Estella Havisham
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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 is adopted and raised by the wealthy and eccentric Miss Havisham to become a lady.
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[edit] Estella and Pip as children
Pip meets Estella when both are 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 engage in children's play.
[edit] Estella as symbolic of Pip's longings in life
Estella is beautiful and naughty and extremely cruel, and Pip is fascinated with her. Aside from the evident romantic interest which carries through much of the story, Pip's meeting of Estella marks a turning point in his young life, as Estella's beauty, grace and wealthy prospects represent the opposite of Pip's own humble life prospects. 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, and he grows to harbor intense love for her, despite the fact that he has been warned that Estella has been brought up by Miss Havisham to use men as objects to avenge the latter's disappointment at being jilted on her wedding day (c.f., Pandora and Eve), and despite the fact that Estella has herself warned Pip that she could not love him, or anyone.
[edit] 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 also released from the blacksmith's apprenticeship that had been paid for 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 for a gentleman. He relentlessly pursues Estella despite the fact that her warm expressions of friendship for Pip are firmly countered by her insistence that she cannot love him.
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 suggests that Estella holds at least a modicum of respect for Pip, whom she is always completely honest with. Pip is hardly satisfied with this concept.
Drummle abuses Estella during their relationship, and she is very unhappy. However, by the end of the book, Drummle is killed after a horse he has been abusing kicks him.
The relation between Pip and Estella worsens during their adult life; Pip pursues her in a frenzy, often driving himself mad with despair. He makes writhing, pathetic attempts to awaken some flicker of emotion beneath her cold arrogance, but this is an exercise in futilty. This cycle culminates in Pip despairingly leaving her for good. He laments that he is not upset so much that she will never be his, but rather that he should not see the nightmare she has woven for herself with her emotional detatchment and lifestyle.
[edit] 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 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.
