Estella Havisham

Estella Havisham (best known in literature simply as Estella) is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel "Great Expectations".

Like the protagonist, Pip, Estella is introduced as an orphan, but where Pip was raised by his sister and her husband to become a blacksmith, Estella was adopted and raised by the wealthy and eccentric Miss Havisham to become a lady.

Character history

Estella and Pip's pre-adult life

Pip and Estella meet as children, when he is brought to Miss Havisham's crumbling estate, Satis House, ostensibly to satisfy the elder Miss Havisham's "sick fancy" to be entertained by watching Pip have his heart broken by Estella.

Estella as symbolic of Pip's longings in life

Pip is fascinated with the lovely Estella, though her heart is as cold as ice. Aside from the evident romantic interest, which continues through much of the story, Pip's meeting with Estella marks a turning point in his young life: her beauty, grace, and prospects represent the opposite of Pip's humble existence. Estella criticizes Pip's honest but "coarse" ways, and from that point on, Pip grows dissatisfied with his position in life and, eventually, with his former values and friends as well.

Pip spends years as companion to Miss Havisham and, by extension, Estella. He harbours intense love for the latter, though he has been warned that Estella has been brought up by Miss Havisham to inspire love, unrequited in the men around her, to avenge the latter's disappointment at being jilted on her wedding day ("c.f.", Pandora and Eve). Estella warns Pip that she cannot love him, or anyone. Miss Havisham herself decries this coldness, for Estella is not even able to love her benefactor.

Estella and Pip as adults

After Pip receives an unexpected boon of a gentleman's upbringing and the "great expectation" of a future fortune from an unknown benefactor, he finds himself released from the blacksmith's apprenticeship that had been funded by Miss Havisham as compensation for Pip's years of service to her. He also finds himself thrown into Estella's social milieu in London, where Pip goes to be educated as a gentleman. He relentlessly pursues Estella, though her warm expressions of friendship are firmly countered by her insistence that she cannot love him.

In fact, Pip discovers that Miss Havisham's lessons have worked all too well on Estella; when both are visiting the elderly woman, Miss Havisham makes gestures of affection towards her adopted daughter and is shocked that Estella is neither able nor willing to return them. Estella points out that Miss Havisham taught her to be hard-hearted and unloving. Even after witnessing this scene, Pip continues to live in anguished and fruitless hope that Estella will return his love.

Estella flirts with and pursues Bentley Drummle, a playboy and disdainful rival of Pip's, and eventually marries him for his money. Seeing her flirt with the brutish Drummle, Pip asks Estella (rather bitterly) why she never displays such affection with him.

:"Do you want me then", said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, "to deceive and entrap you?" ":"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?" :"Yes, and many others - all of them but you."

This exchange suggests that Estella feels at least a modicum of respect for Pip, as does the fact that in his presence, she never pretends to be anything but what she is. Rather than achieve the intended effect, this honest behavior only frustrates Pip.

It is implied that Drummle abuses Estella during their relationship and that she is very unhappy. However, by the end of the book, Drummle has been killed by a horse he has allegedly abused. The references to Drummle's marriage and death are conjectural, and no direct evidence is produced or suggested. Pip 'hears' of Drummle's poor behaviour and accepts the information as truth.

The relationship between Pip and Estella worsens during their adult lives. Pip pursues her in a frenzy, often tormenting himself to the point of utter despair. He makes writhing, pathetic attempts to awaken some flicker of emotion in Estella, but these merely perplex her; Estella sees his devotion as irrational.

Varied resolutions of Estella's relationship with Pip

Though Estella marries Drummle in the novel and several adaptations, she does not marry him in the best-known 1946 film adaptation. However, in no version does she eventually marry Pip, at least not within the timespan of the story.

The eventual resolution of Pip's pursuit of Estella at the end of the story varies among film adaptations and even in the novel itself. Dickens' original ending is deemed by many as consistent with the thread of the novel and with Estella's allegorical position as the human manifestation of Pip's longings for social status. As this ending was much criticized even by some famous fellow authors, Dickens wrote a second ending currently considered as the definitive one, more hopeful but also more ambiguous than the original, in which Pip and Estella have a spiritual and emotional reconciliation. The second ending echoes strongly the theme of closure found in much of the novel; Pip and Estella's relationship at the end is marked by some sadness and some joy, and although Estella still indicates that she doesn't believe she and Pip will be together, Pip perceives that she will stay with him.

Estella's origins

Though she never knows it herself, Pip finally finds out where Estella comes from. She was the child of Jaggers's maidservant Molly, a vagrant at that time and Abel Magwitch.

Pip becomes convinced that Molly is Estella's mother during his second dinner at Jaggers's place, when he realizes that their eyes are the same and that, when unoccupied, their fingers perform a knitting action. Wemmick tells him Molly's story: she had had a child, the same age as Estella whose fate remains unknown. She came to Jaggers after he saved her from the gallows, as she had been accused of having murdered a woman out of jealousy.

One evening, after Pip returned from a visit at Miss Havisham's, Herbert tells him a story that Magwitch told him: Magwitch had a wife once and they had a child, a girl, whom Magwitch loved dearly. His wife told him she'd kill the child (because the child was what Magwitch loved the most, and Molly wanted him to suffer for what he did to her) and, as much as he knows, she did. Shortly afterwards, she was accused of murder, acquitted and then disappeared. The two stories fit so well, that Pip has no doubt: Estella is the child of Abel and Molly.

He tells this to Jaggers and Wemmick, unable to keep it to himself. Jaggers tells him the missing bit of the story (only assuming, that it "could have been" like that): Molly gave the child to him, to be safe in case of her conviction. Abel, believing it dead, did not dare make a stir about it. At the same time, Miss Havisham was looking for a girl to bring up and save from a misery like her own and Jaggers gave Estella to her. She was two or three at the time. Miss Havisham did not know where she came from and named her Estella. Jaggers advises Pip to be quiet about it. For whose sake would he tell it? The father had to keep in hiding, the mother had been about to kill the child and the daughter had escaped disgrace and would be dragged back into it by the revelation. So Pip keeps quiet. He only tells Magwitch, on his deathbed, that his dear child, lives, is a beautiful young lady and that he was in love with her.

References in pop culture

*Estella is referenced in Alanis Morissette's 1995 hit "All I Really Want." In the second verse, the song's narrator compares herself to her, "I'm like Estella, I like to reel 'em in and then spit 'em out, I'm frustrated by your apathy."
*The South Park episode Pip features an incarnation of Estella (as it does all of the major characters from "Great Expectations"). Initially, the character follows the role of her literary counterpart fairly closely (aside from her constant, unnecessarily vulgar epithets) until the story finally deviates from Dickens' original, revealing Miss Havisham's intent to use the "Genesis device"- a machine that will transfer her mind into Estella's body so that she might continue to break hearts for another generation. Attempting to free her, Pip tries to convince Estella that she truly has a heart. To demonstrate, Pip takes a baby rabbit from a bag and presents it to Estella. She notes that it is rather cute, but at Pip's hypothesis that someone with a heart would never be able to kill a bunny, she casually breaks its neck. She repeats this process over 20 times without hesitation (leaving a pile of rabbit corpses on the ground) until saying "I don't see the point of this," which Pip takes as evidence that she truly does have an emotional center despite the mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise. Pip rescues Estella and Miss Havisham is destroyed in a fiery blaze; all live happily ever after (except for Herbert who dies of Hepatitis B).
*The band The Gaslight Anthem features a song on their album "The 59 Sound" entitled "Great Expectations." A line in this song mentions the character by name, reading "And I never had a good time, I sat my bedside, with papers and poetry about Estella."