Great Expectations: Who Killed Miss Havisham?

1. An analysis of the tragic Life of Miss Havisham and how it affected those around her. By Eli Friedman & Jeremy Kaye Great Expectations:Who Killed Miss Havisham?

2. Investigation …Years after the “accidental” death of Miss Havisham, a detective decided to further inspect the case of her death. His findings may prove whether she may have been murdered. Unfortunately, many of the potential suspects have died, which leaves very few remaining. The next slides are the detective’s thorough analysis of these suspects in relation to the victim, Miss Havisham. This also includes their personal accounts of the incident, and quotes (from the text of Charles Dickens) that will provide further insight into the life she lived.

3. Miss Havisham Backround • “ Miss Havisham, you must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father denied her nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer.”-Herbert • Miss Havisham is a thwarted bride. Her fiancee abandoned her mere minutes before the wedding. She has been upset ever since. • Because of this event she wears her bridal dress constantly. • Stopped all the clocks at the time the wedding was cancelled. • Tries to take revenge on all men. Setting: Miss Havisham has isolated herself from the rest of the world and has shut herself into a dilapidated house....that shows neither house nor herself were ageless “The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in sconces on the wall. They were high from the ground, and they burnt with the steady dullness of artificial light in air that is seldom renewed. As I looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they made, and at the stopped clock, and at the withered articles of bridal dress upon the table and the ground.”

4. The Suspects Phillip (Pip) Pirrip,, Estella (Havisham) Drummle, Compeyson,, Molly the Maid, Herbert Pocket,, and Biddy Gargery.

5. Estella “You must know...that I have no heart”-Estella Relationship to deceased: Estella was Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter. At first, they got along quite well. “She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she had reared. “ But Miss Havisham made her cruel and unfeeling… “You should know" said Estella. "I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me." "O, look at her, look at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! "Did I never give her love!" cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. "Did I never give her aburninglove, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!" ... And unable to love “When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but nothing more.” “Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked down at the fire again.“ Other Relationships:Estella was also loved by Pip, who saw what Miss Havisham was doing to her. “I saw in this that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham's revenge on men, and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified it for a term.” -Pip “She had her back towards me, and held her pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never looked round, and passed out of my view directly... I saw her pass among the extinguishedfires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky.”-Pip Possible Motive: As Estella says, she is unfeeling. Perhaps she hates Miss Havisham for making her this way.

6. Herbert Pocket "Matthew will come and see me at last when I am laid dead upon that table“-Miss Havisham Relationship to deceased: Though he did not really know Miss Havisham he had ill feelings toward her motives and what she has done to Estella. • "I didn't care much for it. She's a Tartar." • "Miss Havisham?" • "I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex." • "What relation is she to Miss Havisham?" • "None," said he. "Only adopted." • "Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?" Herbert’s family members stayed very near Miss Havisham and had many encounters with her. Other Relationships • "Thank you, Miss Havisham," she returned, "I am as well as can be expected." • "Why, what's the matter with you?" asked Miss Havisham, with exceeding sharpness. • "Nothing worth mentioning," replied Camilla. "I don't wish to make a display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more in the night than I am quite equal to." • "Then don't think of me," retorted Miss Havisham. • "Very easily said!" remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a sob, while a hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed • "Matthew will come and see me at last," said Miss Havisham, sternly, when I am laid on that table. That will be his place,-- there," striking the table with her stick, "at my head! And yours will be there! And your husband's there! And Sarah Pocket's there! And Georgiana's there! Now you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast upon me. And now go!" Possible Motive Miss Havisham even stated herself that the Pocket Family were only after her money…maybe Herbert was just following the family’s dasterdly plans. (Also The Pockets received an inheritance from Miss Havisham’s will after her death)

7. Pip “I fancied that I saw Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So strong was the impression, that I stood under the beam shuddering from head to foot before I knew it was a fancy” Relationship to deceased:Originally called to Miss Havisham’s house to play for her. • "Estella, dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever,--you have done so, I well know,--but bestow yourself on some worthier person than Drummle…he has not loved you as long, as I. " Visits Miss Havisham every year on his birthday. He is by Miss Havisham when she falls on her knees before him and begs forgiveness. • “What have I done! What have I done!” Other Relationships: Loves Estella • Far into the night, Miss Havisham's words, "Love her, love her, love her!" sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, "I love her, I love her, I love her!" hundreds of times. • "It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practice on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that, in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella." Possible Motive: • Perhaps he is angry at Miss Havisham for allowing the marriage of Estella to Bentley Drummle. Another reason is because he doesn’t forgive her for allowing his own heart to be broken.

8. Pip’s account of the fiery scene • Pip recounts his experience when Miss Havisham begins burning: “At her own awful figure with its ghostly reflection thrown large by the fire upon the ceiling and the wall, I saw in everything the construction that my mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me.” “I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high. “ • After she was burned, Pip notices how she still looks like a ghastly bride: “Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me, she still had something of her old ghastly bridal appearance; for, they had covered her to the throat with white cotton-wool, and as she lay with a white sheet loosely overlying that, the phantom air of something that had been and was changed was still upon her. “ • Despite begging for Pip’s forgiveness, she cannot completely change what she made her life into. Even forgiveness did not prevent her life from being a tragedy. Pip’s account seems very precise, perhaps precise enough that he was the one that pushed her in the first place. His words could be lies after all their were no witnesses other than him present.

9. Biddy “Ah,Except in my bad side of human nature“-Biddy Relationship to deceased: Although no direct relationship to Miss Havisham, she was aware of Pip’s love for Estella over her. Other Relationships Biddy is Pip’s teacher and friend. "Biddy," said I, "how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or you are very clever.“ This shows how Biddy was constantly underestimated making her a perfect suspect. “She was not beautiful,--she was common, and could not be like Estella,--but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered.” “After a pause, they both heartily congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness in their congratulations that I rather resented.” There can not be a better passage to explain how sad Biddy with Pip changing. Possible Motive Jealousy of Estella. Perhaps she thought by killing Miss Havisham she would be able to bring the old Pip back.

10. Molly the Maid “It seems that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman…to the last degree. To what last degree? Murder”-Herbert Pocket • “Her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches' caldron.”-Pip Relationship to deceased: The two never made contact however Molly’s biological daughter was Estella, the adopted daughter of Miss Havisham. Other Relationships • “I'll show you a wrist. Molly, let them see your wrist." • The last wrist was much disfigured,--deeply scarred and scarred across and across. • "Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has.”-Jaggers • The murdered person was a woman,--a woman a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. It was a case of jealousy. ..The murdered woman,--more a match for the man, certainly, in point of years--was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath. There had been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had been held by the throat, at last, and choked. Now, there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this woman, and on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it Mr. Jaggers principally rested his case. • “She had only a bruise or two about her,--nothing for a tramp,--but the backs of her hands were lacerated” Possible Motive Although she seems like one of the most unlikely suspects, her violent past seems to fit with the viciousness of the death of Miss Havisham.

11. Compeyson “He'd no more heart than a iron file, he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned. “-Jaggers • Relationship to deceased: • A onetime lover of Miss Havisham • “…a certain man, who made love to Miss Havisham. I never saw him ... But that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates; because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman…Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him…He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he must hold and manage it all. • Breaks off the marriage to Miss Havisham not long before the wedding. • “The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter.” • Other Relationships • Compeyson is a thief and a convict. • "He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too.”-Jaggers • Compeyson's business was the swindling, handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. • "A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil genius, Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels, knowing of his keeping out of the way at that time and of his reasons for doing so, of course afterwards held the knowledge over his head as a means of keeping him poorer and working him harder.” Possible Motive: PehapsCompeyson needed more money and went back to his original source. Or, after breaking her heart once, he just wanted to finish the job.

12. The Verdict/Result Click directly on Number 2 3 1

13. Ending #1 • After further investigation the detective was able to use Pip’s account to figure out what happened. • You see…after Miss Havisham’s apology to Pip she did not feel any better. She became bitter by the feeling that no one loved her anymore (with Estella betraying her leaving only Pip left)but she realized that after what she did to him there was no way his apology could be real. So she leaned to fire thinking about if death might cause people to love her again. She got her wish and caught on fire which resulted in massive burns injuries that killed her. After she was gone and Satis Manor came crumbling down no one did remember her again…

14. Ending #2 • After further investigation the detective was able to use the motive to deduce that Estella was responsible…… You see her abusive new husband Bentley Drummle heard that Miss Havisham wanted her old Estella back…she believed that all grooms were like her fianceeCompeyson and that Bentley would break Estella’s heart like hers was. Bentley put a stop to this by pushing Miss Havisham in the fire after her meeting with Pip. When Estella found out she immediately wanted a seperation from him and though she felt heartbroken…she had no one else left so she remarried.

15. Ending #3 • After further investigation the detective was able to The case was never solved, however due to this investigation it was discovered that Miss Havisham had greatly manipulated the lives of those around her. At the end of the day the suspects were the true victims.