Great Expectations - Miss Havisham and Abel Magwitch are Living through Others

Great Expectations - Miss Havisham and Abel Magwitch are Living through Others

In the work Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, two characters

live their lives through someone else. Miss Havisham and Abel Magwitch

are both elderly and though someone else are able to obtain their

goals that they are not able to complete themselves. Abel Magwitch

lives his life through the protagonist Pip while Miss Havisham lives

her life through the character Estella. Miss Havisham is an aged,

mysterious lady who has much anger. This anger derives from her

fiancée leaving the day of the wedding. This is the moment when she

"stopped living" and decides to turn to a life of making other men

miserable, just as her ex-fiancée had made her unhappy. However, Miss

Havisham is too old to be able to hurt other men, so she decides to

raise a child. Miss Havisham put Estella in such an environment where

all Estella's compassionate feelings were erased and made very dull.

Miss Havisham's influence also made Estella feel no remorse for those

she hurt. Estella tells Miss Havisham, "If you had brought up your

adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and

had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight…

and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and

know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry?" (307).

When Estella refers to the light and the dark she is referring to the

light as love and compassion and the dark as the cruelty and the sense

of a "stone heart." Estella, even as a young woman, cannot see or feel

love because Miss Havisham has manipulated her to be just as she

wanted, relentless and cold. Moreover, this personality allows Estella

to ...

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.... When fighting with Miss Havisham, Estella says, "Only a little

tired of myself." (305). It is later obvious that Estella is tired of

not being happy and not being able to have any true feelings. Even

though Estella and Pip were given everything they ever wanted, neither

of them got fulfillment and true love from their guardians and both

ended up being very melancholy. Dickens' point is to show the reader

that people need more then just materialistic things to live and be

happy; they need love and need to be able to feel compassion and love.

This book can be considered a commentary on how the social system is

misjudged because the people of the higher lifestyles are not

necessarily happy even though they have most material things. This

idea is important because it shows what is really needed to be happy

and that is love and being able to be compassionate.