n that it would confer upon him.
The title of the novel epitomizes Pip's attitude and his life after he acquires an unknown benefactor--he has great expectations for advancement, success, and a good marriage, all the things that identify the successful stratum of British society. Pip has only vague expectations before the benefactor changes his life. Miss Havisham is the richest and seemingly the most favored person he has met to that date, and so he believes that she has taken a liking to him and is providing the funds for his education.
Dickens believes that his society places too much emphasis on social stratification and has created too many rules to foster and maintain that system. The system undermines true family values by the sort of demands placed on family connections that Pip at first sees as necessary for his own advancement. People who are unworthy gain worth based on their family connections, while people with true worth are passed over because they have no family connections. Who one's parents are becomes more important than who the individual him or herself may be. Magwitch is a man who is punished for crimes committed by his wife, and he is too good a man to do other than to accept his fate. He is a convict, but he is not a criminal. The outward trappings of the man unfairly label him one way when in fact his character is quite different. As Pip discovers, parental relationships should be based on love, respect, and a recognition of sacrifice and not on wealth and position. Pip is the kind of man he is not because of wealth and position, but because of the upbringing given him by his sister and the added lessons taught him by his foster father Magwitch.
Thackeray's Vanity Fair is a novel about social climbing in a society that again values birth above self-worth, and the various characters interact as they attempt to place themselves in the social hierarchy. The social setting places the chara...