Miss Havisham and the Satis House

[pink_rosette]

I find it difficult to understand why Miss Havisham let the house decay and decline? If her intention was to stop time by refusing to change anything, why does she want to live in this sort of misery, why doesn't she want to move on?

[kari]

I am no expert on understanding this book by any means. But I found your question interesting, simply because I don't think it is really an easy on to answer. There are a lot of people in the world that experience something tragic, or emotionally traumatizing in their life. I think some of them are the same as Miss Havisham, maybe not to the extent as her..but definitely in the manner of not wanting to move on, to change the way their life had been prior. I think Mis Havisham was of course an extreme. And maybe there is something even deeper than this that I wouldn't understand right now having only read it once. I think she was just deeply hurt, and let it take over her, making her literally give up on all else...including her own life really. I would love to hear if anyone else has more to add...

[Sr. Nicole]

I agree with Kari and also think that Miss Havisham's desire to cling to the past is a twisted form of pride. When Herbert relates her story to Pip, he says that Miss Havisham was spoiled and proud--she was used to having things go her way. Her jilting was the worst thing that had ever happened to her; instead of trying to move on, she clings to her hurt as though it was a trophy. We see something of this when Pip first meets her and when she first shows him the rotted wedding cake; there is a definite sense of display or melodrama in what she says. There is also evidence that she thinks that by distorting her life, she will get vengeance on Compeyson. She says something about the "curse on him [Compeyson] being complete" when she dies--she is allowing herself to live in the past because it reflects badly on him (she thinks). The irony, of course, is that she has no effect on Compeyson whatever. She hurts Estella, Pip, and a lot of young men (through Estella) only to find that, in the end, she hurt herself.

[kev67]

When Miss Havisham was jilted, she felt her life had as good as ended. Dead people do not change their clothes, move things or wind up clocks. Before the jilting she was looking forward to a life of happiness with the man she loved. Afterwards she felt destroyed and humiliated. She did not feel she could reproduce her feelings for another man or even want to. The stopped clocks, wedding dress, cake and banquet are all reminders of the last moment when she was truly happy. Feeling so humiliated and depressed, she did not feel like going out and socialising again, and because she was so rich and had no close relatives, she could indulge herself in living that way. When she sees how decayed and repellent her clothes and the bridal cake are, she reflects how decayed and repellent she has become.

I listened to a radio programme recently in which a psychologist analysed her. iirc, he said she was suffering from mono-mania and was clinically depressed. She is clearly not insane, but needed counselling or anti-depressants.

I suspect Dickens intended the readers to take the state of Satis House and all the wedding paraphernalia as a metaphor for an internal state of mind. It is surely not possible for a woman to wear the same wedding dress every day for thirty years. It would need washing and would probably have fallen to bits. Would there be anything left of the cake? Word would definitely get around of a batty, old woman who dressed in a wedding dress for thirty years. Pip would certainly be too freaked out to return after the first visit.