Miss Havisham Suffering

Agony of the Heart In the Great Expectations movie Miss Havisham says, “The agony is exquisite, is it not? A broken heart. You think you will die. But you just keep living day after day, after terrible day.” This woman plays a key role in the theme of suffering. The readers see her in the past, being tortured by it. They see her actions causing it for multiple people. But sadly, in the all of what she has done, comes back to bite her. This causes her to be the one who suffers the most. This is the theme of suffering, circling around the woman who embodies it the most, the stone-hearted Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham lived a lavish and spoiled childhood. Whatever she desired was given to her, by her adoring father. Her father was a very rich
But, sadly her mother had died when she was a baby. She remained an only child, until her father privately married the cook which gave her a new half-brother, who would cause her much pain later on. Again, her father’s second wife died and this did not go well with the son, Arthur because, “ As the son grew a young man, he turned riotous, extravagant, undutiful-altogether bad. At last his father disinherited him.”(Dickens 168). His stepfather was horrified by his behavior and did not take pity on him until Arthur was dying. But, it still was not as much pity as Mr. Havisham took on Miss Havisham as a child. Also, during this she had fallen in love with a man named Compeyson. Now, Compeyson was of a lower class than Miss Havisham but, “He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he must hold and
This is where Miss Estella Havisham comes in. Estella is Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, who she had groomed to be a cold-hearted woman whose only duty in this world is to make men suffer. Pip is one of the victims of Estella, but through thick and thin he loves her no matter what. When Miss Havisham starts to see an attraction between these two, she does everything possible to keep them apart. Pip comes to Satis House one day, only to find Miss Havisham chanting something into Estella’s ear, “Break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy.” (Dickens 93). This is aimed mostly towards Pip, by having Estella break his heart and make him suffer from it, just as Miss Havisham had been done to. Also, we see her making Pip suffer from her own hands when she makes him believe that she was his mysterious benefactor. When Pip finds out that she is not, he blames her for making him believe she was. “ But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at least you led me on?” (Dickens 334). Miss Havisham admits, it seems, that she in fact did lead him into believing it, “Yes, I let you go on.” (Dickens 334). Pip then asks her if it was ever kind, and she gets completely enraged by this, “ Who am I...who am I, for God’s sake, that I should be kind?” (Dickens 334). Lastly she makes both Estella and Pip suffer by marrying Estella to Drummle. It is like killing