Great Expectations

One of the greatest novels ever written, Dickens's great expectations is grim decrial of the socio-economic inequality in the class system in Victorian England. It centers around Pip, a poor young boy drawn into his society's upper class by different benefactors with shadowy motives. Most of his peers are excited to see him "rising in the ranks," but he quickly finds that being a gentleman is not all it's cracked up to be.
Great Expectations has been adapted to big and small screens on numerous occasions, most recently as a film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes.