Miss Havisham

Miss Havisham plays a major role in Great Expectations. She portrayed a depressed, mad woman full of anger and misery. Miss Havisham is one of the, if not the most selfish character throughout the novel. After she was jilted on her wedding day, she has remained “stuck” in that day. As an outcome of this, she has grown with hatred for all men and uses her adopted daughter, Estella to get revenge. Miss Havisham’s self-serving character shows when she takes control of Estella’s life and she becomes a victim of Miss Havisham’s teachings. She raises Estella with no knowledge of what love is or how to love. Instead, Miss Havisham teaches her to torture, hate and break the hearts of men, especially to Pip. "That girl is hard and haughty and capricious

From pages 100 to 199 many different things happened to our young protagonist Pip. He became closer to Miss Havisham, and continued his complex relationship with Estella, until he was asked to leave the Satis House and become Joe’s blacksmith apprentice. Pip also begins to disregard his common lifestyle, and those within it, to continue his search for wealth and knowledge. Until he is prompted by the attack on his sister, who becomes brain damaged and incapacitated, to remember where he came from.

Pip then goes on to address the reader directly and explains that “[t]hat was a memorable day to [him], for it made great changes in [him],” (Dickens 70). After meeting with Estella several times and becoming extremely fond of her, despite her bipolar attitudes towards him, Ms. Havisham suddenly decides to recompense Pip for his time and then tells him that he no longer has to come back to the Satis House. Everyday after this, Pip continuously thinks of Estella and of how he must become a gentleman in order to be at the same level as Estella and eventually marry her. Another character Biddy (whose relationship to Pip is somewhat complicated) begins acting as Pip’s teacher and Pip says “[w]hatever [he] acquired, [he] tried to impart to Joe,” because “[he] wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common.” Pip’s plans to become a well-mannered gentleman to be worthy of high-society and to be worthy of Estella’s affection are two goals or “great expectations” that Pip sets for himself that ultimately carry the plot of the novel along.

In the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens a lot of things happen, some things were good and some things were bad that happened. One of the bad things that happened was the fire at Miss Havisham's house. The main character Pip goes to Miss Havisham's house and sees that she is sitting very close to the fire and she is sitting in her old wedding dress. A flame catches her dress on fire, Pip starts to panic and grabs a coat to put the flames out. I think fire symbolizes her wedding day and also may symbolize that it was a suicide attempt. Dickens put this part in the book because the part goes right with the story line.

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.

In the novel, Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, there is a variety of examples that symbolize different things. One of the examples used as a symbol repeatedly in the novel is fire. Though there was a fire in multiple areas of the novel, the one scene in where fire played the biggest role was the scene of the fire at Miss Havisham's home. The fire is a symbol of her wasting away her life, her coldness towards people as ironic as that is, and as a source of punishment and cleansing.

Fire is a symbol for many different things. It represents warmth, purity, punishment, desire, and destruction in many cases. However, in the novel, 'Great Expectations,' fire stands for three very different things, and they are used repeatedly throughout the play. The symbolism of the fire in Miss Havisham;s home could stand for a suicide attempt, Miss Havisham's life, or Miss Havisham's passion. Many believe that Miss Havisham's dress catching fire could have been a suicide attempt, because she is continuously showing remorse about how bad she feels about the way she has lived and treated those around her, especially Estella.

Before Miss Havisham's dress caught on fire, Pip asked her for 900 pounds to invest in Herbert's career. She agreed. She asked Pip if there was anything else she could do for him but he assured her that he didn't want anything belonging to her. Miss Havisham felt guilty for everything she had done to him and begged for his forgiveness. Pip assured her that she had been forgiven. She realized that she did to Pip what Compeyson had done to her. Later, we see Pip walking through the garden, looks up towards Miss Havisham's window and sees that she's on fire. In an attempt to put out the fire, Pip runs into the house, pulls the tablecloth off of the wedding table and wraps Miss Havisham in it. He succeeds in helping her but not without severely burning his arms. She eventually succumbed to her wounds and died.

in the novel the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens one of the many main characters played a huge role in the novel alongside Estella and Pip. She lives in a rotting mansion which seems to be as if she is rotting with it. The old house begins to catch fire, leaving readers questioning whether it is symbolic, or has any purpose to it. The breaking up of her and man and her ex husband Compeyson , left her heart broken an unforgiving. Since then she sworn to herself that'd she never move beyond the heart break thus tuning her into a bitter, vicious and mean old woman , who lived a miserable hate filled life.

(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.

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.

Despite Miss Havisham’s protests, Estella continues to verbally berate her; rightfully blaming Miss Havisham for making her so proud. As the fight progresses, Estella further distances herself by referring to Miss Havisham as her “mother by adoption” (239). Estella uses a metaphor to explain how she feels she has been wronged: “...If you had taught her...that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer...for it had blighted you and would else blight her” (240). She compares daylight to love, and how Miss Havisham trains her to see love as the enemy due to how love ruined her own life. Because of this heated argument, Miss Havisham begins to realize that while she succeeded in making Estella feel no remorse for breaking men’s hearts, she also succeeded in raising a daughter who does not love

Symbolism is very important in literature as it helps readers to understand a literary work very easily. Dickens has used a number of symbols in his novel “Great Expectations.” Dickens has used the symbol of fire in different scenes in the novel, each with a different meaning. The fire incident at Miss Havisham’s home symbolizes purification and punishment of Miss Havisham and Pip. In fact, Miss Havisham was the one on fire, not her home as she was "shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her ...." (Chapter 49). It can be described as the fire of awareness, of experience and of commitment to life that produce a distinctive influence on Miss Havisham and Pip.

Through his novel, Great Expectation, Charles Dickens employs several models of mean-spirited and self-centered female characters. However, one of these models, Miss Havisham, comes to break free of this characteristically unsympathetic behavior by shedding the years of resentment and anger that have weighed so heavily upon her. From a feminist standpoint, it is clear that the duality of character that is evident in her actions and behaviors is characteristic of being a victim which has come to pass due to her experiences with men and isolation from other strong and positive women as role models and uplifting environments. Having been so thoroughly wronged by a man from her past, Miss Havisham becomes consumed with an obsessive need to inflict

The character Estella is imprisoned within herself because of her inability to love. Ever since Estella was a child when it came to a boy, Miss Havisham taught her to "break his heart" (54). Being taught to break boys' hearts imprisons Estella within herself for she is confined and excluded from others because it is extremely difficult for her to care for or form bonds with people. Estella finally realizes what Miss Havisham has done to her when she tells Pip, "there are sentiments, fancies . . . which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean as a form of words, but nothing more" (336). This statement shows Estella's grief with her total incapability to love or form any emotional attachment to another. This grief is a change in Estella from the coldhearted behavior