position paper: the five points

Novel:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Thesis Statement:
Estella represents Miss Havisham’s revenge towards men.

Supporting points:

Miss Havisham’s bad experience made her despise men.
• She was left by her fiancé, Compeyson on her wedding day.
• Lead to her action of living in seclusion and stayed as an old woman who was stuck in the past.
• When she adopted Estella, she automatically dragged her to be stuck in the same dull life.

“…blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did!” (Chapter 29, page 221).


Estella was purposely raised and trained to break men’s heart.
• She does whatever Miss Havisham asked her to do regardless of her own feelings and needs.

Miss Havisham said“If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger it will ear deeper – love her, love her, love her! Hear me Pip! I adopted her to be loved, I brought her up and educated her to be loved.” (Chapter 29, page 221)

Herbert said “That girl’s hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak vengeance on all the male sex.”
(Chapter 22, page 162).

Estella doesn’t see Pip as her possible future husband, but as victim.
• Her relationship with Pip is just another chapter of Miss Havisham’s plan to achieve her motives.
• Estella intentionally treated Pip coldly because she did not care much about his feelings.

Pip was “…so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry-”
(Chapter 8, page 590)

According to Estella, “I have no heart, no sympathy, no feeling.”
(Chapter 26, page 220)

Estella did not marry Drummle out of love.
• The marriage was merely another connection she has with the high class society, compared to her lower status if she married Pip.
• She suffers a miserable life when she chose to marry the cruel Drummle who treated her harshly.
• Finally she learnt to rely and trust her inner feelings.

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching… I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape”. (Chapter 59, page 442)

Estella and Miss Havisham chose to spend their life fixated on vengeance that Estella forgot how to love.

• Miss Havisham destroyed her ability to express emotion and interact normally with the world.
• She was unable to express love even towards Miss Havisham.

“I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me” (Chapter 38, page 281)