The plot of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens features a major red herring. The main character, Pip, discovers that he has a wealthy benefactor. Both he and the reader assume that it must be Miss Havisham, the elderly eccentric woman who seems to have taken him in. We learn later than Miss Havisham has only recruited Pip as a means of taking revenge on the man who left her at the altar; Pip’s benefactor is actually an escaped convict whom Pip briefly helped when he was a young boy.