The role
played by Estella in Charles Dickens’s novel “Great Expectations” is a strange
one. The reader meets her when Pip, the central character, is invited to Satis
House by the eccentric Miss Havisham, ostensibly to play cards with her adopted
daughter Estella, the latter being a few years older than Pip but probably
barely into adolescence at the time they first meet.
Estella’s
upbringing has been far from conventional. She was taken into Miss Havisham’s
home as a very young child and brought up under that lady’s tutelage to have a
very jaundiced view of men. Many years before, Miss Havisham had been jilted on
her wedding day, at which point normal life came to a grinding halt for her.
She had all the clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine and never wore
anything other than the wedding dress that she had just put on when news of her
betrayal was brought to her.
Her chief
purpose in adopting Estella had been to have her revenge on men by proxy,
namely through educating the young girl to break men’s hearts. This is therefore
the role that has been assigned to Estella from her earliest days, and it is
what she tries to do with Pip, although the process is a very long drawn-out
one. It seems odd that Pip, who was only a child at the time, should have been
invited to Satis House as Estella’s first victim, when neither of them would
have known what falling in love was all about.
However, as
the visits continue, over a number of years, Pip does start to have feelings
for Estella, and Estella plays true to form by making fun of Pip and belittling
him as a “common working boy”. However, one feels that Miss Havisham’s purpose,
strange enough in itself, was not intended to depend on snobbishness and class
distinctions. For Estella to be a true heart-breaker she would have to lead a man
on and then reject him at the moment of “conquest”, however that might be
defined.
The idea that
a young woman, who is described as being very attractive, could be educated to
reject all her natural instincts, because of an incident that happened to an
older woman years before the younger one was born, does seem bizarre. It
becomes even more so when Estella is seen in the outside world, beyond the
artificial confines of dark and dusty Satis House. How can the reader believe
that she would hold the same views as Miss Havisham when she was free from the
latter’s influence and had no personal reason to deny her own womanhood? Surely
this characterization is impossible to maintain and stretches the reader’s
credulity too far?
“Millwood”
The answer
comes from the realization that Dickens had in mind a character from a somewhat
melodramatic 18th century play, namely “The London Merchant” by
George Lillo. It is known that Dickens had seen the play as a child and it had
clearly had a considerable effect on him, as it is mentioned in other writings
besides “Great Expectations”. In the context of the novel, Pip is treated to a
recitation of the play by a minor character, Mr Wopsle.
In the play,
an apprentice is persuaded by a prostitute, named Millwood, to murder his uncle.
Both Millwood and the apprentice are brought to justice and hanged. It is
therefore a highly moralistic story about how a man can be brought low by the
machinations of an evil woman. However, in the trial scene towards the end of
the play Millwood refuses to repent but declares that she is only wicked
because she has been corrupted by men, and that she has revenged herself on men
by avoiding older men who already have a sense of guilt, instead focussing her
attention on those who are young and innocent.
Millwood can
therefore be seen as a combination of the characters of Estella and Miss
Havisham, which in turn means that Dickens envisaged his characters not as
individuals but two sides of the same coin. Neither character works, in
dramatic terms, without reference to the other.
Pip’s
reaction to the play’s recitation is to see himself as a reincarnation of
George Barnwell, the murdering apprentice:
“I was made
to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me
down in argument on every occasion.”
If Pip is
Barnwell, then Estella is clearly one half of Millwood.
However,
Dickens then fails to complete the circle and make Estella continue in her role
as the means to the end envisaged by Miss Havisham. Towards the end of the
book, Estella begins to step out of the duality to become something else,
namely a woman with feelings of her own. These feelings are not so much of love
but of guilt. She clearly has a degree of affection for Pip, but she expresses
it not by reciprocating his love for her but by warning him that she is
incapable of love and therefore he had better keep her at a distance.
Estella
therefore fails to be a heart-breaker because her heart is never offered. She
also fails to break the spell put on her by Miss Havisham in that she never
falls in love with anyone, although she does enter a loveless marriage to
another man, namely the boorish Bentley Drummle.
The character
of Estella is therefore one of the less satisfactory aspects of “Great
Expectations”. Having started off with the idea of the dual persona of
Estella/Miss Havisham, Dickens failed to carry his idea through to a conclusion
that was a convincing one. On no level does she come across as a complete
character.
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