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their 
graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a 
man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round 
to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards 
home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked 
over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, 
still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his 
sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here 
and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the 
tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, 
as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another 
horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the 
sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black 
lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make 
out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed 
to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which 
the sailors steered, — like an unhooped cask upon a pole, — an 
ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some 
chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was 
limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to 
life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It 

gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle 
lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they 
thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, 
and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, 
and ran home without stopping.

Chapter II

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years 
older than I, and had established a great reputation with 
herself and the neighbors because she had brought me up 
“by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the 
expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy 
hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband 
as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were 
both brought up by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a 
general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry 
her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each 
side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided 
blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their 
own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, 
easy-going, foolish, dear fellow, — a sort of Hercules in strength, 
and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a 
prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder 
whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater 
instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore 
a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, 
and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full 
of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and 
a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. 
Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; 
or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, 
every day of her life.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as 
many of the dwellings in our country were, — most of them, at 
that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was 
shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being 
fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a 
confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and 
peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.
“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And 
she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with 
her.”
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my 
waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at 
the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by 
collision with my tickled frame.
“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab 
at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That’s what she did,” said Joe, 
slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, 
and looking at it; “she Ram-paged out, Pip.”
“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger 
species of child, and as no more than my equal.
“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock1, “she’s been 
on the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a 
coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel 
betwixt you.”
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide 
open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined 
the cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She 
concluded by throwing me — I often served as a connubial 
missile — at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, 
passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there 
with his great leg.

1 Dutch clock — голландские часы, стенные часы

“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, 
stamping her foot. “Tell me directly what you’ve been doing to 
wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I’d have you 
out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred 
Gargerys.”
“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, 
crying and rubbing myself.
“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn’t for me you’d 
have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who 
brought you up by hand?”
“You did,” said I.
“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my 
sister.
I whimpered, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t!” said my sister. “I’d never do it again! I know that. I 
may truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off since born 
you were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a 
Gargery) without being your mother.”
My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked 
disconsolately at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with 
the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and 
the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those 
sheltering premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.
“Ha!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard, 
indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” One of us, by 
the by, had not said it at all. “You’ll drive me to the churchyard 
betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you’d 
be without me!”
As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down 
at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself 
up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, 
under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he 
sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following 
Mrs. Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at 
squally times.