Great Expectation, How Charles Dickens shows Miss Havisham change over the novel.

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Isabelle Rose

GCSE coursework

Great Expectations     Pre 1914 Prose``

How does Dickens show the change in Miss Havisham over the course of the novel?

“Great Expectation” is about a young boy named Pip and follows him throughout his life. Pip meets Miss Havisham a lady with a broken heart who has an adopted daughter named Estella, Estella is a “pretty young girl” that pip falls in love with. A close analysis of the novel reveals Miss Havisham is not the person she is perceived to be.

The bitter and vengeful Miss Havisham is one of the main characters in Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. She is central to the novel and holds the plot together. Dickens waits until Chapter 8 to introduce the character to the reader, like Pip we are scared and frightened when we meet her for the first time. “I should have cried out, if I could”. This shows that Miss Havisham intimidates Pip; and as a result, we fear for Pip; and are also uncomfortable as readers. Also, the word ‘haunting’ is associated when we think of Miss Havisham. This is because of her “ghostly” appearance, her disturbed state of mind, and the way she haunts Pip. If we are to say haunting is when someone/something has a lasting, negative effect on something, it is evidently shown that Miss Havisham is a gothic, disturbing, melancholic character.

Dickens uses descriptive writing to describe Miss Havisham as a wealthy, well dressed woman “in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silk”. Dickens uses imagery of luxury and opulence to give a clear picture in the readers mind about how Miss Havisham is dressed. Dickens also uses a simile’ withered like the dress’ to show how Miss Havisham has been trapped in time and grown old and decayed along with her white wedding dress, also reflecting her mental state. Dickens presents her to be a living dead, ‘waxwork and skeleton’ as there is nothing healthy in her. She has allowed herself to get wasted and now she looks more dead than alive.

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Both Miss Havisham and her adopted daughter Estella, manipulate Pip for their own “sick fancys”.  Miss Havisham states to Pip that her heart has been “broken” and she wants “diversion”. She also “has had enough of men and women” therefore, enclosing herself in her house. Miss Havisham was jolted at the altar by the man she thought she loved. As a result of her heartache and pain, she stopped the clocks at twenty to nine, and left the house and herself exactly the way it was on that day; “never seen the sun since you were born”.

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