Ever since her rejection by fiancée Compeyson, Miss Havisham-in her own world-has effectively stopped time and all that goes with it.
Then, with a manic obsessive cruelty Miss Havisham adopts a young girl whom she names Estella and raises her as a weapon to wreak revenge on the all members of opposite sex.She inflicts her own sourness and pain on to Estella and successfully turns her into the cold hearted yet alluring creature which Miss Havisham had so fervently sought her to become,dressing her in diamonds and jewels to draw men into the trap. Resulting in Pip yearning after the love he so longingly wants yet cannot have from Estella.
Her malevolent approach towards all men is portrayed throughout the book yet Miss Havisham cannot see that her actions are hurtful towards Pip and Estella.In one example it is possible to distinguish her bitter fixation reaching a climax between Pip and herself,
“ Love her,love her,love her. If she tears your heart to pieces love her and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper-love her, love her, love her!”
The plea in her voice is a clear indication of the sheer desperation that Miss Havisham feels she must enforce upon Estella. However, the more Pip loves her, the more Estella seems to enjoy torturing and manipulating him-he is almost like an equivalent of a toy mannequin for her.
However, eventually Miss Havisham is once again betrayed by her only love and daughter, Estella. It begins to become ever clearer that in making Estella in to the cold hearted woman she is,Miss Havisham has been blissfully unaware that by doing this it has not only deeply affected Estella but also herself.
“You asked me to give you what you never gave me… I am what you have made me.”
These words from Estella’s mouth convey the large amount of tension building up between the two women.
Miss Havisham continually used repetition in her speech” What have I done, what have I done…so hard so hard” to convey the feeling of despondency.
Afterwards it is significantly clear that Miss Havisham feels a strong sense of remorse and regret towards Pip and Estella realising how much she has hurt them. This gives her cause to take action and begs forgiveness from Pip when he visits her nearer the end of the book. “If you can ever write under my name,’I forgive her,’ though ever after my broken heart is dust-pray do it!” as she “dropped to her knees” at Pips feet.
At this point there is a major turning point in the novel ; Pip realises that all her pent up emotion, intense desolation and “wild resentment” had lead to the destruction of her mind, body and soul, “by shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more.” When Pip leaves Miss Havisham he has an instinctive premonition that she may be in some sort of danger, he pictured her “hanging to the beam” this a memorable, gothic image he assumes that it is nothing more than a vision buy just to be certain that Pip is not mistaken he decides to say one last goodbye and check on Miss Havisham. It is then that he witnesses “a great flaming light spring up” from upon her head. In all his might Pip attempted to rescue Miss Havisham from her burning struggle but did so unsuccessfully. Although she was still alive her and her burns were not life-threatening, the sheer shock of her experience lay much to be desired as her condition worsened. The fire scene is especially memorable as Dickens describes the incident in much detail with similes -”struggling like desperate enemies”, he also uses dramatic word choice to make it a truly traumatic event “wildly she shrieked” . Although it only happened in a second Dickens expands the moment to create a vivid picture.Pip was also afraid that if he stopped holding her then the fire would somehow re-appear and “consume” her. The fact that Pip did not realise that he was badly burnt on his hands shows that he was acting on complete adrenalin and that he had no idea what he was doing at the time.
At the very end of the book Pip coincidently meets Estella in the run old, down grounds of Satis house. After having not seen her for many years Pip had little knowledge of her current life and knew only that she had been married twice, the first to a cruel and brutal man whom she had separated and the second to a man whom died in a horse accident. He had no awareness to whether or not she had married again. It is then that the unconditional love in her heart over-rides the mistrust and betrayal in her head and Estella finally confides in Pip and tells him that her heart has been through suffering like his had once, long ago.
“ I have been bent and broken but-I hope- into a better shape.”
The pressures of Miss Havisham and past affairs to Estella and Pip would no longer have a detrimental effect on their relationship and it was then that Pip “saw no shadow of another parting from her”.
In conclusion Miss Havisham was neither crazy, nor was she evil. She was mentally ill, driven to insanity with love and pain, with nobody to care for her. She was a confused lady, with nowhere to turn; therefore, she created her own fictional world where nothing changed and her own experience of emotional betrayal cast a prolonging shadow over her entire life. Dickens illustrates the fact that interpersonal and family relationships are forever changing, as remaining still only leads to tragedy. Her character draws in the reader as her peculiarity is mysterious, interesting and somewhat chilling as she is just that little bit different. Charles Dickens uses an exceptionally vast amount of word choice and word imagery to give us this unforgettable impression of one of the most memorable characters ever created in English literature.
