Miss Havisham

Miss Havisham
Great Expectations character
Miss Havisham, by Harry Furniss
Created by	Charles Dickens
Portrayed by	Gillian Anderson Anne Bancroft Helena Bonham Carter Joan Hickson Martita Hunt Margaret Leighton Tuppence Middleton Charlotte Rampling Florence Reed Jean Simmons Tabu
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Heiress Hermit
Family	Arthur Havisham (half brother)
Significant other(s)	Compeyson
Children	Estella (adoptive daughter)
Relatives	Pocket family (cousins) Cousin Raymond Georgiana Bentley Drummle (son-in-law)
Nationality	British

Miss Havisham is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations (1861). She is a wealthy spinster who lives in her ruined mansion, Satis House, with her adopted daughter, Estella. Dickens describes her as looking like "the witch of the place".

Although she has often been portrayed in film versions as very elderly, Dickens's own notes indicate that she is only in her mid-fifties. However, it is also indicated that her long life away from the sunlight has in itself aged her, and she is said to look like a cross between a waxwork and a skeleton, with moving eyes.

Miss Havisham's father was a wealthy brewer and her mother had died shortly after she was born. He married again in secret and conceived a son, Arthur, with the family cook, but Miss Havisham's relationship with her brother was far from harmonious.

She inherited most of her father's fortune and fell in love with a man named Compeyson, who had conspired with the jealous Arthur to swindle her of her riches. Her cousin, Matthew Pocket, warned her to be careful, but she was too much in love to listen. On the wedding day, while she was dressing, Miss Havisham received a letter from Compeyson and realised he had defrauded her and she had been left at the altar.

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 cake uneaten on the table, and allowing only a few people to see her. She even 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.