The novel Great Expectations looks back at a period of pre-Victorian development. This shows that ambition and personal development are things that many aspire to, but more often than not, ambition can create problems and lead you to do things you never thought you would. While those who are not ambitious because they were born into a rich family commit acts of wickedness knowing it but realizing that what they actually wanted was indeed not what they wanted but they were blinded by wickedness. This also shows that crime is not always committed out of malice, but sometimes it is the only one that can survive. However, we can seek to redeem ourselves by seeking to help others. Mistakes are things we make throughout life and experience. In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the characters Pip, Magwitch, and Miss Havisham demonstrate how society seeks redemption after making mistakes that greatly affected their lives. Ambition and personal development are one of the major themes of the novel. The novel demonstrates how ambition and personal development can be blinding and encourage us to make mistakes that will later encourage us to 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 that he was fundamentally crude and common and thus his "high expectations" towards himself began and that she was the light of his life. Later, readers discover that someone has "high expectations" of Pip and wants to make him a gentleman, who is the convict he first met in the first chapter. When Pip sets off on his journey full of expectations, her attitude towards her "family" instantly changes to...... in middle of paper...... She is an eccentric woman who has been abandoned at the altar and who could not forgive or forget the incident. She sought to hurt all men because of what had been done to her through her adopted daughter Estella, who was Pip's love. She lives in a crappy mansion and wears her wedding dress every day of her life, and has stopped the clock twenty minutes until nine in memory of the moment she was informed she had been abandoned. Miss Havisham moves the plot forward because throughout the story Pip believes that she is his benefactor and she plans for him and Estella to be together. Miss Havisham's only intention in taking Pip to Satis House, her home, was to break her heart and make her feel what she felt. His only concern was to break men's hearts through Estella. She caused Pip and Estella to suffer greatly without knowing that her actions were hurtful..