Great Expectations

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"Mrs. Havisham’s house of darkness, decay, and frozen time …. is a symbol of the spiritual condition of Mrs. Havisham. "(Miller 192) Dickens has been known for using houses as symbols of the characters that lives in the house. "Satis house is an elaborate example of a figurative technique constantly employed by Dickens: the use of houses to symbolize the state of the soul. "(Miller 191) Mrs. Havisham’s house is called the "Satis House". It could also be called the Satisfied house.
Mrs. Havisham is satisfied with everything she has and everything she doesn’t have. Estella knew what she was talking about when she told Pip "It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house ,could want nothing else. " (Stange 186) She is happy being the victim of the cold-hearted, back-stabbing Compeyson. Her morbid revenge is to freeze time so that she is the innocent victim for the rest of her life because this allows her to be guilt free about creating Estella’s heart of ice towards ...

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herself decays with it. "She has worn away with the meal" (Hardy 205) The spiders feeding off the wedding cake represents how people have been using her and causing her pain by eating at her heart. "She has been gnawed by pain as the food has been gnawed by mice." (Hardy 205) Another example of Mrs. Havisham being is eaten away is when "the little quickened hearts of the mice behind the panels have been quickened by what was Mrs. Havisham carried off crumb by crumb." (Vanghent 181) When Mrs. Havisham dies she will be laid out on the long table so that her relatives can eat her away, symbolically of course. They will be talking about who gets the most money and about how much they ...

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