The Heart Wants What It Wants — Great Expectations

Years pass in this manner, with Pip working in the forge and nursing his private discontent. He's now nearly twenty-one, and his apprenticeship is approaching its end, though his prospects remain exactly what they've always been: he'll become a blacksmith like Joe. Nothing has changed except Pip's increasing sense of entrapment and his guilt about that feeling. His dissatisfaction with his lot has become his defining characteristic, yet he's done nothing to change it, stuck between wanting more and having no legitimate path to achieve it.

Into this stagnant situation comes Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer from London who announces that Pip has "great expectations." An anonymous benefactor has provided a large sum of money that will allow Pip to be educated as a gentleman. The conditions are clear: he must keep the name Pip, he must not inquire about his benefactor's identity, and he must understand that the benefactor will reveal themselves when they choose to do so. Pip immediately assumes, as everyone does, that Miss Havisham is his patron, though Jaggers never confirms this.

The news transforms everything instantly: the prison door he thought locked forever swings open, offering him escape from the forge, from the marshes, from his "common" status, and presumably, a path to becoming worthy of Estella. Yet this transformation rests entirely on mystery and assumption.