Miss Havisham in Great Expectations

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In Great Expectations, Dickens depicts an eccentric character in Miss Havisham. The unmarried Miss Havisham seems to both conform to and deny the societal standards of unmarried women in the Victorian Age. Spinsters and old maids display particular attitudes and hold certain functions in the society. Miss Havisham's character shows how one woman can both defy and strengthen these characteristics. She, along with several other female characters in the novel, supports the fact that unmarried women were growing in number. In addition, her extravagant appearance aligns her with the common misconceptions of a spinster's appearance as common and unattractive, as well as makes her outcast from society like many unmarried women were. On the other hand, Miss Havisham's wealth is an uncommon characteristic of unmarried women. Furthermore, society does not show disrespect for Miss Havisham as it did for many spinsters; in fact, Miss Havisham portrays an authority rarely associated with spinsters over the lives of a few characters in the novel. Yet, while Miss Havisham's wealth and sense of respect and authority defy these characteristics of spinsters, the reasons she has these traits, her inheritance and social status, realign her with the traditional idea of a spinster.

The novel presents several figures of single women like Miss Havisham, each with her own peculiarities, which is in keeping with the social reality that the number of single women was growing. Molly, Jaggers's maid, is revealed as a murderess with a "diseased affection of the heart" (204; ch. 26). Biddy, the servant at the forge, provides an excellent example of a young woman on the verge of spinsterhood. She is described by Pip as "not beautifu...

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...re of spinsterhood and old maid living in accordance with the characteristics of these women in his time.

Works Cited

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Small, Helen. Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Web. 29 June 2015.

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Walsh, Susan. "Bodies of Capital: Great Expectations and the Climacteric Economy." Victorian Studies 37 (1993): 73-97. Web. 11 June 2015.

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