Mrs. Havisham In Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Miss Havisham is a strange old lady who is always dressed in her wedding dress. She is described as being "faded" - everything about her is old and decaying. Her white hair is decorated with bridal flower and her dress are yellow from its age. Mrs. Havisham had once planned to be married, but she was jilted at the altar, and she has left everything in her house exactly the way it was on her almost-wedding day.
Mrs. Havisham's estate is unkempt and overgrown, and the house is a creepy old mansion which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rusty barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred and at the side of the house there was a large brewery. The inside of the house is dark, the only light are lit by wax candles, and all the clocks have been stopped at twenty minutes to nine. On a long table in the great room, Mrs. Havisham's wedding cake still remains, covered with dust and cobwebs. Mrs. Havisham has instructed that the table not be cleared until she has died, after which she will be laid upon it for her wake. …show more content…
When Pip comes over for the first time, she orders him to play so she can have some diversion. It is her intention that he grow up to marry Estella, a young girl whom she has adopted. Taught by Miss Havisham to reject all who would love her, Estella is cruel and unfeeling. Though Miss Havisham exhorts Pip to "love Estella”, making him play with Estella even when Estella obviously hates him and then, when Pip is growing up, eagerly telling him that she's "educating for a lady. She was just trying to heal her broken heart in the only way she could. In the end, she really wants them to marry together, but Estella cannot love him back, and the old lady's dream of marriage for them never