Mrs. Havisham is a well-known character. It’s true. Even if someone hasn’t read Charles Dickson’s classic “Great Expectations”, there’s a good chance they’re still very familiar with the great expectations a toxic mother has over her children.
The discussions and blogs I’ve read of Mrs. Havisham mainly focus on her relationship with Pip. It seems understandable since Pip is the protagonist of the story. He is the benefactor of Mrs. Havisham’s effort to bring sorrow and pain to the men of the world. The problem I have with that singular focus is that it misses the bigger and far more damaging character dynamic hidden right under our noses – namely the one between Mrs. Havisham and Estella.
You see, yes, Pip was hurt, manipulated, and used, but here’s the thing, he wasn’t the only one. Mrs. Havisham’s pain was not going to be satiated with the virgin blood of just one boy. She had a steady flow of wide-eyed and bushy-tailed suitors at the ready to be sacrificed. The story Great Expectations could have easily focused on any one of the boys that ended up into the evil queen’s service and then fed into the heart break machine. There really isn’t anything special about Pip. The story cannot exist, however, without Estella.
Estalla was the adoptive tool of a mad-woman for a purpose and while discussions about how she was the tool of madness are readily available, the who was the target of that madness is sorely lacking. I know what you are thinking, “Its Pip.” But its not. “Yes, Mrs. Havisham used Estella to hurt those boys.” No, no… you only think that because the story is told from that perspective. What you think is that Mrs. Havisham was a jilted lover who wanted all male-kind to feel the pain of what happened to her. But sorry, your 7th grade teacher told you wrong, that is not who it was meant to hurt. Estella wasn’t supposed to hurt boys, she was supposed to hurt another girl. Let’s go back.
First of all, who is Mrs. Havisham? We know she is an older wealthy woman, living in her past pain in a mansion rotting away at its core. But who is Mrs. Havisham? We know she lives alone and was hurt by all the men she couldn’t get to stay in her life. A woman of wealth who is used to the finer things in life but unable to buy the happiness she deserved. But WHO IS MRS. HAVISHAM? Mrs. Havisham is a narcissist.
Let’s be honest, if Mrs. Havisham wanted to hurt anyone, she could have gone about it simply with a stick and smacked the boys until her arm was tired. She could have found submissive men wanting to be chained up and flogged daily. She could have kidnapped unsuspecting boys. She could have cleaned herself up and courted men by the dozens and jilted them all back, but she didn’t… she used Estella. You have to first understand that a narcissist cannot live in a universe where someone they deem inferior to them can achieve what they’ve lost. A controlling and narcissistic mother who’s lost every man she’s courted cannot live with the thought of her daughter’s happiness! No. Mrs. Havisham’s plot wasn’t about having what she always wanted, this was about ruining someone else – and that someone else wasn’t Pip. It was Estella.
Even if you’ve never read Great Expectations (and you should), you know who Mrs. Havisham is. She might be in your family, your mother-in-law, or she might be you. Personally, I’ve known quite a few of them. The first Mrs. Havisham I knew was my late grandmother who’s toxic influence on my parents has no doubt influenced my connection to a great many Estella’s. That in itself is worth a whole discussion: why did Pip love the girl used to hurt him? Why, when I did my damnest to weed out that specific thing, do I still end up at the mercy of Mrs. Havisham like some wicked plot twist at the end of a scary movie?
The M.O. is always the same. A single older woman, not just single, bitterly single, ie. hurt in someway by the man she gave everything too. A woman attracted to men based on the wrong criteria: money, looks, or, in my grandmother’s case, social status. My grandfather, the preacher, died long before I was born, and my grandmother never found it in her soul to connect with another man. For decades I always thought it was because she loved him so much, but once truth about the life of a black woman in the south during the civil rights era under a religious hegemonic crux came to light, I realized it had nothing to do with love. Preachers aren’t exactly saints, and the aires put on by those in religious families are many. She hated men, but not being able to rid herself of the image she lived under, she hid that anger inside of her – for nearly half a century.
Mrs. Havishman was also angry, and that anger manifested itself in many ways, the way it was channeled through Estella wasn’t just poetic, it was life. The first few times the mother does it, it comes off as harsh, but for someone that has been giving their child advice since they were born, it eventually comes off as love- but its not. I don’t know if I can make the argument that a narcissistic mother doesn’t love her child, but I will say that sowing seeds of discord in a child’s life is not because of love. It’s because of pain and because of bitterness. Most importantly, it is because of envy. Envy at the possibility of success where she has no doubt failed. Mrs. Havishman was a prima dona and a prima dona doesn’t fail at something unless it is something that simply can’t be done. The way a toxic mother keeps her daughter emotionally hostage and then systemically pours her demons into her child is not fiction, it is art, ugly, horrible, toxic art and Charles Dickson was a master at painting it.
Anytime I’ve found potential bliss and happiness with an Estella, there came the mother… bitter, angry, whispering into her ear a sweet poison of love. “Make him do this… if he doesn’t then he doesn’t love you. Tell him to buy that… if he can’t then he’s not good enough. He will never turn from his happiness and purpose, for us, and you will leave me an abandoned old woman because of him!”
My mother was never good enough for my father, according to my Grandmother. She found the flaws in an otherwise perfectly normal human being. My dad was Estella, he was there to hurt and channel pain to any other woman that dare seek the happiness she’d be robbed of. The cycle continued as I’ve seen it play out over multiple engagements and marriages in my own life. I cure myself now because I saw it coming every time but I stayed. I could tell when she would be speaking to her mom, and her mom would drip venom of deceit into the ears of my loves. The thing is, none of those women ever said it to me. Mrs. Havisham never told me that I was good for nothing. None of them ever told me to abandon my dreams. None of them ever told me anything because it wasn’t about me, just like it wasn’t about Pip. It was always about Estella.
They say the first step to recovery is admission, and I’ve admitted to myself a thousand times this is an issue, but I have yet to discover a solution. I dare not consider the solution in the book, I was thinking more along the lines of having a relationship where my biggest enemy isn’t the mother of the woman I’m in love with? A woman who’s mother wants to see her daughter happy? Not dating a woman who listens to her jealous friends, sister, aunts, or mother?
I thought about blogging about the specifics of my prior relationship but, as I wrote, the heat pouring onto the page cooked my computer and made me realize that this is story deserving of its own book. So I’m working on that as we speak. I just know its gonna hurt a lot of feelings. As far as a solution goes? The best I’ve come up with is don’t date Estella and don’t be a Pip. Walk away from situations like that no matter how attached to it or no matter how deep into it you’ve gone. Oh course, that makes me the jilter. That makes me abandoner. That makes me the guy who left her! The bad guy in every story, and I believe, as reflected in my writings, sometimes you really have to be the bad guy.
Bentley Dean 