Great Expectations Essay
Some people are willing to do just about anything for love and on the account of it. This is evident in everyday life, as one may watch a friend change for a loved one. However, it does not make a difference whether the change occurs consciously or unconsciously. The important thing is that it occurs. Remarkably, love has a way of transforming people. It may turn a common boy into a gentlemen, a hardened convict into a compassionate man or a beautiful bride into miserable figure in faded and yellow dress. In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, love alters the lives and personalities of Miss Havisham, Pip and Magwitch - three characters who have had the fortune or misfortune to encounter it. The most memorable metamorphosis transpired in Miss Havisham. Once young and frivolous, she fell in love with a handsome man named Compeyson who played with her emotions and, since she was fairly well off, used her for her money as well. He broke her heart with a letter he sent to her the day of their wedding. She received it while she was dressing for her marriage at twenty minutes to nine - "the hour and the minute at which she afterwards stopped all clocks." (Great Expectations Pg. 168. Many years l
ater, she was still exactly as she had been the day of her wedding - only much, much older. "The bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes." (Great Expectations Pg. 53.) Her love for Compeyson had been so strong that her broken heart never healed. She renounced the world and shut herself up in her house never to see daylight again. There is no doubt that it was her "blind devotion, unquestioning self humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief" (Great Expectations Pg. 224) which caused her to act with such means. Consequently, over the years she transformed herself into a bitter and somewhat cruel, old eccentric woman in a faded and yellow bridal dress. Miss Havisham was not the only character who underwent a drastic change as a result of falling in love. When Pip fell in love with Estella - a beautiful girl with no heart who was adopted by Miss Havisham in order to "wreak revenge on all of the male sex"(Great Expectations Pg. 164), he too changed. Estella wounded him with her pride by calling him common, she insulted him and looked down upon him, but Pip loved her "against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness and all discouragement that could be" (Great Expectations Pg. 216). When Pip First Met her, he decided that he wanted to "be a gentleman on her account" (Great Expect
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Approximate Word count = 961
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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