I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for having been won of me.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 8. There is heavy foreshadowing in the Beggar My Neighbor card game played between Estella and Pip. Puppet master behind it is the manipulative Miss Havisham, who plots for Pip to fall in love with Estella so she can break his heart. The game is not a match of equals. But rather it’s a power play between social classes with a disdainful Estella using it to humiliate Pip. The notion of the wealthy Estella “beggaring” the by comparison poor Pip is somewhat ironic. There is further dramatic irony in that he is unaware he is a pawn in Miss Havisham’s larger game to “beggar” him emotionally using Estella. Pip’s future emotional troubles and manipulation by various people are foreshadowed, also the cruel and controlling nature of Miss Havisham’s influence on him and Estella.