The novel, Great Expectations, traces a period of pre-Victorian development. It shows that ambition and self-improvement is something that many aspire to, but more often than not, ambition can create problems for someone and cause them to engage in things they never thought they would do. On the other hand, those who are not ambitious because they were born into a wealthy family commit acts of malice knowing it but realizing that what they really wanted was not actually what they wanted but they were blinded by malice. It also shows that crime is not always committed maliciously, but rather is sometimes the only one that can survive. However, you can try to redeem yourself by trying to help others. Mistakes are things that are made throughout life and experience. In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the characters Pip, Magwitch, and Miss Havisham demonstrated how society seeks redemption after making mistakes that greatly affected their lives. Ambition and self-improvement are a major theme of the novel. The novel demonstrates how ambition and self-improvement can be blinding and cause one to make mistakes that will later make them want to redeem them. Philip “Pip” Pirrip was a character who craved ambition and self-improvement because the woman he had great feelings for told him he was basically crude and common and so began his “great expectations” for himself and she was the light of his life. life. Later, readers discover that someone has “high expectations” of Pip and wishes to turn him into a gentleman, which is the convict he first met in the first chapter. When Pip sets off on his journey full of great expectations, her attitude towards her "family" immediately changes in... middle of paper... She is an eccentric woman who was abandoned at the altar and could not forgive nor forget the accident. She sought to hurt all men because of what was done to her through her adopted daughter Estella, who was Pip's love. She lives in a decaying mansion and wears her wedding dress every day of her life, and has stopped her clocks from twenty minutes to nine in memory of the moment she was told she had been abandoned. Miss Havisham keeps the plot moving forward because throughout the story Pip believes she is his benefactress and plans to get him and Estella together. Miss Havisham's only intention in bringing Pip to Satis House, her home, was to break his heart and make him feel the way she felt. His only concern was to break men's hearts through Estella. He made Pip and Estella suffer greatly by not knowing that his actions were hurtful.