Everybody, excluding the exceptionally lucky ones, has experienced heartbreak. In Great Expectations Mrs. Havisham is chosen by Dickens to represent the grief caused by heartbreak from a lost love. Dickens portrays the absolute outer limits of this subject by thoroughly exaggerating Mrs. Havisham’s reactions to the pain she is feeling from being left at the altar by her soon to be, or so she thought, husband.
Now, the question is, why does Dickens feel the need to so elaborately exaggerate Mrs. Havisham’s behaviors? Is he suggesting or advocating the long grieving process Mrs. Havisham takes to get over her lost love? Is he condoning the use of another innocent human being (Mrs. Havisham’s use of Estella’s beauty to break the hearts of other men) for personal vengeance? Or is he simply adding an eccentric being to the plot of the story?
My personal belief is that Dickens uses Mrs. Havisham to reach out to the readers with broken hearts. To show these readers that nothing good comes from sitting around thinking "where did I go wrong?" "What could have been?" Nothing profitable became of Mrs. Havisham’s living in the past, wearing her wedding dress around all day long, for this dress caused her great harm toward the end of the story when she leaned over the fireplace and was consumed in flames. Absolutely nothing uplifting or cheerful came from her attempt at vengeance on the male species, for she did not achieve her goal of breaking every man’s heart for breaking hers, she just hurt Pip using Estella, and later felt terrible for this action.
I believe one reason Mrs. Havisham is used in the plot of Great Expectations is to basically say “heartbreak is not the end of your life”. Dickens shows how grieving over a lost love for one’s whole life gets one nowhere, and the only way to move past the pain is to grieve, gather oneself together, and move on. What do you guys think?
5 comments:
I definitely agree with what you're saying here. I also think Dickens uses Havisham as a way to say 'don't wish your misfortunes onto others'. Her goal throughout the entire novel is to inflict the same pain she experienced onto every man that falls for Estella's beauty, especially Pip. In the long run it completely backfires. She creates a heartless monster out of Estella and ends up feeling horrible after Estella hurts Pip. Like you said in your post above, heartbreak is not the end of your life; dwelling on it will only cause you more greif.
I believe that the only worthwhile thing that came out of Miss Havisham's reclusivness and strange lifestyle is the eventual remorse she feels for living so when she realizes the effect it had on Pip's "relationship". As for the lesson that heartbreak is not the end, I believe that it might be realized in another element of Great Expectations but I do not find it within Miss Havisham. It was the end for her; besides the realization of remorse, her life is a downward slope, starting at her fail of a wedding. As was the point, she died very much the same as she started, full of sadness and despair. Therefore, I believe that Dickens meant instead to remind the reader that while heartbreak is not nessecarily the end(for what is, really, the "end"?), it leaves a scar, that depending on the person, may never fade. Miss Havisham just refused to apply the "anti-scar" cream.
I beleive what you are saying about how "heartbreak is not the end of your life" is true. But I also beleive there is a larger lesson behind it. I beleive Dickens is trying to communicate that heartbreak never leaves us. No matter what kind of heartbreak it was or how it became, it will forever change you.
There is actually a song out right now by Sarah Evans called 'A Little Bit Stronger' and one of the lines in the song reads "I know my heart will never be the same" and I believe that is what Dicken's is trying to convey. That love, heartbreak and betrayal may not be the end of your life and you will eventually work your way through it, but it will also never leave you and you will forever be changed.It will affect your future emotions adn realtionships and maybe even how you conduct your heart through furture love and heartbreak.
I totally agree with this. I also feel that when writing books, authors tend to put various traits of them self in the characters they create. In this case, I think Dickens is showing heartbreak he has experienced in the past through Miss Havisham.
I agree with you on this, but i also think that some of her quirks were put there for amusement, and for a larger part of the story. I also think that it is a part of himself Dickens showed here-after all, It is my belief that every character in a book is a spin off of one side of the author's, although twisted and exaggerated. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to write it! You can't write what you don't think.
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