Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to achieve her own revenge on men. Miss Havisham is an example of single-minded reward pursued in a hostile way. Both Miss Havisham and the people in her life suffer greatly because of her quest for revenge. Miss Havisham is completely unable to see that her actions are hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed at the end of the novel when she realizes that she has caused Pip’s heart to be broken in the same manner as her own rather than achieving any kind of personal revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness, reinforcing the novel’s theme that bad behaviour can be redeemed by contrition and sympathy.
In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize Pip’s romantic insight of the upper class and many other themes of the book. Miss Havisham has chosen to make herself an outcast. By creating this world for herself, Miss Havisham creates her own prison, one she cannot escape until she comes to terms with her life. In this way, she strengthens the image of spinster as an outcast to society. Her entire life is a tribute to one singular bad experience. Through her exile, Miss Havisham aligns herself with the spinster's identity. In addition, her extravagant appearance also aligns her with the spinster's identity.
On her decaying body, Miss Havisham’s wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast symbolize Miss Havisham’s past, and the stopped clocks throughout the house symbolize her determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The brewery next to the house symbolizes the connection between commerce and wealth. Miss Havisham’s fortune is not the product of an upper-class birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, decaying stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that spread through it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole. Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one who darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter praise against the class system in which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to torment men and “break their hearts,” Estella wins Pip’s deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm, winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and scheming. Though she represents Pip’s first longed-for ideal of life among the upper classes, Estella is actually even lower-born than Pip as Pip learns near the end of the novel, she is the daughter of Magwitch, the coarse convict, and thus springs from the very lowest level of society.
As luck would have it, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead, she is victimized twice by her adopted class. Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility, she is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and interact normally with the world. And rather than marrying the kind-hearted commoner Pip, Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years. In this way, Dickens uses Estella’s life to reinforce the idea that one’s happiness and well-being are not deeply connected to one’s social position if Estella was to have been poor, she might have been considerably better off.
Despite her cold behaviour and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens nevertheless ensures that Estella is still a sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to discover and act on her own feelings rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing, Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of Estella’s inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might love about her. Estella does not seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but she also seems not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly warns him that she has “no heart” and seems to urge him as strongly as she can to find happiness by leaving her behind. Finally, Estella’s long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop along the same lines as Pip—that is, she learns, through experience, to rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to Pip, “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better.
Contrary to the standard treatment of spinsters, Miss Havisham still receives respect from those she makes contact with. Despite her strange nature and circumstances, "everybody for miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham" (50; ch. 8). Yet no one openly disrespects her. For example, Jaggers does exactly as Miss Havisham instructs in bringing her Estella, "a little girl to rear and love, and save from my fate" (329; ch. 49). Pip never hesitates to do as Miss Havisham commands him, especially when it comes to Estella. She bids him to "Love her, love her, and love her! If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!" and Pip does not hesitate to give his entire being to Estella (193; ch. 29). When she summons Joe to speak to him about Pip's apprenticeship, he does not hesitate to go. As a matter of fact, the whole ordeal has him so nerve-wracked; he does not know how to speak to her. Most spinsters do not receive the same respect from others because they lack Miss Havisham's self confidence as a result of their so-called shameful position. Yet while Miss Havisham is respected unlike many spinsters, it is because of her wealth and social position more than her air of self-importance. Miss Havisham's position in society is fixed in the upper class because of her wealth. This, in turn, provides her with a respect unknown to spinsters, who belonged mostly to the middle class. As a result, Miss Havisham never feels unjustified in her thoughts and actions. She uses this respect to her advantage when dealing with outsiders. The small sect of women, classified as old maids, who possessed this authority were like Miss Havisham in that their social and economic position granted them such liberties. In addition to respect, Miss Havisham's wealth and social status give her this authority that otherwise would not be possible and was not characteristic of middle-class single women.
What is obvious is that Dickens chose a character like Miss Havisham for a specific purpose. In some aspects of her life, like her wealth and authority, Miss Havisham defies the standards set for a spinster by society. Yet, because of her wealth, Miss Havisham's economic and social status is raised up beyond that of a typical middle-class spinster. It is this raised status that provides her with the additional respect and authority she has as a spinster or old maid, not a mere attitude of self confidence or of complete disregard for society's standard.
