Many critics consider "Great Expectations" one of Dickens greatest
             works. The two main characters, Pip and Estella represent two far distant
             members of economic classes that were so important in Victorian English
             society. Pip is an orphan who is raised by a blacksmith and his wife, but
             longs for greater things. Estella is the adopted daughter of Miss
             Havisham, a bitter old woman who was jilted at the alter and has never
             forgotten her experience. Pip falls in love with Estella, but knows as a
             member of the working class, he has no hope of winning her heart, so he
             sets out to get an education and become a gentleman. Some of his friends
             are the worst sort of society, including criminals and pickpockets, but he
             is determined to rise above them in his "great expectations." One warns
             him of others who have attempted to be gentlemen, but were not born
             gentlemen. His good friend Herbert notes, "no man who was not a true
             gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in
             manner... no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more
             varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself" (Dickens 179).
             Herbert is trying to gently let Pip know that a man can look a gentleman on
             the outside, but without "breeding" and a family line, he will never be a
             true gentleman. This is the heart of this novel - the belief that good
             breeding automatically created a "superior" kind of people who were far
             better than the "lower" classes beneath them. Estella is a classic example
             of the rich snob who looks down on those beneath her, and treats Pip rudely
             and with scorn. Early in the book, she puts him in his place. "'He calls
             the knaves, Jacks, this boy!' said Estella with disdain, before our first
             game was out. 'And what coarse hands he has. And what thick boots!'"
             (Dickens 61). She ends up unhappy and alone because she marries a man who
             is a "gentleman" ...