petak, 30. siječnja 2015.

Miss Havisham - Character Analysis

Miss Havisham fist appears in the book when she invites Pip to come to the Satis House to play with her adopted dauther Estella. The first thing he noticed were the clocks - they were all set at 8:40. He refered to her as 'the witch of the place'. She was a very wealthy, but broken woman, because of the tragic even that has happened to her years ago. Her fiance sent her a letter on their wedding day, in which he had left her. It broke not only her heart but she could again never trust men. She thinks they are the same, and wants a revenge. That is why she raised Estella to be cold hearted and insulting towards men. To her, Estella was a form of weapon to teach them all a lesson. So what was her plan? She incouraged Pip to fall in love with Estella, and she kept on breaking his heart over and over again.

"In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see. 
...
It was when I stood there before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that the clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine."  - Pips first impressions (Dickens, C. (1986) Great Expectations  (pages 54/55- chapter 8),  Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd, 58 Old Compton Street, London  WIV 5PA)

Even though she was dressed in rich materials; satin, lace and silk, she looked lifeless. The wedding dress that once used be beautiful white is now yellow, dirty and smelly. She had only one shoe on her foot, as she got the news as she was putting them on.  A long white veil (half arranged) and bridal flowers were still in her, now white, hair, and bright jewels sparkled around her neck and hands. There was also a prayer book on the dressing table as well as the other shoe, gloves, a handkerchief, and her watch and chain. She hadn't seen the daylight in years, the only light in her room was coming from a candle. Everything that was one new, white, beautiful and shiny was now old, yellow and had lost its sparkle, even her eyes.

I think Miss Havisham is a very honest and real character, but out of touch with reality. She openly shows her brokeness and sadness, she wears her feelings and has no desire to move on. That is what, in my opinion, what makes her honest and real. When other people experience this kind of loss, they spend a certain amount of time being sad and depressed and then try to move on. Everyone wants to forget something as devastating and life changing as this. They want to find someone new, believe that there are happy endings after all and to live a happy life. But not her. Isolated from the world, she keeps living in that horrible moment when her heart was broken. Even the clocks set at 8:40 are there to remind her of the time when she stopped to live a happy life and turned into a living corpse. She went from a victim of being left at the altar, to a victim of her own mental illness. Trapped in this sad little world of her own, with no desire to move on, or to live, for that matter, she sits alone, tourtering herself, in a dark room, slowly waiting for death. 

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