I was a sophomore when I read Great Expectations for my British Literature class. I read it once before, maybe in middle school, but it didn't really click with me then. It wasn't until the reread that I learned to appreciate Dickens and more importantly his characters.

Let me make this clear: I DO NOT CARE ABOUT PIP. Or Joe. Or Pip's mean-spirited sister who is karmically punished and left as an invalid. Or the convict. No, my appreciation of Great Expectations come from two minor characters: Miss Havisham and Estella. Oh, where should I start with these two women? Okay, I'll start with Miss Havisham. I don't think Dickens has ever created a creepier character. As a writer, this description of an old, jilted women who wears her old wedding dress, her wedding feast still on her table, cobwebs on the candlesticks, rotting herself as the food does, is just too delicious. Dickens was the master of character description. I hate watching adaptions of this book because I have a Miss Havisham perfectly envisioned in my mind from his words. I loved reading about her: this women who adopts a child and raises her to break hearts, who nurtures poison in her heart. Just the psychology of this women is interesting. I would have read a novel just about her, which is why I was so disappointed when (in typical Dickenesque fashion) she is punished for her wickedness. Dickens always punishes the most interesting character.

That brings me to Estella, my favorite Dickens character. Some might argue there is not a lot to Estella: she's beautiful and cruel, her purpose being to torture Pip. I would call you an idiot because there are little hints of humanity in her, hints that you might miss if you're not looking. I do like her for her cruelty though. I think she is a Natasha Romanoff before there was Marvel (minus the butt-kicking). When Estella is in a room full of men, she is the queen among pawns. She knows exactly how to push and pull on their (particularly Pip's) affections. When it comes to Pip, however, her humanity finds its way to the surface. She feel something for this strange boy even if she can't admit. She repeatedly warns him away from her, tells him not to love her, tries to save him even she knows he won't listen. Estella doesn't know how to use her heart, not yet, but she knows she doesn't want to break Pip's. Like the other wicked woman of the novel, she is punished for her cruelty, but Dickens is kinder to her. After all, she can't help what she has been made into. In the revised ending (which the publishers insisted on because the original wasn't happy enough), Estella and Pip meet again. Estella has been mistreated by Drummle. She no longer has a fence around her heart. Instead, she has learned how to use it, prompting my favorite line of the novel: “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”

I recommend Great Expectations just for these two characters, though I suppose the other stuff is good too. Dickens is Dickens after all.