Who is Miss Havisham?

Miss Havisham is a momentus character in the Charles Dickens novel 'Great Expectations'. Estella her adopted daughter lives alone with her in their large ruined mansion. Dickens described her character as ''the wicked witch of the place.''

Her age is based on being in her early fifties, although she has often been portrayed in film versions as a very elderly woman. It has to be said that her long life away from sunlight hasn't done justice on herself as it has aged her. 

Miss Havisham and Satis house, her prize home, both in ruins, represent wealth and social status for Pip; the irony is obvious. Their decayed state prefigures the emptiness of Pip's dream of rising in social status and of so being worthy of Estella. Miss Havishams fawning, self interested, envious relatives and their competition for her wealth illustrate the evil effects of the love for money.

The decayed house and herself have a relationship; it parallels the diseased state of her mind. By stopping time, symbolised by the clocks all reading twenty to nine, Miss Havisham has stopped her life which thereby becomes death-in-life.

"Time stands still yet everything turns to dust." Miss Havisham

She has not left the house since she was abandoned on her wedding day and roams from room to room in her torn and faded wedding dress. The clocks in Satis House stopped a long time ago and the house steadily decays around her. But while her world has not moved on for years, Miss Havisham sees a little boy with potential in Pip. Pip is young when Miss Havisham first began to have him come around her house. She complained to her tenant Pumblechuck about how she was bored and wished for a young boy to come to play at her house with Estella and herself. Pumblechuck told Mrs Joe and so she sent for Pip.

For my final look I want to design Miss Havisham around the age of her early 50's. Because she has locked herself away from any sunlight and socialisation, her body and skin has aged alot faster than it would have if she had looked after herself correctly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018wmhr/characters/miss-havisham



Here are two drawings that I have draw of Miss Havisham. This is how I can imagine her looking, old, grey and tired.

I added colour to only one as the biro drawing looks more effective without colour.