Looking closer at the surroundings Pip noticed that everything didn’t appear to be the way it had originally seemed. The white dresses (material) that he had thought to be white, and had been long ago, were now stained with yellow decay. Death surrounded the room - the flowers had lost their brightness. The bride within the dress was old and withered like the wedding dress, and similar to the flowers had no brightness or life left in her. A woman with a rounded figure had worn the dress in the past, yet now, the woman was skeletal, so the dress hung loose on her figure.
Everything was dying, losing its colour in addition to its brightness, like life being sucked out of the house and it’s contents, including Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham was compared to a waxwork that Pip had once seen, and he remembered it had, had deep, dull, dark eyes that had scared him and looking at Miss Havisham, he likened her to the waxwork. At this point in the novel he is rather frightened of Miss Havisham, but when he was asked,
“You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”
He was not afraid to say ’No’
Miss Havisham was once to be a bride, until she was jilted, by letter, at twenty minutes to nine. Now so many years on she was still brooding and wants her own back on men and really having Pip come over to her house was only to break Pips heart. Having Estella to break Pips heart, as she was so pretty, but when she puts her hand on her heart and asks Pip
“What do I touch?”
Pip replies,
“Your heart.”
All of a sudden she uttered the word,
“Broken!”
With an eager look, strong prominence and an uncanny smile with a type of boast to it.
The impression of things was that she has used men and woman over a long period of time to entertainment herself, by watching people playing.
Miss Havisham was a very lonely, and for a diversion asked Pip to come and play to entertain her. She has been brooding for over nine years. The age of Pip, as she said that, she
“has never seen the sun since you were born?”
The clock and watch has been stopped at twenty minutes to nine, that says that this was the time that she had heard terrible news that she had been jilted and that broke her heart, and has continued to brood ever since.
Miss Havisham tells Pip that she wants to see him play. To this command he had no such idea of what to do. He had a sudden thought to gallop round the room in an assumed character of Mr Pumblechook chaise cart, but felt so unequal to the performance that he dismissed the idea straight away. He stood in a “dogged manor” Miss Havisham then spoke and asked,
“Are you sullen and obstinate?”
Pip answered in a rather scared and nervous voice.
“No Ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just now.”
Pip asked not to complain of him, as he would get in trouble with his sister. To Pip the things and surroundings were so new and melancholy, but to Miss Havisham so old, familiar and melancholy to both of them.
“Call Estella”
Miss Havisham still looking in the looking glass when saying this made Pip assume that she was still talking to herself, until she turned repeated herself this time looking at him with a cold hard glare.
“Call Estella, you can do that, call Estella at the door.”
To stand in a lonely, dark passage way and bawl out ‘Estella’ with no reply in return or see her made pip consider that maybe playing wasn’t so hard after all. Eventually a light, like a star, came up the staircase and up the passage. The name Estella means star and a star is pretty but are cold, dismissive and isolated, just like Estella the girl. Like a star, she lit up the dark cold passage way.
Estella entered the room and was beckoned to come nearer. Miss Havisham picked up the jewel and placed it around her neck, she told Estella that all would be hers one day.
“ Let me see you play cards with this boy.”
Miss Havisham told Estella. She exclaimed,
“With this boy! Why he is a common labouring boy!”
Miss Havisham replied,
“Well you may break his heart!”
Pip at first thought that he had misunderstood what Miss Havisham had said, although later realised that he had heard correctly. Miss Havisham had had her heart broken by a man, and was now out for revenge through Estella.
They played and only then did Pip realise that everything like the watch and the clock had stopped a long time ago. Miss Havisham had put back the necklace from the exact spot she had found it from. The shoe on the dressing table had never been worn, but the shoe on her foot had been worn out and the silk sock once white, now yellow had been ‘trodden ragged’. All the objects yellow with decay and all the withered bridal gear on the old skinny body looked so much like grave clothes, and the long veil so much like a shroud.
Miss Havisham is described as a corpse as she sat slouched. The edges of her bridal dress was ruined and faded in colour, and looked like earthy paper. Her reluctance to see the natural light makes us think that she will be turned to dust if she sees daylight just like a vampire.
Pip was insulted by the name he gave the knaves.
“He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!”
Now looking at the Pips coarse hands she insulted them and his thick boots.
Miss Havisham noticed that Pip said nothing of Estella, who called him names and insulted him and asked,
“You say nothing of her, she says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?”
“I don’t really like to say”. Pip had stammered
Pip telling Miss Havisham in her ear that Estella was proud, pretty and very insulting.
“Anything else”
Miss Havisham beckoned, Pip replied:
“I think I should like to go home”.
Miss Havisham jumping to conclusions adds:
“…and never see her again, though she is so pretty?”
Pip replied
“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should like to go home now”.
She agreed that he shall go home soon and said to “Play” the game Miss Havisham’s face dropped to a watchful and brooding expression.
Pip played the game to the end and Estella beggared him, and she won. Noticing Pips movement she thought of when to have him back. Telling Pip she does not know the day of the week or year.
Miss Havisham told him to come back after six days, and told Estella to feed him and let him roam.
Pip followed the candle the way he had done on his arrival. She put the
candle from the place she had picked it up on when he had arrived.
Assuming that it would be dark outside Pip was rather shocked to see the daylight after so long of seeing by the candles. Estella told him to wait outside and she went her way. Taking the opportunity of being alone he looked at his coarse hands and his thick boots. They had never trouble him before, but they troubled him now. He thought of why Joe had taught him to call the picture cards, Jacks, when they should have been called Knaves. He wished that Joe had been brought up differently; so then in return he would have been brought differently.
At that moment Estella appeared with some bread, meat and a little mug of beer. She placed the mug on the stones of the courtyard and handed the bread and meat to Pip without looking at him as if a dog in an ashamed and disgraced manner.
Pip felt humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry and sorry, as tears formed in his eyes. Estella saw the tears and delight spread across his face, as if being the course of them gave her great joy. This gave Pip the will power to rise above her. She gave a contemptuous toss, turned and left.
Pip turned to make sure she had gone, found she had gone, found a place at hide his face. There he cried on his arm, kicked the wall and tugged at his hair, so bitter had Pip felt.
Pip’s sisters upbringing had made him sensitive from the day he could speak he knew his sister was unjust to him. Bringing him up by hand, gave her no particular right to bring Pip up by jerks. He had learnt to ignore his sister’s anger she gave him jerks, this had made him extremely sensitive.
For a while Pip had kicked pushed and pulled all his injured feelings out of him into the brewery wall, he smothered his face into his sleeve and returned to his food. He started eating and drinking, the warm tingling feeling of beer, brought his spirits up.
Now wondering around and the “rank” was the garden of the house, it was overgrown with weeds that tell me there was no one to tend the gardening. Pip looked around, now noticing a figure suspended of a beam, a shape he recognised as Miss Havisham the yellow, earthy papery like gown, and only one shoe on her foot. He didn’t know whether he should run from it or towards it. Though when he turned and looked again the figure had gone. Seconds later he saw Estella approaching, so he hid away his fear, therefore Estella couldn’t see it.
Estella gave Pip a triumphant glance as she if found pleasure in his coarse hands and thick boots. She unlocked the gate and let Pip through and asked him,
“Why don’t you cry?”
Pip replied,
“Because I don’t want to.”
“You do, you have been crying till you are half blind, and you’re
near crying now!!”
She laughed contemptuously and pushed Pip out the way.
Pip went straight to Mr Pumblechook’s house, and was immensely relieved Mr Pumblechook was not in. He set off for the four-mile walk back home, with a message with the shop man. Deeply revolving that he was a “common labouring boy,” with “coarse hands.”
Miss Havisham, a willowy, yellowed woman dressed in an old wedding gown. Pip calls for Estella and the two play cards, despite Estella's objection that Pip was just a "common labouring-boy." "Well," says Miss Havisham, "you can break his heart." Estella insults Pip's coarse hands and his thick boots as they play. Estella was the main character that changes Pip’s life she insulted him also he wanted to impress her and he thought to impress her had to be part of the higher-class people. Or in order to even be part of her life, he had to become a gentleman.
Pip's first taste of "higher society" was a bitter one, and it leaves him ashamed and embarrassed, rather than justifiably angry. Pip was, in fact, just a toy for both Miss Havisham, who wants him to "play," and Estella, who treats him roughly, while at the same time flirts. Pip, was torn between being insulted and his attraction to Estella, opts to feel ashamed of his upbringing - so much so that he "wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up." His newfound respect and love for Joe was being spoiled by his embarrassment of being brought up in a lower class family.
During his first visit to the Satis House, Estella, who considers herself much too refined and well-bred to associate with a common boy, scorns Pip. On the other hand, Pip seems to fall in love with Estella during their first meeting. He even admits to Miss Havisham, that he thinks her adopted daughter was not only "very proud" and "very insulting," but also "very pretty" and that he should "like to see her again”. After just one afternoon at the Satis House, Pip develops a desire to become more acceptable to Estella, in hopes that her callous attitude toward him would change. As a result, while walking back home, Pip begins to feel ashamed of his life. His mind is filled with regretful thoughts such as "that I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way". Pip realizes that his personality and outlook on his life was changing.
Pip was brought to Miss Havisham's place; a mansion called the "Satis House," where sunshine had never entered in the past nine or so years. He meets a girl about his age, Estella, "who was very pretty and seemed very proud." Pip instantly falls in love with her. He then meets Miss Havisham, a willowy, yellowed old woman dressed in an old wedding gown. Miss Havisham seems most happy, when Estella insults Pip's coarse hands and his thick boots as they played.
Pip was insulted, but thinks there was something wrong with him. He vows to change, to become uncommon, and to develop into a gentleman.
As a result of his visit, Pip’s analysis of himself and his life, concludes that he was ‘morally timid’ and ‘very sensitive’. By comparison to the appearance and demeanour of Estella, he considers himself to be a common labourer. He worries about his appearance - his coarse hands and thick boot’s.
Despite the way Estella treats Pip, he was starting to fall in love with Estella and was becoming impatient with Joe and all he stood for. This was the turning point that effectively launches Pip’s ambition to become Estella’s equal, both socially and culturally.
English Coursework 14th February 2002 Anjana Patel 11R!
