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Miss Havisham is a character in Charles Dickens's 1861 novel Great Expectations. She is a wealthy spinster once jilted at the altar, who insists on wearing her wedding dress for the rest of her life. She lives in a ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella. Dickens describes her as looking like "the witch of the place". In the novel, she schemes to have the young orphan, Pip, fall in love with Estella, so that Estella can "Broken heart".
Although she has often been portrayed in film versions as very elderly, Dickens's own notes indicate that she is only in her mid-thirties at the start of the novel. However, it is indicated in the novel that her long seclusion without sunlight has aged her. She is one of the most Gothic fiction characters in the work of Dickens.
Humiliated and heartbroken, Miss Havisham suffered a mental breakdown and remained alone in her decaying mansion Satis House – never removing her wedding dress, wearing only one shoe, leaving the wedding breakfast and wedding cake uneaten on the table, and allowing only a few people to see her. She also had the clocks in her mansion stopped at twenty minutes to nine: the exact time when she had received Compeyson's letter.
Time passed and Miss Havisham had her lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, adopt a daughter for her.
While Estella was still a child, Miss Havisham began casting about for boys who could be a testing ground for Estella's education in breaking the hearts of men as vicarious revenge for Miss Havisham's pain. Pip, the narrator, is the eventual victim; and Miss Havisham readily dresses Estella in jewels to enhance her beauty and to exemplify all the more the vast social gulf between her and Pip. When, as a young adult, Estella leaves for France to receive education, Miss Havisham eagerly asks him, "Do you feel you have lost her?"
After Pip leaves, Miss Havisham's dress catches on fire from her fireplace. Pip rushes back in and saves her. However, she has suffered severe burns to the front of her torso (she is laid on her back), up to the throat. The last words she speaks in the novel are (in a delirium) to Pip, referencing both Estella and a note she, Miss Havisham, has given him with her signature: "Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her!'"
A surgeon dresses her burns, and says that they are "far from hopeless". However, despite rallying for a time, she dies a few weeks later, leaving Estella as her chief beneficiary, and a considerable sum to Herbert Pocket's father, as a result of Pip's reference.
Another contemporary inspiration might have been Margaret Catherine Dick of Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, who lived at "Uppermount" house and was the daughter of Captain Samuel Dick. Dickens spent the summer of 1849 staying in Bonchurch writing chapters of David Copperfield; during his time in the coastal village he took regular walks up St Boniface Down with Charles George Dick, the brother of Margaret. The character of Mr Dick (who boarded with Miss Betsy Trotwood) in David Copperfield is based on Charles. In 1860 Margaret Dick was jilted at the altar and began living a reclusive life. In the 1860s, Dickens's daughters stayed with the vicar in Bonchurch that was to marry Margaret Dick. Dickens may have based the character of Miss Havisham on Margaret Dick; but named her after her neighbour Miss Haviland.
Another inspiration may have been the London merchant Nathaniel Bentley. Known as "Dirty Dick", Bentley never washed himself or cleaned his premises, and was rumored to have been jilted on his wedding day and to have locked up the dining room, leaving the meal to rot.cite journal|last1=Fraser|first1=Russell|title=A Charles Dickens Original|journal=Nineteenth-Century Fiction|date=1955|volume=9|issue=4|pages=301–307|doi=10.2307/3044395|jstor=3044395|issn=0029-0564cite journal|last1=Friedman|first1=Stanley|title=Another Possible Source for Dickens'
publisher=New York University
In the introduction to the 1965 Penguin edition of Great Expectations, writer Angus Calder notes that "James Payn, a minor novelist, claimed to have given Dickens the idea for Miss Havisham – from a living original of his acquaintance. He declared that Dickens's account was 'not one whit exaggerated'." Dickens reportedly encountered a wealthy recluse called Elizabeth Parker while staying in Newport, Shropshire, which has an aptly named Havisham Court. However, research by the Newport History Society has found no evidence to support the stories that Dickens ever stayed in Newport, met Miss Parker, or was an inspiration for Miss Havisham. Despite the reports Miss Parker (born 1802) spent the rest of her life as a recluse, census records of the period show she was at Chester (1851), then Whitchurch (1861), before moving to Chetwynd House, Newport in 1863. She was not even living in Newport when Dickens started to write Great Expectations in 1859.
Since the publication of Great Expectations, the character of Miss Havisham has seen numerous comparisons and parallels with many real jilted brides (life imitating art), such as the widely reported case of Alice Pinard-Dôges in Neuilly, France, who committed suicide in her bridal gown in 1894.
Ronald Frame's 2013 novel Havisham is a non-canonical story about Miss Havisham's early life. The story tells how Miss Havisham (given the name of Catherine) is the daughter of a brewer. The story tells of more than just the infamous trauma of being left behind by her fiancé and goes on with her taking charge of her family's business before descending into vengeful madness, adopting Estella, and arranging the meeting of Estella and Pip.
Terry Pratchett's novel Reaper Man references Miss Havisham with the character of Miss Flitworth, who was apparently jilted by her fiancé on her wedding day. Miss Flitworth says that while her neighbors expected her to mope about the place in a wedding dress for the rest of her life, she did not want to waste food and so had the wedding breakfast and got on with living the rest of her life.
Both Sunset Boulevard and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? were inspired by David Lean's adaptation of Great Expectations, as were, by extension, the characters of Norma Desmond and Baby Jane Hudson, and their homes.
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