Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)

Essay Question : Why do you think Miss Havisham manipulates and misleads Pip into thinking she is his secret benefactor ? What , if anything , does she derive from this action

While Miss Havisham is not one of Charles Dicken 's most believable characters , here in `Great Expectations ' we have a very memorable woman Jilted as a young woman she has let this affect her in a negative way for the rest of her life . She literally tried to make time stand still even stopping the clock to the time it stood at when she heard

that she was not to marry and keeping a decayed wedding feast on her table . She wore the clothes she wore that day , even to the point of wearing only one shoe as she was about to put on the second shoe when the message came that Compeyson had called off their wedding

Any love she once had turned to hate , not just for her fiancye , but against all men , which of course includes Pip . She wants revenge and intends to get it . Her ward Estella , with whom Pip becomes besotted , has been trained to be cold and cruel in to break the hearts of men as Miss Havisham 's was so long ago . Miss Havisham deliberately dresses her up with jewels so as to accentuate the difference between her station in life and that of the orphan Pip . This is quite deliberate as she has been looking about for someone to test Estelle 's skills as a manipulator of men 's hearts

The jilted bride is a wealthy woman which gives her power and she uses this to manipulate others

Pip is informed that he has a secret benefactor and for various reasons believes this to be Miss Havisham . She goes along with this because it means she has power over him and can manipulate him . The more often she has contact with him , the more he sees Estelle , and the more he suffers from unrequited love

Miss Havisham cannot control her own fate so seeks to control that of others . At the end of the novel she realizes that all she has achieved is to cause Pip the kind of suffering she has gone through when Estelle marries Bentley Drummle and she begs for forgiveness

References

Dickens , Charles , `Great expectations , first published 1860-61 , Penguin Classics , London 1996

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Dickens , Great Expectations...