Dickens’ classic work centers around the adventures of Pip, the orphaned blacksmith’s apprentice who is fashioned to become a gentleman with “great expectations,” and the many fascinating people who shape his life: the half-mad spinster Miss Havisham; her ward, the beautiful and icy Estella; Pip’s friend, the aristocratic Herbert Pocket; Jaggers, the lawyer made hard and brutal by the indignities of the world; and Magwitch, the escaped convict whose favor starts the plot in motion.