Character Information:
Pip- Pip is the protagonist and the narrator of Great Expectations. Pip wants the best in life. The entire novel is him seeking his “Great Expectations”. Pip is very passionate and has a great conscience. The entirety of the novel is him wants to improve himself. Pip is the reason that his novel is a bildungsroman. Once he learned all the lessons he needed to in the novel he fully matured. Many of the events that happened to Pip are a representation of what happened to Dickens in his early life. Apart from David Copperfield, Great Expectations is his most autobiographical novel.
Estella- Estella is Miss Havisham’s daughter. She is said to be very beautiful and cold hearted. She is raised by Miss Havisham to do one thing, use and break men’s hearts. Pip is in love with her but she is uninterested in him. She warns him that she has no heart. Miss Havisham essentially ruined her life. Although she is in the upper class, she has not emotion and is the shell of a person. She could have been better off if Magwitch raised her in the lower class.
Miss Havisham- Miss Havisham is Estella’s adopted mother. Her entire life revolves around being left by Compeyson on their wedding day. She wears her wedding dress every day and all her clocks are stopped on the time she received the letter. She raises Estella as her own personal weapon to get revenge on all men. She never wants to get over her heart break; she has Estella continue it on. Everyone in her life suffers because of Compeyson’s actions. At the end of the novel she begs Pip for his forgiveness, showing once again the novels theme that bad behavior can be redeemed.
Magwitch- A criminal who has Pip rob his family for him in the beginning in the novel. He gets se...
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...ions” to change.
Works Cited
Barickman, Richard, Susan MacDonald, and Myra Stark. “Dickens." In Corrupt Relations: Dickens, Thakeray, Trollope, Collins, and the Victorian Sexual System. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, 59-110.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Radhika Jones. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003. Print.
Hobsbaum, Philip. A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973. A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens. Google Books. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
Lii, Thereaa. "Defining Characters by Their Chosen Environment." Defining Characters by Their Chosen Environment. Brown University, 23 Feb. 2008. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
Weiss, Zoe. "Seeing Double, Double Seeing: The Use of Doubles in Great Expectations." Seeing Double, Double Seeing: The Use of Doubles in Great Expectations. Brown University, 18 Feb. 2008. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
She has taken Estella under her wing and raised her to be a heartbreaker. She even says in the novel, “Break their hearts, my pride and hope…have no mercy!” Miss Havisham clearly lives vicariously through Estella and enjoys seeing Pip struggle to win Estella over. Furthermore, Miss Havisham continuously brings up the topic of her heartbreak and rancor at men. She states, “…when they lay me dead…will be the finished curse upon him…” She hopes to have one last piece of her vindictiveness rest upon the man who left her at the altar. Moreover, Miss Havisham also makes Pip put his hand on her heart at one point in the story. When he does so, she simply tells him that it is “broken.” Similarly, Miss Havisham also tells Pip, “…this heap of decay…The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.” This demonstrates the idea that Miss Havisham is still heartbroken and apoplectic over her being “jilted.” She routinely proclaims how her heart is broken, which in turn paves the way for her acrimony to set in, which then results in her creating taunting Estella as her last revenge on all young men who vie for the affection of
Estella is Miss Havisham’s puppet because she has no control over her life. Miss Havisham devoted a period in her life to raising Estella to be exactly who she wanted her to be. Miss Havisham made Estella into a heartless doll of her creation. Miss Havisham told Estella to be especially cruel to Pip. Estella shows non-sentimental emotions toward Pip. She tells him she doesn't remember anything from their childhood. This showed Pip that Estella did not care enough about him to reflect on the times that they had spent together. Miss Havisham's bleakness made Estella a terrible person. Miss Havisham taught her student to break hearts, so she hurt Pip because he loved her. Furthermore, her groom abandoned Miss Havisham on her wedding day. Miss
Since both Estella and Pip were kids Estella showed no compassion towards Pip. After going to Miss Havisham’s for the day, Estella is told to feed Pip. He tells the reader that she basically throws everything at him and treats him like a dog then watches him cry and enjoys it. (Dickens p.68). Young Pip also narrates, “But, I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.”(Dickens 102) Estella always knew that Pip was in love with her, yet she never reciprocated the feeling and simply exploited his weakness. The reader can understand and somehow excuse her behavior because she has Miss Havisham as her main example. Estella even explains how amusing it is when people are surprised by the way Miss Havisham treats them in chapter 33. This shows how cruel Miss Havisham is and how cruel Estella is as a result of
... discontinued her life and this is mainly represented by the clocks and watches in her house stopping at twenty to nine. She has raised Estella to hate men and break their hearts just as her future husband had the day of her wedding. Miss Havisham’s function in the story is to create a source of fear and as Pip visited her house, her character was created
...hat all un-married women were useless because they weren’t going to have children and they were built to reproduce. Miss Havishams appearance suggest that she is a virgin since she is all in “white” and was going to get married, but her fiancé stood her up, and since then she has wore her white wedding dress, and never saw day light and abhorrence all men and tried to make Estella despise men.
She is manic and often seems insane, fitting around her house in a faded wedding dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, wearing only one of her shoe, and surrounded herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. With a kind of manic, obsessive cruelty, she adopts Estella and deliberately raises her as a weapon in order to break men’s heart. 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 quest for revenge. While Estella was still a child, Miss Havisham began casting about for boys who could be a testing ground for Estella's education in breaking the hearts of men as vicarious revenge for Miss Havisham's pain. Pip, the narrator, is the eventual victim; and Miss Havisham readily dresses Estella in jewels to enhance her beauty and to exemplify all the more the vast social gulf between her and Pip. When, as a young adult, Estella leaves for France to receive education, Miss Havisham eagerly asks him, "Do you feel you have lost her?” This quote shows that Miss Havisham takes a perverted pleasure in hurting Pip and that her desire for revenge still as strong as
To start off Miss Havisham is an old woman whose heart was broken on her wedding day. Basically she uses her revenge on all men to get their hearts broken, just to feel better for herself. In order to complete that revenge Miss Havisham adopted and raised Estella to use her to get her revenge on men. She starts off with Pip. Miss Havisham tells Estella to be mean to Pip, and
In the story, Miss Havisham tells Estella to “break their hearts and have no mercy.” The livid hatred Miss Havisham has against humanity results from decades of denial in accumulating bitterness. Hatred is a veil that entraps Miss Havisham in a cyclical path where she chases mirages of revenge against all men through Estella, effectively locking her out of redemption. In the story, Miss Havisham tells Pip that he “set his own traps, not [her]” after Pip asks for her why she planned to hurt him. Miss Havisham is fully aware of her duplicitous schemes to break Pip’s heart, however she reacts with glee in Pip’s pain. Her neglect to correct her wrongs and happiness of exacting revenge enforces her stagnant personality of an evil witch. After seeing the monster in her other puppet, Estella, Miss Havisham says “Estella, to be proud and hard to me!” Miss Havisham shows no remorse in destroying Estella, rather feels pity in herself for being hurt. Despite having both of her creations being reflected upon her, Miss Havisham refuses to contemplate her wrong actions, illustrating her role of being sheer evil. Greed and hate are ingrained traits in Miss Havisham that cause her to be a static
Throughout Dickens’ novel Great Expectations, the character, personality, and social beliefs of Pip undergo complete transformations as he interacts with an ever-changing pool of characters presented in the book. Pip’s moral values remain more or less constant at the beginning and the end; however, it is evident that in the time between, the years of his maturation and coming of adulthood, he is fledgling to find his place in society. Although Pip is influenced by many characters throughout the novel, his two most influential role models are: Estella, the object of Miss Havisham’s revenge against men, and Magwitch, the benevolent convict. Exposing himself to such diverse characters Pip has to learn to discern right from wrong and chose role models who are worthy of the title.
Magwitch in secret provided Pip to become a gentleman. Magwitch later reveals to Pip that he had been his benefactor and says that he had made a gentleman of him. He also explained how it was his dream to make Pip a gentleman. “Yes Pip, dear boy I made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea and that guinea should be going to
Miss Havisham's has what can only be called a grotesque fetish towards women who hurt men, this is due to her herself being broken by a man. Pip detects Miss Havisham's strange desire to have Estella constantly mentally & emotionally abuse him very early on, however when Estella treats Havisham coldly as well, she goes ballistic. The confrontation addresses the elephant in the room, Estella's mounting cruelty towards people. Estella declares that her "mother by adoption" has made her cruel and incapable of love. In response Miss Havisham claims that Estella is being "proud" or "hard," Estella responds by saying, "Who taught me to be hard?" Estella had not chosen the life thrust upon her by her bitter caretaker but after the confrontation she has embraced as her own and even perfected it.
With the opportunities that came with her enormous wealth, Miss Havisham abused her power and broke poor Pip’s heart, merely because she found similarities between him and a commoner of her past, Compeyson, who hurt her. She oppressed Pip’s feelings by training Estella to “break [his] heart and have no mercy” (Dickens 58). Throughout Pip’s life, he continued to love Estella against reason, even “if she [favored him]...If she [wounded him]...If she [tore his] heart to pieces” (127). Along with Pip’s growing affection for Estella, Miss Havisham continuously crushed Pip’s spirit. Miss Havisham made sure to shatter Pip’s dreams of
Miss Havisham is someone in teaches how a person can affect others by their actions. Miss Havisham is always in Estella’s life because she brings Estella up by herself. The way Miss Havisham acts is the way Estella will see and act similarly. The saying of “monkey see monkey do” is similar to Miss Havisham and Estella. Estella is the “monkey” and she sees Miss Havisham act one way so she copies it. Miss Havisham makes Estella into who she is now: cold, heartless and cruel towards others.
In order to make more money Pip’s uncle sends Pip to a psychotic old lady’s house named Mrs. Havisham. Mrs. Havisham is a mean and nasty character who constantly bickers at Pip and tells him of his unimportance. Pip continues to be mild mannered and respectful to Mrs. Havisham yet he begins to see that he will never get ahead in life just being nice. Mrs. Havisham uses Pip as sort of a guinea pig to take out her passion of revenge against men. She does this by using her daughter, Estella to torment Pip.
Adopted by Miss Havisham as a baby, Estella rises to a high social standing. Raised to be protected from Miss Havisham’s mistakes in love, she is trained to repress notions of romantic love. By “[stealing] her heart away and [putting] ice in its place,” Miss Havisham thus prevents Estella from gaining the ability to achieve true happiness in life. The true meaning and feeling of love is unknown to Estella. Condescension and insensibility to others is sowed into her being early on, and she only can become more incapable of loving as she matures. When Pip is hired to become her playmate, she revels in the opportunity to exercise her prowess. Encouraged by Miss Havisham, Estella hones her ability to break hearts with Pip, but he is only the first of the many destined to befall that fate.