Destructive Women in Dickens' Great Expectations

There are a number of women in Charles Dickens tale of love and revenge, Great Expectations. The two most significant of these are Miss Havisham, a wealthy and embittered old woman, and the beautiful young woman, Estella, who Miss Havisham schools in the art of breaking male hearts to exact her revenge for being jilted. However, even Pip's harsh, older sister mistreats him. In short, though Estella is manipulated by Miss Havisham to injure she represents the harshest destruction of Pip's "great expectations."

From his elder sister, along with her kindly blacksmith husband, who raises Pip with a "hard and heavy hand," to Miss Havisham and Estella, Pip's great expectations of life and love are destroyed by destructive women (Dickens 13). Throughout the novel, Dickens uses a number of rhetorical devices like figurative language to underscore the theme of the potential destruction wreaked by women on men. Miss Havisham's betrothed who wishes to rob her of her fortune, ends up being destroyed by nightmarish visions and jilts her. Joe, a kindly man, is beaten down by his wife, Pip's sister who remains cold and harsh, often beating Pip with such a hand. Joe will eventually find solace in a less destructive second wife. Miss Havisham admits she has purposively turned Estella's heart to ice at one point, explaining she has taken Estella's "heart away and put ice in its place" (Dickens 370).