Comparison of Miss Havisham and Lady Macbeth Essay

Lady Macbeth, a leading character in William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Macbeth, progresses throughout the play from a savage and heartless creature to a delicate and fragile woman, having no regard for mortality.

In the play Macbeth, ambition, strength, and insanity play major roles in how the characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth behave and react. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth present all 3 of these behaviors at one time or another during the play. However, there behaviors progress in very different ways. While Macbeth gets stronger and more ambitious, Lady Macbeth does the opposite. She starts out strong and ambitious, but becomes weaker and more reserved.

The audience’s initial perception of Lady Macbeth is of a confident and evil women. In her first scene she is reading a letter from her husband telling her about the witches predictions. Upon reading the letter she instantly decides to

Lady Macbeth is a complex and intriguing character in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. She is a difficult character to embody as her personality seems split between two sides, one that is pure evil, sly and conniving in contrast to her softer, vulnerable, weak and feminine side. In the play we see her in these two main ways. The reader may feel a certain animosity towards Lady Macbeth throughout the first few acts as her personality appears more and more distasteful, in spite of this towards the end she has a serious breakdown over the guilt that torments her, even in her sleep, regarding her hand in Duncan’s untimely death.

Lady Macbeth is a strong character controlling her terrifying dreams at night and rescuing Macbeth from his weak conscience as in the scene when Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost. She protects him and defends him at the banquet. However as the play progresses, Lady Macbeth’s relationship with Macbeth weakens and we see more of her defenselessness and delicateness. During the

Lady Macbeth from “Macbeth” was a very powerful and influential character in the play. However, her traits are portrayed as bitter making her seem as an undesirable figure. Throughout the book she is interpreted as controlling, demanding, power seeking, and corrupt, but it will later come back and cause conflict. In the book she says, “ Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures… For it must seem their guilt” (Shakespeare 59). At this point in the book, Lady Macbeth is showing how controlling she is by taking the matters into

One day Pip is taken to play at a large house, the house belongs to the character Miss Havisham who is portrayed as an extremely eccentric person. It is during these visits that the young Pip meets Miss Havisham’s daughter Estella, who never displays any form of affection for Pip and treats him contemptuously. Nevertheless, Pip falls in love and it his dream to become a gentleman and marry Estella.

Miss Havisham is a lonely individual who has been through many struggles in her life. One example of a struggle she has been through is when she was getting married and on her wedding day, was jilted at the alter. The day she received a letter stating that her fiancé had merely defrauded her and no longer wanted to marry her changed her outlook on life. She stopped trying to progress in life and altogether stopped living. Heartbroken as she was, she remained in her

She adopted her when she was young just so she could love her. But, in the end she turned her into a such a monster that it even back fired on her. She's also regretful of putting her past on her and made her try to take revenge for her. Now, Estella inside of her has no heart and she believes what Miss Havisham wanted her to believe about love. Miss Havisham now knows the truth about Pip's love for Estella and it kills her to see that she caused a lot of pain for Pip by changing Estella. The love Miss Havisham wished upon having from a guy was in Pip for Estella and she sees she messed it up all for

In my opinion she was feed up of her life. For example in chapter 49 of Great Expectations Miss Havishmas called Pip for some Business. When Pip went to her house it was different she just wanted to say sorry to Pip after whatever she did to him and Estella. She might be fed up of her life because she was always wrong all the men are not the Same as she thought they all were the same. She separated two people who loved each other so much. That can also be the reason why she was fed up of her life maybe they were the regrets that she had to

She targets Pip and uses Estella to taunt him, saying things to Pip such as, “Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, 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!” (Dickens 253) Through Estella, Miss Havisham makes Pip feel ashamed for things he can’t change.

Likewise, Dickens describes how Pip is “outside the gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone.” It is at this point that the reader realises the power and determination Miss Havisham has as a women in plotting this plan to break Pips heart and that the finality of Pip maybe never seeing Estella again is so brutal. However, the two characters are very different in the way that they go about their manipulation. Shakespeare uses language that would shock the Elizabethan

This makes the reader feel somewhat sorry for her at first and wonder why she is living in such a way. Although it is soon evident that Miss Havisham is not as weak as she first appears when she speaks to Pip for the first time; ‘“Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.”’ Dickens also uses imperatives in Miss Havisham’s speech ‘come’ showing that although regarded by all in that era as a failure she still has power to make others do whatever she wants.

Miss Havisham also undergo an evolution as one might say. She requests Pip's presence at the Satis House to fulfill a request he made in regards to Herbert. Loneliness has taken over her room. She anonymously gives Pip money for Herbert and her explanation as to why is, "I want to show you that I am not all stone. But perhaps you can never believe me, now that there is anything human in my heart?" She recognizes she hurt Pip in her quest for revenge and hopes to repent by doing something nice for him. She then questions his desires, hence showing that she is no longer the same woman Dickens wrote about in the beginning of the

Wayne Trotman, a British filmmaker, once argued, “Revenge can only be found on the road to self-destruction.” To put it another way, revenge damages all involved, including those who administer the revenge. Charles Dickens often illustrates in Great Expectations this concept through his characters attempts to get ahead by getting even with the people who wronged them. The characters fail to see that through these actions they persecute themselves in the process. In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the pursuit of revenge consumes and destroys the lives of Estella, Orlick, and Miss Havisham.