Why Great Expectation's second ending is better than the first

How many times has it been said, most recently by John Sutherland in The Sunday Telegraph, that Dickens's original ending to Great Expectations was far, far better than the one the book ended up with, and that he should never have changed it just to please his sentimental colleague Edward Bulwer Lytton? I believe I've lost count. Well, my advice is, get a copy of the novel where the first ending is included as an appendix and make up your own minds, because it is in fact a bit of a damp squib.

Aside from being naturally suspicious against people who carp at happy endings, I was almost prepared to believe the first-ending-adherents until I read it. After all, it is a problematic idea that Pip and Estella should have some kind of future. Not only has she always been a first-class bitch - and to simply blame it all on Miss Havisham just won't wash: Dickens would never have forgiven one of his male villains, whatever his upbringing, so easily - she never once displays any symptoms of returning Pip's love. When he opens his heart to her, she is puzzled, because she has never felt anything of the kind for him or for anyone else. As for Pip, yes, he's in love with Estella, but not in a way agony aunts would find a solid base for a marriage. It's an infatuation which is at best tiresome and at worst downright harmful. It is Estella who makes Pip feel ashamed of his home and embarrassed by the well-meaning clumsiness of Joe Gargery. It is in large part because of Estella that he is so appalled at finding his benefactor to be Magwitch (who ironically turns out to be the little jumped-up madam's father). His love for her inspires the worst of his behaviour, and when he acts nobly, it's in spite of her, not because of her.

The ideal ending of Great Expectations for me, then, would be one where Pip got over Estella and fell in love with someone who brings out the best in him (and is perhaps a little more glamorous than Biddy). Estella, meanwhile, would not reform, as it isn't in her nature - though as I've pledged myself against cruel and unusual punishments, I have no objections against Dickens killing off her husband.

But what happens in the original ending? Estella is still reformed, but instead of being paired off with Pip she marries an anonymous "Shropshire doctor" who has not put in an appearance in the book before. I would not have minded a last-minute love interest for Pip, but one for Estella, and to boot someone for whom Dickens can't even be bothered to invent a name? It just looks like clumsy storytelling. The original ending is also very short, and there is no atmospheric final Satis House scene. As for Pip, he is still unmarried - and likely to remain so - when we leave him. So not only does he not get Estella, he doesn't get anyone else either, and has to mope about supposedly still carrying a torch for the wife of the Shropshire doctor? The first ending's final words are "suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be." I wish Sutherland could explain to me why this is much more brilliant than "I saw the shadow of no parting from her".

Now, if Estella should reform, surely it makes more sense that she and Pip should make a go of it than that she is foisted on a nonentity? And if Pip truly can't love anyone but this ghastly woman, why shouldn't he have her? Dickens's new ending might not be ideal for Estella sceptics like me, but it has considerably more oomph than the original one. The much-maligned Bulwer Lytton was right.

Incidentally, on the subject of Bulwer Lytton, I don't think "It was a dark and stormy night" is such an atrocious way to start a novel as all that.