will come into handsome property....immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place and be brought up as a gentleman--in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations." 

And, it is these grand hopes, these "great expectations" that links so many of the characters in Dickens's grand effort of narrative:

• Magwitch hopes to vicariously redeem his tragic life
• Pip expects that in becoming a gentleman, he will become superior to others and worthy of Miss Havisham's respect and Estella's love. 
• Herbert Matthews aspires to secure a respectable position and to marry
• The orphaned Biddy hopes to find a meaningful position in life.
• Mr. Wopsle parodies the expectations of Pip in his ridiculous hopes of becoming a serious actor.
• So, too, does Pumblechook parody Pip's excessive expectations in his claim to having brought about Pip's success.
• Mr. Wemmick's exaggerated home displays a lightly comical image of great expectations.
• In a sinister form of expectations, Orlick hopes to destroy Pip who has always been his rival.
• Miss Havisham, who has had great expectations of a happy life, seeks to regain some peace of conscience with Pip's forgiveness.
• Estella's great expectations to break men's hearts become tragic as she marries a cruel husband and becomes aware of her limitations in receiving love.
• Finally, the readers have "great expectations" as they hope to see Pip succeed and attain his only love, Estella. 

The novel clearly has an relevant title as paradoxically there is in its narrative the unfulfillment of many of the expectations of characters while at the same time, as critic Angus Calder notices, Pip attains the other "great expectations" of many readers as 

Pip does not merely see what has been there all the time; in the cases of Miss Havisham and Magwitch, he actively helps them to become better people near the end of their lives.

And so, the "friendly foe" of Sir Phillip Sidney, "Great Expectations" is, indeed, an appropriate title for the grand work of Charles Dickens.

As you know the title of a work is important. In this case, the title, Great Expectations, refers to the protagonist's desires for his future. In particular, as the novel progresses, Pip desires greater things for himself and his future. He has great expectations about leaving poverty and becoming a gentleman. When he sees Satis House he is obsessed to be wealthy - partially to win the affections of Estella.

He has great expectations about shedding his ignorant country boy ways and becoming learned. This is why he learns to read at Mr. Wopsle's aunt's school. He even has great expectations about moral reform and becoming a better person. For example, he regrets his mistreatment of Joe and Biddy. In short, we can say that Pip has great expectations to rise above his social class. In a sense, this is his salvation.

The irony of all of Pip's desires is that whatever he achieves does not make him any happier. He is no happier than when he as an apprentice as a blacksmith. In this sense, we can say that these great expectations did not deliever.

Great Expectations tells a story of characters who have ambitious and often unrealistic expectations for both themselves and the people in their lives. It could be argued that the purpose of this novel is to show how people's expectations in life are often unrealistic, uninformed, or unreasonable. Furthermore, expecting someone else to play a role in one's own personal development does not lead one to success, as Pip learns by the end of the novel.

The purpose of "great expectations" in the novel is to set characters on courses that might or might not be appropriate for them and to obfuscate the things that really matter. The book makes it clear that expectations are not synonymous with ambition and are certainly not synonymous with hard work. To attain one's expectations, or goals, one must propel oneself forward rather than relying on external assistance.

For instance, Estella’s expectations of her future and her sense of how to treat others, derived from being raised by Miss Havisham, lead to disastrous consequences for her when she marries Drummle. Pip’s expectations of his benefactor’s identity—he wrongly believes Miss Havisham is his benefactor—and about his future lead him to initially take the wrong path and rebuff the people who truly love him in favor of the superficial pursuit of the life of a gentleman.

Ultimately, when the truth is revealed to him, Pip learns that he spurned the people who truly cared about him and wasted time, money, and effort on achieving an empty ambition. He also learns that to attain something he wants and to reach his goals, he needs to do more than merely “expect” another person to gift him money or status. He needs to work hard and lift himself up rather than expect others to achieve his aspirations on his behalf.

Nearly everyone has great expectations when they are young. They expect a lot of themselves, a lot of other people, and a lot of life. But they are usually disappointed in all three. This is expressed very succinctly in Ernest Hemingway's short story, "Hills Like White Elephants." While they are waiting outside a little cafe for the train to Madrid to arrive, the girl wants to try a drink called Anis del Toro. 

"It tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.

"That's the way with everything."

"Yes," said the girl. "Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe."

The pessimistic German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer expresses the same truth another way.

Of course, as Schiller says, we are all born in Arcadia; in other words, we come into the world full of claims to happiness and pleasure and cherish the foolish hope of making them good. In any case, experience after a time teaches us that happiness and pleasure are a fata Morgana which is visible only from a distance and vanishes when we approach it.  

The great English Romantic poet William Wordsworth begins his most famous poem, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" with the following stanza.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-- 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 

The title of Dickens' novel Great Expectations appears to have multiple meanings. It can apply simply to the hero Pip, who had "great expectations" in the form of a promised fortune and also had great expectations of his future life as a wealthy gentleman married to Estalla. It can apply to some of the other characters in the novel as well. It can be at least partly autobiographical, because Dickens own early life was similar to that of Pip, and Dickens also enjoyed good fortune for a period before he became disenchanted. But in a larger sense it can apply to humanity in general. Children are likely to have grandiose dreams they expect to see fulfilled at some time in the distant future. But they can be rudely disappointed either by failure or success. Macbeth thought he would be happy if only he could become king of Scotland, but he ended up reflecting that

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The Bible, of course, ought to have some words on the subject. We find some famous ones in Ecclesiastes 1:14:

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Pretty pessimistic. It can't be that way for everybody. Or can it? Maybe Dickens was only suggesting that people shouldn't expect too much from life because they are bound to be disappointed with the way things turn out in reality. In the end Pip seems to realize that a simple life with modest expectations is the best kind of life. He uses Joe and Biddy as examples of people who are happy because they do not make themselves unhappy. 

Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman is a good example of disappointed expectations. So are the heroes of Henry James's stories "The Great Good Place," "The Lesson of the Master," and "The Beast in the Jungle." So is the hero of Voltaire's novel Candide, which ends with this sentence:

“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”

Dickens manages to hook the reader right from the start of Great Expectations. The opening scene is a masterpiece of mood-setting that captures our attention with its vivid description of the Romney Marshes with all is cold, damp, and dreariness. This is an inhospitable place, to put it mildly, certainly no place for a small child like Pip. That Pip should live here only heightens the sympathy we’ve already gained from knowing that he is an orphan.

Poor young Pip comes across as the loneliest boy in the world. And his loneliness, the kind that only a child would understand, is driven home in the first major set-piece of the novel, Pip’s terrifying encounter in the churchyard with the escaped convict Abel Magwitch.

As Magwitch descends upon him, Pip is all alone. His parents may be nearby, but they’re long since dead, buried in the churchyard. At this precise moment, Pip desperately needs the protection of an adult. Such protection will indeed arrive one day, but ironically it will come from the man who now threatens to cut his throat.

The scene in the graveyard is important because it establishes the lack of a true protector in Pip’s life, something that will affect him as he makes the difficult transition into adulthood. In due course, Pip will seek protection in a number of adult authority figures such as Miss Havisham and the lawyer Mr. Jaggers. But neither of them have his true interests at heart, and so Pip will remain as lonely inside as he was on the outside on that cold, foggy day in the churchyard.

The opening pages of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations are significant in a number of ways, including the following:

• The very first paragraph introduces Pip, the narrator of this autobiographical novel.  Since the novel explores Pip’s development from childhood to adulthood, the opening paragraph immediately engages our interest in the central character of the book.
• The second paragraph opens with a sentence that performs several functions: (1) it already suggests some wit on the part of Pip; (2) it begins to show Dickens’ talent as a writer, especially in the balanced phrasing of “his tombstone and my sister”; and (3) it not only introduces two more important characters (Pip’s sister and her husband) but also begins to sketch the kind of world into which Pip was born (thanks to the reference to “the blacksmith”).
• The following sentence emphasizes that Pip never saw his father or his mother, thus introducing two major themes of the book: isolation and the function of substitute parental figures.
• The next two sentences (about Pip’s interpretation of the tombstones) begin to introduce an element of paradoxical humor into a book that is often humorous indeed. The frequently whimsical quality of Dickens’ writing begins to appear when Pip says, concerning one of the tombstones, that

The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.

Pip is a character whom we are already beginning to like, since he (now an adult) can look back on his earlier self and offer wry self-mockery. Pip seems lacking in excessive pride or pretension and seems to have a sense of humor. Pip is already displaying the distinctiveness of personality, the idiosyncrasy, for which Dickens’ characters are so often well-known and which often helps make them so unforgettable.

• Finally, Pip’s references to his five dead siblings already imply another theme of the novel: that life can be hard, that success in life (and even survival) is hardly guaranteed, and that life can often lead to loneliness and isolation.  The adult Pip’s comments on his dead siblings already imply his compassion, but his sense of humor prevents this moment from being saccharine or sentimental.

1.  Estella is with the protagonist Pip. This Estella is the same daughter of the convict with whom we opened the book. A second generation that has taken advantage of the young Pip is now and still at work.

2. I believe there is great irony in Dickens' closing scene of Great Expectations. Estella's character is changed from what we have seen throughout the novel, she has been leading and manipulative to Pip. Here, we see her changed:

I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were and tell me we are friends.

Estella's words to Pip demonstrate his experiences. This bending and breaking has been happening his whole life. The difference here is that she is embracing it. Pip never could embrace his circumstances. He continues with great expectations... his life feels unfulfilled.

3. The setting of the scene is at Satis House, or what was left of it. This moment finds Estella being genuine and sincere to Pip, something she never really did while Miss Havisham was alive or while Satis House was standing.

4. Most importantly, Satis House is changing.

The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined resistance I made in all the wretched years.

Satis House was a symbol of the "determined resistance" she was trained in for all those years. Estella's life is moving on. Pip is not in that place in his life to let go or move on yet. Estella has matured through the problems of her existence. Pip is still expecting.

Interestingly enough, Great Expectations had two different endings.  Dickens changed the ending when he was convinced that the first one would not be profitable.  I guess everyone’s a sucker for a happy ending!  Both scenes have significance, but I tend to believe that the original ending is worth more.

In the published ending, Pip runs into Estella on the ruins of Satis House.  She seems to have mended her ways and is ready to ride off into the sunset with Pip.  Dickens implies that the two will never part again, and live happily ever after.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

This is an optimistic ending.  The significance is that anyone can change, and even if you have been hurt you can still find love.

In the original ending, things do not end with Pip and Estella together.  Pip runs into Estella on a street in London.  She is married, he is not, and he has Joe and Biddy’s child with him.  They shake hands and part ways forever.

I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

It’s a matter of taste, but I have always believed this ending to be far more realistic and Dickens's true intention.  They have both been through so much that one has to ask if they really would be happy together, or ever can be happy at all.  However, the significance of this ending is that Pip has moved on with his life and is no longer pining for Estella.  He has learned his lesson.  That’s another reason I prefer the second ending.

The title is also appropriate because the major character of the novel is Philip Pirrip (nicknamed "Pip"), and Dickens is thus alluding both to Sir Philip Sidney and also to a phrase in one of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella sonnets (21), in which Astrophil's friend refers to

. . . that friendly foe,

Great Expectations . . .

In Sidney's poem' great expectations are a "friendly foe" because they challenge us to do our best, to achieve our full potential even if doing so requires hard work and effort.  Pip, in Dickens' novel, has great expectations of himself but is also the object of others' great expectations.

Well ther ya go. I never knew that Dickens was alluding to one of Sidney's sonnets. This is enlightening information that adds to the depth of my appreciation of Dickens, whom I already appreciate greatly. Thanks for the insight. Great to have you with us on eNotes, by the way!

I love how the title is suggestive to the reader from the beginning. It certainly fits as the above posts suggest. My students place great wonder in the word expectations because they see it as something placed on a person by an authority. For example, I have the expectations that when I assign an essay, students will turn it in. What they find so intriguing about the book is that these are the expectations of the characters. Then, the connection to real life becomes so much more relevant. Students realize that as children, they expected they would play NFL football or become president. Now, their realities as high schoolers are starting to set in. They didn't even make the football team, or they never got a grade higher than a C and doors begin to close. This book's title suggest much about what occurs in the text, but even more, it demonstrates an overwhelming truth about life that is important for readers to grasp.

I agree with #5. One of the classes I hated the most in school was the critical analysis class when pursuing my English degree. I always had, and still have, a problem looking at a text from different perspectives. For me, the only perspective which matters is my own when deeming a text great or not. I place a lot of faith in author intent mixed with personal interpretation.

In regards to a title, when an author names his work, it is similar to naming a child. The author has slaved over the 'raising' of the text- they have felt anger, happiness, worry, perhaps every emotion one can experience in their lives. So, (not that I am refusing the critical analysis of your question) who are "we" to question the naming of Dickens' "child"?

Just a thought!!!

As the above posts mention -- the book is all about expectations, so the title is appropriate.  I would add that if one thinks about most "great expectations" we realize that more often than not, the reality does not, and cannot, possibly live up the grand mental/emotional build-up that comes before. What follows then is the inevitable let down -- and it is a let down even in the face of it not being a disaster! I can dream about a great beach vacation for months, but in reality, the airport is a hassle and the weather could be less than ideal. Even if most of my vacation is a delight,  I have great expectations which, of course, cannot possibly live up to the fantasy.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense for people like us to second guess Dickens.  He was one of the great literary talents of the world and we are not (so far as I know).  However, for the sake of argument, do you suppose you might want to think about calling the novel "Dashed Expectations?"  After all, the book is centered around the idea that no one ever really got what they expected.  So maybe the title should be about that.

You might want to relate the choice of title to some of the key themes of this excellent novel, in particular that of class consciousness and transformation. One of the crucial stages of the novel is when Pip goes to Satis House for the first time and experiences the rather uncomfortable epiphany that he is nothing but a "common labouring boy" who "calls the Knaves Jacks." He comes back home with the ambition of becoming a gentleman and winning Estella. Thus his great expectations come as something of a dream come true.

However, the transformation that these great expectations bring is critically presented by Dickens from the very first. The new clothes that Pip wears, for example, change the way that characters such as Pumblechook and Trabb treat him, but those that love him are not so impressed. Although Pip in London learns the mannerisms and habits of being a gentleman, in his character he is shown to act in a very un-gentlemanlike fashion when Joe comes to visit him in London, for example. In addition, his great expectations seem to be based around a life of idleness, corruption, moral vice and dissolution as he lives off the wealth of a convict. Dickens seems to use the phrase "great expectations" to ironically comment upon the way in which a sudden injection of wealth and status does not automatically equate with "great expectations" and, in fact, we might argue that Pip would have been better off and happier had he stayed in the marshes. Throughout the novel, then, Dickens uses the phrase to comment upon class and the impact of money by showing the way in which it is moral character and maturity that gives one truly great expectations.

For Charles Dickens, Great Expectations was significant because it was semi-autobiographical. It was his revision of his earlier semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield. Besides the fact that both books are about young boys who have rough upbringings, they are pretty different. David Copperfield is idealized. Great Expectations is darker. Also, Great Expectations takes place in and around Rochester, where Dickens grew up. The places are based on his childhood haunts.

An example of this is the graveyard from the beginning of the book. This is actually based on a real graveyard outside a castle in Rochester which has the same headstones Dickens describes as being Pip’s siblings’ headstones. Dickens grew up looking at them, and incorporated them into Pip’s life.

To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine,—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence (Chapter 1).

Dickens even based Satis House on a real house, which you can still visit today. When he was a child, Dickens was enamored with another house called Gad’s Hill Place, and he returned to buy it once he was famous and could afford the house. He was creating his own arc, similar to, but different from, Pip’s. Unlike Pip, Dickens made his own success.

Some of Great Expectations's themes could definitely apply to Dickens's life. Dickens had trouble with relationships, especially when it came to love. He married, but fell out of love with his wife. He loved children and had many, but he was an exacting father. He had high expectations, and often as a result had rocky relationships with his own children. Life didn't turn out to be a fairy tale for Charles Dickens.

"Great Expectations" is significant also as a Bildungsroman, or the "novel of maturation."  And it is for this reason, Dickens's novel is often included in school anthologies.  The moral lessons that Pip learns parallel closely the lessons that many young people must learn:

1. Money cannot buy quality in a person.  After his first visit to Satis House, Pip becomes ashamed of his "coarse hands and [his]common boots."  He is ashamed of being "a common laboring boy....that was much more ignorant than [he] had considered [himself] ...and generally was in a low-lived bad way."  But, Pip later learns that the poorer characters are the more genuine and noble.  Mr. Jagger's clerk, Wemmick is a kind and loving man, Joe and Biddy are warm, decent people of strong moral character while many of the "gentlemen" such as Drummle are cruel and unethical.
2. Being influenced by others can be detrimental. In his efforts to become a gentleman, Pip wishes to socialize with Estella and the other gentlemen; in so doing, he becomes snobbish.  He is embarrassed by Joe's visit to London, mortified as Joe clumsily drops his hat and does not know how to act in the presence of Herbert. Later on, when Pip visits the forge, Joe, notes the difference, "Diwisions among such must come and must be met as they come.  You and me is not two figures to be together."  In his realization of his cruelty to Joe, Pip calls himself "a swindler":  "and with such pretenses did I cheat myself."
3. Appearances can often be deceiving. Many of the people that Pip has been impressed with are not what they have seemed to be.  Estella, for all her beauty, is cold and heartless.  Herbert, the gentleman on whom Pip wishes to model himself, is a failure in his business ventures, Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer, is actually a crude and heartless man, Miss Havisham is a pitiable, misdirected woman.  The convict, Magwitch, is really a good man who has simply had an unfortunate life, Joe and Biddy are the best people he has known.
4. Spiritual/ethical values are what are most important inlife. From Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns the value of real love and friendship, the value of integrity in a person.

In addition to the important moral lessons, the title itself is significant in the suggested meanings of the often repeated phrase "great expectations."  Pip expects money to buy him happiness and social position as a gentleman, as well as love.  But, none of these qualities can be attained by his false expectations.  For, after Magwitch appears and Pip realizes the meaning of Mr. Jaggers phrase to take nothing on appearances--"Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence.  There's no better rule"--he remarks in Chapter 41 that he has "no expectations."

I would say that the title Great Expectations does not apply merely to Pip but to human expectations in general. Pip is deeply disappointed in love, but this is a pretty common experience for men and women in general. He was disappointed in his ambition to become a gentleman, which was an ambition largely inspired by his love for Estella; but this too is a common enough experience for people who manage to climb a few rungs up the social ladder. They often find that the people who were above them are not as good as the people they left below. Life itself is a disappointment for many of us. We expect too much of it when we are young. True love is hard to find. True friendship is equally hard to find. And they seldom last. Troubles are very easy to find, or they find us. The hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is very much like Pip. Gatsby wanted to become a gentleman in order to win Daisy, just as Pip wanted to become a gentleman in order to win Estella. Both are cruelly disillusioned. Gatsby spends a fortune entertaining people and not one of them comes to his funeral--not even Daisy. The words "Great Expectations" are like the first part of an unfinished sentence which might read something like: Great expectations are a bad mistake because they lead to disillusionment and unhappiness. Pip's story is just an example of a general principle.

Expectations of this world
And the people in it,
Are surely the sources
Of our greatest misery.
    The Uddhava Gita

The title has a double meaning, because when it refers to “great expectations” it is talking about both Pip’s money and his plans for himself; neither worked out for him.

In many ways, Dickens is satirizing the role of money in determining one’s fate.  Pip had one life in store for him before the money, and a different one after.  Most people would agree that although a blacksmith’s life is not luxurious, having a trade you can be successful in and people who love you is preferable to being isolated in the city with people who pretend to be your friend only as long as you have money.

When Jaggers tells Joe and Pip that Pip has expectations, they gasp.  They seem to understand exactly what he is saying.

“Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has Great Expectations.” (ch 18)

He also comments that the expectations come with the money to support them.  Pip is to be a gentleman.  He will be set for life.  Everything will be fine from now on.

Ironically, things don't go well for Pip.  His life as a gentleman is lonely and full of conflict.  He struggles, because he is not given guidance on what to do with the money.  The other gentlemen that he associates with seem to mostly waste thiers.

When Pip learns that the money came from the convict, the whole illusion comes crashing down on him.  He realizes that he is the same person he was, and he can go back to being that person.  He had turned his back on those he loved, but seeing Magwitch sacrifice himself out of a paternal desire to see Pip was enough to return Pip to his simple lifestyle, and become much happier making his fortune, modest though it may be, on his own.

Yes, lit24 sums it all up quite nicely.

The tension throughout the novel is one that is common to all of our lives; it is the inner struggle of believing that what we have been given in life is not enough, that we should always strive for something better and have great expectations of a more fulfilling future. What Pip eventually learns, after all he had hoped to gain and after all his endeavors for another, more rewarding existence, what he learns is the same lesson Dorothy learns in the Wizard of Oz: after all is said and done and hoped for and wished for, there is no place like home. And home is not so much a place as it is a state of mind, a way of being satisfied (ah, Satis House) with what one has.

In many ways, in the end Pip is back where he started in a simpler and less frought existence. It is certainly not by chance that his name is Pip: small and simple and the same in the end as it is in the beginning, the same read forwards as it is backwards: PiP.

I have read "Great Expectations" countless times and thoroughly enjoyed the book.  The reason Charles Dickens titled it so was because Pip had had a hard life in so short a lifetime, and when he supposedly came into good fortune, he had high hopes of a better life--an education, a good home, plenty to eat, nice clothes to wear.  But the greatest hope of all was the love of Estella, who spurned him constantly.  It was always his greatest dream that she could love him and in the end, after much suffering, she finally did.