Comparing the Characters of Magwitch and Miss Havisham in Great Expectations by Dickens

Comparing the Characters of Magwitch and Miss Havisham in Great Expectations by Dickens

Miss Havisham is a bitter old woman. She wants to seek revenge on all

men for the wrong that was done to her by one man. She lives in her

clothes that she should have worn to her wedding and is surrounded by

decaying things in a darkened room. Miss Havisham adopts a young girl

Estella, whom she has planed to use her to seek revenge on all men.

Miss Havisham is delighted in the way Estella torments Pip. This is

shown in chapter 8 when Pip has just met Miss Havisham and Estella,

when Miss Havisham asks Estella to play with him. Estella calls Pip a

common labouring boy, Miss Havisham says to Estella "Well? You can

break his heart." Like it was the only reason that Pip had come, so

that Estella could break his heart and to seek revenge on him because

this was how Miss Havisham had taught her to treat men.

Miss Havisham later realises that she has turned Estella into a

monster, she accuses Estella of being, hard and ungrateful and

Estella's reply is that she can not give her love as she was never

given it herself. Miss Havisham tries to undo the effects that she has

had on Estella.

At the beginning we are repelled by Magwitch by his manner of his

speech, how he says it, appearance and of his rough habits. In chapter

one when we first meet Magwitch he speaks to Pip in a tone of voice

which would scare anyone, especially a young boy. This is shown in

chapter one when Magwitch says to Pip "You get me a file and you get

me wittles, you bring 'em both to me. Or I'll have your heart and

liver out." Pip even confesses that he was scared of Magwitch bec...

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...as spent on Pip to turn him into a perfect gentleman.

Another reason their characteristics is that Miss Havisham was more of

a fantasist, yet Magwitch was a realist. I think that Miss Havisham is

a fantasist because of the way she lives, the way that she had stopped

her life. In the fact that all the clocks in the house had been

stopped at twenty minutes to nine and the way that she still had on

her wedding dress. I think that Magwitch is more of a realist because

he always has good reasons for his actions, for example he turned Pip

into a gentleman because of Pip's loyalty towards him when he first

met Pip on the marshes.

So I my conclusion is that Miss Havisham and Magwitch are more similar

then you would of thought so. As many of their characteristics are

very similar and the time that they changed how they acted.