Great Expectations: Suffering

Suffering can be analyzed from several different aspects; it can be a lesson learned or a way to feel sorry for yourself, but in either way Dickens uses it in his novels to thicken the plot, to show clearly coming of age, as well as to help you further understand the character's situation. When you take the best you can out of suffering, and study every thing that might have lead to that peak of pain, and change that, suffering will only do you good in the long run. Instead of taking the best you can from it, some people take suffering as a way to mourn and be miserable, and tell other people how unfortunate you are. This will do you no good. Dickens uses both of these in Great Expectations, and it shows you a different side of each of his
Miss Havisham has a snotty way of judging everybody, and putting her pain on someone else's shoulders. For example, she wants Estella to be exactly like her and doesn't let her own daughter live the way she wants to, Miss Havisham sets standards and obligations for Estella's each and every move. Miss Havisham herself was abandoned at the alter, and since then has frozen time at the exact hour before her marriage. She is one of the characters who are created to show to readers how all they do is feel misery and wish misery upon everyone else. She could have a lot, but instead she makes up lies for Pip, rules for Estella, and nothing to change her own sad and depressing future, so you see how people give up their entire lives so
Yet an important thing she says is "Suffering has been stronger than all other teachings." After all these years of Estella being the cold, shrewd one, perhaps all her suffering and misfortune has affected her, made her into a better person. During her life Estella was always unsatisfied. Firstly with her mother, who was trying to make something out of her which wasn't real. Miss Havisham was trying to boss her around, make decisions for her, and plan out her entire life, in which Estella had no say. Let alone that she was unhappy with the world itself, the way things were and the way she was herself. Her marriage didn't work out as well, which just led to more and more pain. Yet Estella is one of the more mature characters you'll find, because although everyone judges her as spoiled, ill-tempered, or cold she is able to take all these problems she has to deal with, and learn from it and use it to become a better