Great Expectations: Self-Sacrifice

With her plan of revenge in mind, Miss Havisham deliberately raises Estella to avoid emotional attachment and treat those who love her with cruelty. A specific quote in the book, where Miss Havisham tells Pip that he must love Estella at all costs, sheds light on Miss Havisham's vengeful character. One can draw parallels from the life of Miss Havisham to the life that she

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 also mocks the "angel in the house" in the way she raises Estella. Instead of teaching Estella to be loving and obedient, she teaches her coldness and hatred, planning to use her to seek revenge on all men. "With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring boy!" Estella says when Miss Havisham orders her to play cards with Pip. "Well! You can break his heart," Miss Havisham replies. She teases Pip by constantly pointing out Estella's

I think just as much as she wanted Pip to fall in love with Estella, she wanted Estella to fall in love with Pip. Dickens talks about Estella's mood swings when it came to her treatment of Pip (chapter 12) and how Miss Havisham seemed to enjoy them; it leads me to believe that Estella was having strong feelings for Pip but being trained that they were to be fought, crushed, and ignored, which must have lead to some pain, inner conflict and confusion for the young girl. Miss Havisham, I think, wanted Estella to learn this feeling of passion young, and wanted her to learn how to reject them young. It would also explain why she always loved Pip, even though she denied it. It was the only love she really ever experienced, but was never allowed to

A weapon used to her advantages, as an act of revenge. Little did she know this affected Estella's future, and her well being. She raises Estella to torment men and break their hearts. She gains the truest love from a young man Pip by the ways of Miss Havisham. She becomes cold.

(The Great Expectations; Chapter 49) The importance of this part of the chapter outlines something that had not been shown by the character; Her remorse and humanity. Throughout most of the book, Miss. Havisham is portrayed as heartless as she torments Pip with Estella which is overshadowed by the change of heart she has.

Everyone experiences pain, a universal feeling; how someone deals with that pain reflects their character. While pain is unavoidable, suffering is subjective. In Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations, the main protagonist, Pip, meets a wealthy lady named Miss Havisham and her adoptive daughter, Estella. When Pip first encounters Miss Havisham, he notices that, despite being dressed in bridal attire, she resembles a corpse. Dickens intentionally named her Havisham to emphasize that regardless of her wealth and elegant possessions, she endures a life of misery and sorrow.

With no serious distinction between child and adult morality, Charles Dickens builds Great Expectations with an underlying fairy tale motif, which has an important role in the novels structure. Following the cycle of the hero’s journey wheel, Pip comes across two mentors, one an heiress and the other a convict, who both act as typical characters in the standard fairy tale sorry. In the somewhat supernatural symbolism of the book, lies Miss Havisham, who, much like a wicked witch spun out of one of Hans Christian Andersen's fables, keeps Pip enthralled, employing Estella's beauty. Magwitch, the convict "boogeyman" and mysterious stranger,

Someone trying to get revenge will end up hurting the people they love. Sometimes it hurts their family and friends, but people who strive for revenge will always end up hurting themselves. In the novel, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Magwitch and Miss Havisham are trying to get revenge. Magwitch is a convict who received a 14 year long sentence and is then banished to Australia. A fellow convict acquires a shorter sentence for looking the part of being upper class, because of this Magwitch wants revenge on the upper class. Miss Havisham is a wealthy woman who lives with her adopted daughter Estella. After being left at the altar Miss Havisham wants revenge on the entire male gender. Mrs Havisham and Magwitch take their pain that one

As Miss Havisham told Pip, a young man who fell in love with her daughter Estella, "I'll tell you what love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter-as I did,"().Miss Havisham didn't believe in love anymore after her failed attempt at her own, so she had no respect for the feelings of others. Miss Havisham's personal prison is combined by and strengthened by her neglected home, her refusal to let time pass, and her neglected and confined emotions and these are what keep her in her self-inflicted confinement. She doesn't realize that she isn't going to heal her past by dwelling there.

Ms. Havisham claims to have intended to “save” Estella from misery, but she has actually put Estella through a different kind of misery; she put Estella through a childhood that taught her only to hurt others. Ms. Havisham raised Estella to be cold hearted to others around her, specifically to the men in her life that she encountered by “deceiving and entrapping” them. For example, Estella’s actions toward Pip throughout the entire book are extremely harsh and obviously hold no regard for his feelings. Estella even says herself, “’I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing’”

When Pip, the narrator of the novel, is first introduced to Estella at the Satis house, he hears Miss Havisham’s true intentions of his being there. He eavesdrops while Miss Havisham tells Estella “You can break his heart” (69) as Estella’s incentive for having anything to do with Pip. What Estella does not realize is that Miss Havisham is not doing this just to please Estella by allowing her to break Pip’s heart because he is a poor laboring boy that Estella wants no business with, it is truly that Miss Havisham just wants to see men suffer like the way that she had to suffer because of a man. Cleverly, Miss Havisham finds that Estella is the perfect person to continue her shattering of men’s hearts. Estella continued this crushing of hearts and cold attitude throughout the novel and it got to the point where she no longer felt much of anything towards anyone.

One of the most important and common tools that authors use to illustrate the themes of their works is a character that undergoes several major changes throughout the story. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens introduces the reader to many intriguing and memorable characters, including the eccentric recluse, Miss Havisham, the shrewd and careful lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, and the benevolent convict, Abel Magwitch. However, Great Expectations is the story of Pip and his initial dreams and resulting disappointments that eventually lead to him becoming a genuinely good person. The significant changes in Pip's character are very important to one of the novel's many themes. Dickens uses Pip's

Great Expectations’ main character, Phillip Pirrip- generally known as Pip- had a rough upbringing as a child. His sister, Mrs. Joe had “brought him up by hand”, after their parents and five brothers had all been laid to rest many years ago. Another character, Herbert Pocket experienced a bizarre childhood, though in a different manner. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations develops through the novel following Pip, a young “common boy” who grew up in the countryside. As he matured so did his love for a girl of higher class, Estella. However, being a common boy, Pip was not good enough for his Estella, thus once he was given an opportunity to become a gentleman in London he seized it without much hesitation. Charles Dickens’ had his own

Most readers are appalled at the cold-hearted and cruel ways of Estella, but any criticism directed at her is largely undeserved. She was simply raised in a controlled environment where she was, in essence, brainwashed by Miss Havisham. Nonetheless, her demeanor might lead one to suspect that she was a girl with a heart of ice. Estella is scornful from the moment she is introduced, when she remarks on Pip's coarse hands and thick boots. However, her beauty soon captivates Pip and she is instilled as the focal point of his thoughts for much of the remainder of the novel. The fact that Pip becomes infatuated with her is also not Estella's fault. By no means is there any evidence that she loved him. She does not flirt with