Pip -  The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip begins the story as a young

orphan boy being raised by his sister and brother-in-law in the marsh country of Kent, in the
southeast of England. Pip is passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic at heart, and he
tends to expect more for himself than is reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and
he deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and socially.

As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents the growth and development of a single

character, Philip Pirrip, better known to himself and to the world as Pip. As the focus of the
bildungsroman, Pip is by far the most important character inGreat Expectations: he is both
the protagonist, whose actions make up the main plot of the novel, and the narrator, whose
thoughts and attitudes shape the reader’s perception of the story. As a result, developing an
understanding of Pip’s character is perhaps the most important step in understandingGreat
Expectations.

Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the novel take place, there
are really two Pips inGreat Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the character—the voice
telling the story and the person acting it out. Dickens takes great care to distinguish the two
Pips, imbuing the voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and maturity while also imparting
how Pip the character feels about what is happening to him as it actually happens. This
skillfully executed distinction is perhaps best observed early in the book, when Pip the
character is a child; here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger self, but also
enables us to see and feel the story through his eyes.

As a character, Pip’s two most important traits are his immature, romantic idealism and his
innately good conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and
attain any possible advancement, whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry
Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to
learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he understands ideas like
poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral. Pip
the narrator judges his own past actions extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for
good deeds but angrily castigating himself for bad ones. As a character, however, Pip’s
idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency to
oversimplify situations based on superficial values leads him to behave badly toward the
people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he immediately
begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to treat Joe and
Biddy snobbishly and coldly.

On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact that
can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book (helping Magwitch,
secretly buying Herbert’s way into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love
him. Pip’s main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of learning to
place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature idealism.

Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pip’s desire for advancement largely
overshadows his basic goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes
seem to have been justified, and he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But
the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy Miss Havisham, is his secret
benefactor shatters Pip’s oversimplified sense of his world’s hierarchy. The fact that he
comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately
forces him to realize that one’s social position is not the most important quality one
possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who
care about him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who
narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman.

Estella -  Miss Havisham’s beautiful young ward, Estella is Pip’s unattainable dream
throughout the novel. He loves her passionately, but, though she sometimes seems to
consider him a friend, she is usually cold, cruel, and uninterested in him. As they grow up
together, she repeatedly warns him that she has no heart.

Miss Havisham -  Miss Havisham is the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor
called Satis House near Pip’s village. She is manic and often seems insane, flitting around
her house in a faded wedding dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, and surrounding
herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. As a young woman, Miss Havisham
was jilted by her fiancé minutes before her wedding, and now she has a vendetta against all
men. She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge, training her beautiful ward
to break men’s hearts.
Read an in-depth analysis of Miss Havisham.

Abel Magwitch (“The Convict”) -  A fearsome criminal, Magwitch escapes from prison at
the beginning of Great Expectations and terrorizes Pip in the cemetery. Pip’s kindness,
however, makes a deep impression on him, and he subsequently devotes himself to making
a fortune and using it to elevate Pip into a higher social class. Behind the scenes, he
becomes Pip’s secret benefactor, funding Pip’s education and opulent lifestyle in London
through the lawyer Jaggers.

Joe Gargery -  Pip’s brother-in-law, the village blacksmith, Joe stays with his overbearing,
abusive wife—known as Mrs. Joe—solely out of love for Pip. Joe’s quiet goodness makes
him one of the few completely sympathetic characters in Great Expectations. Although he is
uneducated and unrefined, he consistently acts for the benefit of those he loves and suffers
in silence when Pip treats him coldly.

Jaggers -  The powerful, foreboding lawyer hired by Magwitch to supervise Pip’s elevation to
the upper class. As one of the most important criminal lawyers in London, Jaggers is privy to
some dirty business; he consorts with vicious criminals, and even they are terrified of him.
But there is more to Jaggers than his impenetrable exterior. He often seems to care for Pip,
and before the novel begins he helps Miss Havisham to adopt the orphaned Estella. Jaggers
smells strongly of soap: he washes his hands obsessively as a psychological mech-anism to
keep the criminal taint from corrupting him.

Herbert Pocket -  Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a
pale young gentleman, Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in
London, and Herbert becomes Pip’s best friend and key companion after Pip’s elevation to
the status of gentleman. Herbert nicknames Pip “Handel.” He is the son of Matthew Pocket,
Miss Havisham’s cousin, and hopes to become a merchant so that he can afford to marry
Clara Barley.

Wemmick -  Jaggers’s clerk and Pip’s friend, Wemmick is one of the strangest characters
in Great Expectations. At work, he is hard, cynical, sarcastic, and obsessed with “portable
property”; at home in Walworth, he is jovial, wry, and a tender caretaker of his “Aged Parent.”

Biddy -  A simple, kindhearted country girl, Biddy first befriends Pip when they attend school
together. After Mrs. Joe is attacked and becomes an invalid, Biddy moves into Pip’s home to
care for her. Throughout most of the novel, Biddy represents the opposite of Estella; she is
plain, kind, moral, and of Pip’s own social class.

Dolge Orlick -  The day laborer in Joe’s forge, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of
evil. He is malicious and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it. He is
responsible for the attack on Mrs. Joe, and he later almost succeeds in his attempt to murder
Pip.

Mrs. Joe -  Pip’s sister and Joe’s wife, known only as “Mrs. Joe” throughout the novel. Mrs.
Joe is a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household
and frequently menaces her husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls
“Tickler.” She also forces them to drink a foul-tasting concoction called tar-water. Mrs. Joe is
petty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something more than what she is, the wife of
the village blacksmith.
Uncle Pumblechook -  Pip’s pompous, arrogant uncle. (He is actually Joe’s uncle and,
therefore, Pip’s “uncle-in-law,” but Pip and his sister both call him “Uncle Pumblechook.”) A
merchant obsessed with money, Pumblechook is responsible for arranging Pip’s first meeting
with Miss Havisham. Throughout the rest of the novel, he will shamelessly take credit for
Pip’s rise in social status, even though he has nothing to do with it, since Magwitch, not Miss
Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor.

Compeyson -  A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated,

gentlemanly outlaw who contrasts sharply with the coarse and uneducated Magwitch.
Compeyson is responsible for Magwitch’s capture at the end of the novel. He is also the man
who jilted Miss Havisham on her wedding day.

Bentley Drummle -  An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with
Pip at the Pockets’ house, Drummle is a minor member of the nobility, and the sense of
superiority this gives him makes him feel justified in acting cruelly and harshly toward
everyone around him. Drummle eventually marries Estella, to Pip’s chagrin; she is miserable
in their marriage and reunites with Pip after Drummle dies some eleven years later.

Molly -  Jaggers’s housekeeper. In Chapter 4 8 , Pip realizes that she is Estella’s mother.

Mr. Wopsle -  The church clerk in Pip’s country town; Mr. Wopsle’s aunt is the local
schoolteacher. Sometime after Pip becomes a gentleman, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and
becomes an actor.

Startop -  A friend of Pip’s and Herbert’s. Startop is a delicate young man who, with Pip and
Drummle, takes tutelage with Matthew Pocket. Later, Startop helps Pip and Herbert with
Magwitch’s escape.

Miss Skiffins -  Wemmick’s beloved, and eventual wife.