Objectification and another look at Pip and Estella

 In my earlier post, I interpreted Dickens's ending to mean that Pip and Estella eventually did marry. However, since the ending of Great Expectations is rather open-ended, I've decided to reinterpret Estella and Pip with an ending in which the two "part as friends" and nothing more.

Contemporary writer Terry Pratchett once wrote that "evil begins when you begin to treat people as things." Throughout Great Expectations, however, both Pip and Estella are often seen as objects by many characters. For both Pip's aunt and Mr. Pumblechook, Pip is a burden, not a boy: something to be seen to, not something to be loved. Later on, Mr. Pumblechook sees Pip's successes as only a prize for himself: something that can further his reputation, not something that will aid Pip in life. However, while Pip does have friends who view him as human, Estella has very few of these. From childhood, she has been seen even by Miss Havisham, as an object, something with which Miss Havisham will "wreck her revenge on men." Her  
adoptive mother sees her as a tool while her suitors see her, because of her beauty, as ornamentation. The only person who does eventually acknowledge her humanity is Pip: though he, like the many men before him, initially sees only Estella's beauty, by the end of the novel he learns to respect her choices and humanity by accepting that the two will part as only friends. Pip, who himself has repeatedly treated as though he were an object and not a man, learns in his turn not to treat the girl he has loved as thus. While Pip is eventually left alone, his solitude ironically yields a much more satisfying and rich ending than if he had stayed with Estella.