Great Expectations Forum

What is ironic about the book's title?

The sad irony is that expectations are never great.  A man is what he does.  A man who expects to be given is a parasite and a fool.  Like the male characters that inhabit Jane Austin's novels, the non-working capitalist class of Imperial England are slackers, loafers, and egoists.  They contribute nothing to the world, they neither make shoes, shovels, or entertain on the stage.  Their wealth comes from sweatshops, mines, and plantations.  They inherit, they consume, they are the capitalist class.  Pip's aspirations to be one of them, and to leave the honest and healthy trade of blacksmith, are the same as Pinocchio's idea of living in a circus with nothing but fun and candy.  Haversham and Estella are like Pinocchio's evil advisers, the fox and the cat. 

   Ironic it is that when Pip's and Pinocchio's expectations arrive, they are anything but great.