1. Background Information – Dickens’ Miss Havisham
“Havisham” is written from the perspective of Miss Havisham, a well known character who features in the Charles Dickens novel “Great Expectations”. At the start of the novel she about forty years old.
She is a wealthy spinster who lives as a virtual recluse in a ruined mansion with her adopted daughter.
As a young woman, Miss Havisham was madly in love and engaged to be married to a man called Compeyson. However, on the day they were due to be married, Compeyson broke off the engagement, leaving Miss Havisham humiliated and brokenhearted.
After the trauma of her failed wedding, Miss Havisham refused to move on with her life. She stopped all of the
clocks in her mansion at twenty minutes to nine, the time at which she received the letter breaking off her engagement. She continues to wear the dress she was to be married in, and wears only one shoe, as she only had one on when she heard that her engagement was broken off. The wedding breakfast that was prepared for the day of her marriage remains on a banquet table, with a decaying wedding cake in the centre.
Miss Havisham also retains a bitterness and hatred towards men. She adopts a daughter – Estella – and raises her with a desire to protect her from suffering at the hands of men. However, as Estella grows older, it is clear that Miss Havisham’s true motive is to use Estella as a way of hurting men in order that they can experience the pain that she has suffered.