Jaggers, a lawyer who happens to have been the strange figure at Miss Haversham’s. As Pip continues to describe this increasingly tense exchange, he observes that the gentleman is possessed of “an air of authority not to be disputed, and with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about every one of us . . .” Jaggers, it turns out, has an interest in Pip’s welfare his own instincts to the contrary. Jaggers is not only Miss Haversham’s lawyer, he was also the convict Magwitch’s attorney.

Mr. Jagger’s office is a reflection of this austere lawyer’s personality. In Chapter 20, Pip arrives at Jagger’s office per the lawyer’s request/summons, and provides the following description of this small room:

“Mr. Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see - such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed chair was of deadly black horse-hair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at the clients.”

As Pip’s initial observations regarding Mr. Jaggers in Chapter 18 note, this “strange gentleman” is very serious and very dour, and knows how to intimidate others. His disdain for his mission of providing for the well-being of Pip is typical of this bleak individual’s demeanor, and the fact that his office is “a most dismal place” featuring a chair of “deadly black horse-hair” that resembles a coffin and a scattering of old weaponry and some rather macabre busts of unknown but exceedingly unattractive individuals is consistent with that demeanor.

The Pocket household is described in volume II, chapter 3 of Great Expectations. Dickens frequently used comic set pieces to describe otherwise dismal or distressing situations. The "tumbling up" of Herbert's younger siblings is intended both as comic relief and as a contrast to the macabre atmosphere of Satis House. Chaos and resignation reign in both places, though one is sunny and beneficent though noisy and the other is lightless and malignant. Herbert is the product of one house; Estella is the product of the other.

An earlier version of the brainless, spoiled Mrs. Pocket is Dora in David Copperfield, whom Dickens kills off as a mercy to his protagonist. Dickens uses Mrs. Pocket to more fully explore the consequences of rearing a female to be ornamental to the point of idiocy, the results of which are neglect and constant danger to her children (as in baby's nutcracker) and predations on the household resources by the servants. Dickens keeps the tone humorous and over the top, but hints about Herbert's character and future are found in the attempts of little Jane to impose some measure of security for the baby Pocket and Mr. Pocket's hapless determination to provide for his family.