YMMV / Great Expectations

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Wemmick's has turned his house into a miniature castle complete with moat and drawbridge. To modern readers this may seem eccentric, but this was actually quite common for wealthy Victorians. Then again, it may also seem like the act of a rich idiot who wants to impress other rich idiots
• Broken Aesop: A point of contention against the Revised Ending: a major point of Pip's Character Development is learning he was never meant for Estella and that she is not the person he has idealized her to be. This is undermined by having fate bring her back to him at Satis House, having just conveniently Taken a Level in Kindness and ready to love him.
• Broken Base: Original ending or Revised Ending? Fans such as George Orwell and George Bernard Shaw have argued the original is superior and more fitting, while John Irving wrote that Dickens "did the good thing and the right thing" by changing it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Miss Havisham is probably the most memorable character from the book, despite her supporting role. She even had a scientific phenomenon named after her - the Miss Havisham Effect, where a person suffers a painful longing for lost love.
• Ho Yay:
  • Pip and Herbert. Pip is very fond of Herbert, and Herbert refers to Pip as "my dear Handel", or "my dear boy" throughout the novel. Chapter 50 of the original text, when Herbert is tending to Pip's wounds, is swimming in this, especially at the end.
  • The way Herbert proposed to Pip to share his business with him and Clara just smelled of a threesome attempt that everyone would've agreed with.
• Jerkass Woobie: Miss Havisham. After reading her backstory, her actions when it comes to raising Estella become understandable. And of course, Estella herself due to said upbringing.
• Nightmare Fuel: Miss Havisham intended to raise her adopted daughter, Estella, so the young girl wouldn't have her heart broken by a man. Which, okay, is understandable. But as Estella grew into a beautiful young woman, Miss Havisham's motivations change from wanting to protect Estella to breaking Pip's heart because she found some strange sense of joy in watching his innocent love for Estella constantly get rejected. Miss Havisham realizes her mistake and repents but by then, the damage is done.
• Signature Scene: The opening scene of the young Pip accosted by Magwitch at his parents' gravesite, which has been used as the cover illustration for various editions of the book.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The book takes a while to really get moving, despite a pretty action-packed first chapter. As a result of its serial nature, the first two parts rely heavily on building suspense that pays off in the third part (where nearly every chapter has a plot twist or revelation).
• Tear Jerker:
  • Pip's harshness towards both Joe and Magwitch before the completion of his Character Development.
  • Pip's discovery of the Awful Truth about his benefactor's identity, and his confrontation of Miss Havisham.
  • What happens to Magwitch in the end.
  • Miss Havisham's entire backstory. She fell in love with a man who conspired with her bastard half-brother to steal her inheritance...something she only found out as she was getting dressed for their wedding! She becomes so despondent that she becomes a recluse, never takes off her wedding dress, wears only one shoe and leaves everything (even the wedding cake) to rot. It's to the point that she had the servants stop the clocks at twenty minutes to nine (the exact time she got the letter from her ex fiancé revealing what happened). As much as readers hate Miss Havisham for how she raised Estella...it's really hard to not feel sorry for her when you learn why she became that way.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In the revised ending; Estella is openly cruel to Pip and yet he falls for her anyway, with her beauty being the only explanation, and the narrative eventually treats this as true love. With the rising awareness of the dangers of rushing into love, this has raised eyebrows from readers.
  • The original ending, on the other hand, is Values Resonance in this regard, in that Pip ultimately realizes he was Loving a Shadow all along, with his love-at-first-sight being deconstructed.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: The Bantam Classic printing has a lengthy introduction by John Irving that does spoil the whole plot before page one of chapter one, does compare the book to various other works of Dickens, and does go into way too much scholarly analysis, but at least doesn't go into much Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory.

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