Is it possible to feel sympathy for the Miss Havisham and Estella characters in Great Expectations?

Authors Avatar

Great Expectations Essay

Great Expectations

By

Charles Dickens

Is it possible to feel sympathy for the Miss Havisham and Estella characters in Great Expectations?

Great expectations is a book that is set in Victorian Britain, which tells us the story of a boy named pip who goes from being poor and working with his brother in-law as a blacksmith, to learning how to be a gentleman in London. The story focuses on how pip becomes the focus of a strange, eccentric woman called Miss Havisham, who is using her adopted daughter Estella to break Pips heart.

Although the stories main character is pip I have decided to write this essay on Miss Havisham and Estella. The reason for that I have chosen these characters is because I feel that they have a lot of reasons why we should and should not feel sympathy for them.

An interpretation of the word sympathy is ‘to feel pity or sorrow for another’. I feel that because Miss Havisham and Estella have such different personalities I will be able to comment on them much easier than any other characters.

During the course of the essay I also will be focussing on the Language used in the book and how this helps to describe the characters, the historical background of the book and its connection with the characters, and the Victorian idea of what a gentlemen actually is.

Miss Havisham is a very lonely and bitter women, she hates all men and is very rich.

The reason that she hates all men is because she was jilted by her fiancée on her wedding day. Because she is in denial about being left by her future husband she has not moved a thing since that day, everything in her house has been kept exactly as it was, she is still in her Wedding dress, her wedding decorations are still up, and all the clocks have been stopped at the exact time that she found out she would not be getting married, we know that the clocks have all stopped because pips says:

“I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty to nine.”

The fact that Miss Havisham cannot move forwards and carry on with her life is my first reason for why we may be able to feel sympathy for her.

When Pip first sees Miss Havisham he says:

“I saw the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.”

This can paint I very vivid picture in the head of the reader and helps give us a glimpse into what she must be feeling. Her despair at being jilted has been reflected on the way that she is dressed and that fact that she has spent many years in the same dress waiting for her fiancée to come back can make us feel pity and compassion for her.

Join now!

In the Victorian times, it was common that a women should be married, especially a women with a high status such as Miss Havisham. Because Miss Havisham has failed in becoming married may help us to feel sorry for her because people would probably not be very understanding to her suffering.

When pip first meets Miss Havisham he does not look her in the eye, which leads Miss Havisham to say:

“You are not afraid of a women who has not seen daylight since you were born?”

The way in which Miss Havisham says this gives the reader a ...

This is a preview of the whole essay