Great Expectations Characters: Complete Analysis

Philip Pirrip—called Pip because as a child he couldn't pronounce his own name—is an orphan raised "by hand" (abusively) by his sister, married to Joe Gargery the blacksmith. As a child, he helps an escaped convict in the marshes. He's then summoned to Satis House to keep company with Miss Havisham and meets Estella, who treats him with contempt for being common. When a mysterious benefactor makes him wealthy, he assumes it's Miss Havisham preparing him for Estella.

Pip becomes a London gentleman, learns to be ashamed of his working-class origins, and wastes money living beyond his means. The revelation that Magwitch (the convict) not Miss Havisham is his benefactor forces him to confront his class prejudices. His moral education consists of unlearning everything Victorian society taught him about class and worth.

Pip embodies Dickens's critique of how class ambition corrupts character. His moral baseline as a child—helping the convict despite fear, loving Joe despite embarrassment—shows he has innate decency. Becoming a gentleman doesn't refine this decency; it destroys it. He learns to value appearance over substance, status over character, and money over people.

• •Class Corruption: Demonstrates how false values corrupt those who internalize them
• •Moral Education: His recovery requires unlearning everything society taught him
• •Realistic Growth: Achieves genuine but incomplete transformation—improved but permanently scarred

Pip achieves genuine growth: he overcomes class prejudice to care for dying Magwitch, recognizes Joe's true worth, and narrates his story with full awareness of his moral failures. But his redemption is deliberately incomplete—he remains fixated on Estella, never builds his own family, and can't fully recover from years spent valuing the wrong things. Dickens' realism: you can improve without becoming whole.

Joe is the blacksmith married to Pip's sister. Though uneducated and barely literate, he embodies true gentility through kindness, loyalty, and treating everyone with dignity. He protects Pip from his sister's abuse, shares his food, and teaches through love rather than punishment. He's gentle despite being married to a violent woman, forgiving despite being treated shamefully by Pip, and consistently good without expecting recognition.

When Pip becomes a gentleman and treats Joe with embarrassment, Joe understands rather than resenting it. When Pip falls sick and poor, Joe nurses him back to health and pays his debts without demanding gratitude. Joe represents Dickens's argument that true gentility requires no education or wealth—it's about character, not class.

Joe is Dickens's proof that Victorian class assumptions are false. He's working-class, uneducated, "common"—everything Victorian society judged as inferior. Yet he demonstrates moral excellence that every upper-class character lacks. His consistent goodness despite hardship shows that character develops independently of social position. He's the true gentleman by Dickens's definition, making every "gentleman" by Victorian definition look hollow.

Miss Havisham was jilted at her wedding by Compeyson at twenty minutes to nine in the morning. She stopped all clocks at that moment, never changed her wedding dress (letting it yellow and decay on her body), and turned Satis House into a tomb. She adopted Estella and deliberately raised her to be cold and cruel to men as revenge for her own betrayal. She tells Pip directly: "Break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!"

Her suffering is genuine—Compeyson's betrayal was calculated theft and emotional devastation. But her response transforms her from victim to villain. She deliberately damages Estella's emotional development to use her as a tool of revenge. She encourages Pip's hopeless love knowing it will cause suffering. Her victimization is real; her perpetration is also real. Dickens doesn't excuse the second because of the first.

Eventually, Miss Havisham recognizes what she's done. She begs Pip's forgiveness, crying "What have I done!" repeatedly. She realizes that in creating Estella to be incapable of love, she created someone who can't love her back. Her wedding dress catches fire and she burns—consumed by the revenge she couldn't let go. Her remorse is genuine but comes too late to undo the harm. She's Dickens's demonstration that being victimized doesn't justify victimizing others.

Estella is the beautiful girl Miss Havisham adopts and raises specifically to break men's hearts. She's trained from childhood to be cold, proud, and cruel. She treats Pip with contempt, calling him "boy" dismissively and mocking his common hands and thick boots. Yet she warns him explicitly: "I have no heart"—she's not being dramatic, she's being honest. Miss Havisham raised her without emotional capacity.

She's later revealed to be Magwitch's daughter and Molly's (Jaggers' housekeeper). She marries Bentley Drummle, a wealthy brute who abuses her. Her tragedy is that she becomes Miss Havisham's tool rather than her own person. She had no choice in her upbringing, making her both Miss Havisham's creation and victim.

Estella represents the damage caused by raising children as tools of revenge rather than people. Her name means "star"—beautiful but cold and distant, providing no warmth. She demonstrates how cycles of harm continue: Miss Havisham was damaged by Compeyson, damages Estella in response, who then suffers abuse from Drummle. Each generation's pain creates the next generation's suffering.

Magwitch is the escaped convict young Pip helps in the marshes in Chapter 1. Terrorizing Pip for food and a file, he seems brutish and violent. But he never forgets Pip's kindness. Transported to Australia, he works hard, makes a fortune, lives simply, and spends everything making Pip a gentleman—not for any return except the pride of proving a convict could create what society values.

His return to England is illegal and risks execution. He comes anyway because he loves Pip and wants to see "his gentleman." Pip is initially horrified that his benefactor is a convict, not Miss Havisham. But Magwitch demonstrates parental love, generosity, and loyalty that no "respectable" character in the novel possesses. Pip gradually comes to love him, holding his hand as he dies and calling him "dear boy"—reversing Magwitch's term of endearment.

Magwitch proves Dickens's argument from the opposite direction from Joe. If Joe shows working-class people can be noble, Magwitch shows even society's most condemned can achieve moral excellence. His history—abandoned as a child, criminalized young, betrayed by Compeyson (who received lighter sentencing because he looked respectable)—reveals how society creates criminals then condemns them. His generosity despite this treatment demonstrates character that transcends circumstances entirely.