March | 2012 | Moving On

Ms. Havisham’s one example of someone who has failed to move on. But she happens to be just a character in a novel that’s still read and studied by many these days.

You will be intrigued by Ms. Havisham in Charles Dickens‘ novel ‘Great Expectations‘ and your questions about her will remain unanswered even after you’ve finished reading the book. Her image keeps on coming back in your mind as she plays a very pivotal role in the novel. In those days, novels were published in installments, with each chapter released after a certain period (which can be a week or so), and which was the case with ‘Great Expectations.’ This writer imagines that Ms. Havisham’s character probably kept lingering in the minds of readers in those old days. She is shown having the main keys that will open the directions of the lives of the other leading characters. For example, she possesses the wealth that Pip (the main character) erroneously thinks and greatly expects will be handed over to him when he undertakes efforts to educate himself. Mr. Pip will think early on that Ms. Havisham’s his unnamed benefactor, but will be so surprised toward the end of the novel when he discovers who will turn out to be the real one.

Cinematic-like, eccentric quality of her character

Similar to an assembly of other characters a reader has encountered in many other books or even that stereotyped character faced by a moviegoer on big screen, her character comes alive in your imagination by the way Mr. Dickens has described her. Imagine a wedding where a groom didn’t show up, which will lead the bride (Ms. Havisham) to decide to freeze that humiliating moment in her life. In a way of looking, she is easily among those living ghosts people see in haunted places or even those zombies who come alive in many movies. And Ms. Havisham will even have certain people whom she selects to meet up with to see her only in that wedding gown and within the confines of her enormous bedroom. And she will get away with it because she relentlessly pursues what she wants for the rest of her life, and she will display no due consideration to what others think of her eccentricities.

Manipulative

Her apparent motivation in living her mature life is to manipulate all characters around her. She will be in this highly motivated path after grasping from events in her life that her no-show groom-to-be (who also has a dubious character) had been collaborating with others to merely skim huge amounts of money from her (and nothing else). She will be using her inherited wealth from her businessman-father to meet all her whims and caprices; she will be enkindled by her dismal failure from moving on with her life. And everybody else will have to kowtow before her so she will remain forever frozen in that petrifying period in that fortuitous wedding. You see her traits among certain people you meet in life. They can probably include your bosses who are so exploitative in their dealings with you, your siblings (if you have one) who have been petty when attempting to get something valuable from you just because they’re not leading happy lives, your co-workers who just deal with you because they can still get something material from you and not mainly because they care at all about your growth and development as a person, among so many others probable scenarios. Ms. Havisham is almost the epitome of those manipulations by someone who turn them into a well-disguised scheme behind a great work of art. But at the end, she will come to realize that all her efforts in manipulating people’s lives will come to nil. For example, she will realize to her utter amazement that Pip’s a genuinely kind-hearted person who remains grateful for the opportunities he receives early on in his life from her.

User

Ms. Havisham is the supreme example of a character who can be described as a ‘user,’ who is the disgusting type people meet once or in many occasions in their lives. She will be mainly motivated by her interests in using people around her to meet her purposes, trivial and important ones included. She will use Estella, her adopted daughter, and mold her according to her plans to take revenge to people whom she feels will just take advantage of Estella’s innocence and beauty. She molds her in a direction that will turn Estella into a near complete reflection of her young self. Using her wealth, Ms. Havisham will entice Estella so she will follow and pursue what she wants for her from babyhood to adulthood. Also, she will use Pip’s presence in her mansion so that she will have her kind of amusement and entertainment, and will treat him as ‘something’ to experiment on with her plans to take revenge. She will be using many other characters to make them follow exactly what she wants for the remainder of her life.

Someone you will love to save from eternal damnation

In this writer’s mind, Ms. Havisham’s fate can be saved for the better. But nothing like this will happen in the novel. She will not meet a lot of people who face her straight up and will persuade her about other certain truths in life, like the val
ues of love, of being genuine, and of being brave. She will not be taught to learn to forgive herself and others who offend her, and to move on. These features are reserved for the main character, Mr. Pip. She will realize her follies toward the end; she will eventually die after being inflamed as she inflicts more hurts to herself by attempting to burn down her room.

It’s almost too bad that Ms. Havisham is not main protagonist in ‘Great Expectations.’ She is a very fascinating character that many people these days can identify or relate with, given similar types of characters people see from news shown almost daily on TV and the like.