Miss Havisham In Great Expectations

Each character in Great Expectations has their own environment, which helps illustrate the character. By describing the surroundings in detail, as well as the characters' interactions with their surroundings, Charles Dickens goes beyond simple narrations of appearance and personality when characterizing. Miss Havisham’s dark character is revealed not only by her description, dialogue, and deeds, but also by what she calls “home” or what Pip paints it to be.
Miss Havisham’s secluded and aloof character is first introduced after Mrs. Joe Gargery informs Pip that he has been invited over to her mansion, the Satis house. When he and Mr. Pumblechook arrive, Pip recounts the exterior of her “home,” “which was of old brick, and dismal, and had great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows has been walled up; of those that remained , all the lower were rustily barred” (55). The fact that the lower was “dustily barred” shows that Miss Havisham, who is responsible for the upkeep, has not been actively doing, which depicts her to be unkempt. In this description, there are words, such as: old, dismal, barred, and rustily, which has negative connotations, which …show more content…
While Pip is playing cards with Estella, it seems like time has stopped, but when he “glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white now yellow, had never worn” (60). The yellowing of all the “decayed objects,” tells us how much time has elapsed and for how long Miss Havisham has been living in the painful memories of her past, as “not even the withered bridal dress on collapsed form could have looked so grave-like, or the long veil so like a shroud” (60). Because the descriptions of Miss Havisham’s “home,” the disheveled condition of it paints her and her life to having similar