# Great Expectations — Character guide

> Key figures in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

- [Pip](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/pip.md): Pip grows up in a marshy village under his sister's temper and Joe's gentle protection, until Miss Havisham's decaying house and Estella's scorn teach him to despise his own rough hands. When anonymous money lifts him to
- [Estella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/estella.md): Estella moves through Satis House like a lit candle in a tomb, beautiful, remote, and schooled from childhood to break hearts without mercy. She is the instrument of Miss Havisham's revenge, yet her mockery of Pip carrie
- [Miss Havisham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/miss_havisham.md): Miss Havisham rules Satis House in yellowed wedding silk, her stopped clocks and cobwebbed feast a monument to the day she was abandoned. She takes a greedy pleasure in Estella's beauty and cruelty, whispering for her to
- [Joe Gargery](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/joe_gargery.md): Joe Gargery raises Pip under his sister's blows and his own unshakable kindness, speaking in tangled malaprops that hide a clear moral vision. When Pip's fortune arrives, Joe keeps his distance with painful tact, never r
- [Herbert Pocket](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/herbert_pocket.md): Herbert Pocket, once the pale young gentleman Pip brawled with at Satis House, becomes his closest friend and guide through London's manners and money troubles. He sees Pip's adoration of Estella plainly, teases him kind
- [Wemmick](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/wemmick.md): Wemmick runs Jaggers' business with a postal mouth and a mantrapping eye, treating clients and biscuit alike as items to be processed. At home in Walworth, he tends his miniature castle, his deaf Aged Parent, and a warmt
- [Jaggers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/jaggers.md): Jaggers rules his grimy Little Britain office like a courtroom, washing his hands of human messiness even as he profits from it. He guards his clients' secrets—and his own knowledge—with a deliberate, unnerving silence, 
- [Biddy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/biddy.md): Biddy grows up in Joe's forge-household as the one person who sees Pip plainly and loves him anyway, answering his condescensions with 'Do you, Mr. Pip?' and no visible wound. When she announces she will teach at the new
- [Magwitch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/magwitch.md): Magwitch enters Pip's life as a terror on the mudflats, a starving fugitive who demands food and a file and threatens worse. What Pip cannot see is that this desperate man is building a fortune in exile for the boy who s
- [Mrs. Joe Gargery](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/mrs_joe_gargery.md): Mrs. Joe keeps her husband Joe and her brother Pip in a state of perpetual apology, brandishing the 'Tickler' and the story of her own sacrificed youth. Her ferocious domestic tyranny shapes Pip's earliest sense of shame
- [Mr. Pumblechook](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/pumblechook.md): Pumblechook stuffs himself at Mrs. Joe's table, drills Pip through the pence-table for sport, and boasts of connections he does not have. He is the first to sniff advantage in Pip's visits to Miss Havisham, and the first
- [Mr. Wopsle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/wopsle.md): Wopsle reads the lessons with such gloomy relish that the congregation feels judged, and his dream of dramatic glory is the running joke of the village. When he finally takes to the London stage, his Hamlet is greeted wi
- [Compeyson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/compeyson.md): Compeyson moves through the criminal underworld with a gentleman's manners and a forger's cunning, bending weaker men like Magwitch into his service through debt and fear. When his accomplice Arthur raves about a vengefu
- [Drummle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/drummle.md): Bentley Drummle sits at Jaggers's dinner table glowering at the other young men, grudging and suspicious, yet the lawyer singles him out with peculiar interest — the Spider, he calls him, and likes the look. Where Pip bu
- [Orlick](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/orlick.md): Orlick works the forge at Joe's side but belongs to no one, a sullen figure whose resentment of Pip's rise curdles into something murderous. He believes Pip has always been in his way — favored where Orlick was bullied a
- [Mrs. Pocket](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/mrs_pocket.md): Vain, distracted mother of many children who reads about titles while ignoring her family.
- [Mr. Matthew Pocket](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/mr_pocket_senior.md): Herbert's father and Pip's tutor, a gentle scholar married to a foolish woman.
- [Clara Barley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/clara_barley.md): Gentle young woman who marries Herbert Pocket after caring for her bedridden father.
- [Miss Skiffins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/miss_skiffins.md): Practical woman who works for Wemmick and later becomes his wife.
- [Startop](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/startop.md): Friendly fellow student of Pip's at Mr. Pocket's, helps in Magwitch's escape.
- [Mr. Trabb](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/trabb.md): Pompous tailor in Pip's hometown who makes Pip's gentleman's clothes.
- [Camilla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/camilla.md): Grasping relative of Miss Havisham who constantly schemes for her money.
- [The Aged Parent](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/aged_parent.md): Wemmick's deaf, cheerful father who lives in the little castle.
- [Mike](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/mike.md): Hapless client of Jaggers who frequently gets into trouble.
- [Molly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters/molly.md): Jaggers' mysterious housekeeper with strong hands, later revealed as Estella's mother.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/great_expectations_se/characters