In Satis House, there are two main, important characters. They are Miss Havisham and Estella.
The vengeful Miss Havisham, as well as living in a rotting mansion, wears an old and yellowing wedding dress every single day. “She was dressed in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silks – all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white.” At later stages in the book, these white clothes are described as yellowish, or greyish, and old and decaying, just as the wearer: “I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left, but the brightness of her sunken eyes.”
This shows the lack of colour in Miss Havisham. She is almost death-like. “But I saw that everything within my view, which ought to be white, and had been white long ago, had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow.” Her personality is joyless; she never smiles. She hardly ever moves. She seems to be waiting for death. She is full of hatred and malice. “Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table”. Although Miss Havisham is described as decaying and colourless, her wealth is on display, and impressive to Pip. These jewels are the only brightness and colour in sight.
Miss Havisham’s whole life, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is defined by a single tragic event: her fiancé ditching her on what was to have been their wedding day. She has never forgiven, nor forgotten. She stopped all the clocks in Satis House at twenty minutes to nine, the moment when she first learned that her fiancé was gone, and she wears only one shoe, because when she learned of his betrayal, she had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of eccentric, obsessive cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to achieve her own revenge on all men. Miss Havisham is an example of single-minded vengeance pursued destructively: both Miss Havisham and the people in her life suffer greatly because of her mission for revenge. Miss Havisham is completely unable to see that her actions are hurtful to Estella and Pip, although perhaps she intended it to upset Pip. She is redeemed at the end of the novel when she realises 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.
Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to torment men and “break their hearts,” Estella ironically wins Pip’s deepest love by practising deliberate cruelty. Unlike the kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative. Though she represents Pip’s first longed-for ideal in life among the upper classes, Estella is 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. Funnily enough, life among the upper classes does not show rescue for Estella. Instead of being raised by Magwitch, a man of integrity, she is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and relate 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 your happiness and well being are not deeply connected to your social position; had Estella been poor, she might have been significantly better off. The fact that happiness is not necessarily connected with wealth is a great Victorian theme, and was common in works of literature at the time. (For example, John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress.)
Despite Estella’s 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 forced motives of her childhood, Dickens gives the reader a glimpse into Estella’s heart, 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 sometimes; she always warns him that she has “no heart” and seems to strongly convince him to find happiness by leaving her alone. 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. 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 shape.” Here, she is beginning to show humility.
Throughout most of the book, Pip is affected by Satis House and its inhabitants, in that he is striving to improve himself. Before he became aware of Satis House, Pip was happy with his lot in life, and is content to help Joe Gargery in the forge. As soon as he meets Estella, he becomes consumed with ambition for great things. But he also starts to see himself differently, as Estella calls him a “common labouring boy” with “course hands” and “thick boots”. Seeing Miss Havisham and Estella in Satis House with their false pride and wealth he tries to make something of himself, while aiming to win the love of Estella. However, by the end of the novel, Pip turns away from these ambitions of social status and recognises that it is what is on the inside that counts, and not how much wealth you have. This is illustrated again for Pip when Joe and Biddy get married, they are perfectly happy without the riches. Pip would not have had all these false ambitions if it hadn’t been for his introduction to Satis House.
At the end of the book, Pip realises that he is very fond of Biddy and that she would make the ideal companion for him. He realises for years that she loved him and was waiting for him to propose. However, it is too late for Pip because by the time he’s made his mind up to propose marriage, that very same day she marries Joe. This is poetic justice in that the Victorians believed that you would be punished for any wrongs that you’ve committed. But it’s a cruel twist of fate.
Great Expectations is full of contrasts. Biddy contrasts with Estella; Joe contrasts with Miss Havisham; the forge contrasts with Satis House; and the life Pip leads contrasts with the life he could have lead.
The comparison between Miss Havisham, Satis House and Pip’s own background at the forge, lead to understanding why Pip develops ambitions to become rich, grand and a ‘gentleman’. First, he falls in love with an uncaring woman and he feels this is the right way to win her heart. Second, he concludes that his poor background is something to be ashamed of.
As a reader you follow Pip’s life and you go on the same journey, and you come to the same conclusions as Pip. Not did I appreciate Pip’s journey through the book, it made me think about it and helped me appreciate my own journey and choices I will make.
So you as a reader appreciate Pip’s ultimate choice; to return to honesty and his humble roots is the morally superior goal.
