Estella (Great Expectations) Estella (Great Expectations) Estella Havisham (best known in literature simply as Estella) is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel, "Great Expectations". Like the protagonist, Pip, Estella is introduced as an orphan, but where Pip was raised by his sister and her husband to become a blacksmith, Estella was adopted and raised by the wealthy and eccentric Miss Havisham to become a lady. Pip and Estella meet when he is brought to Miss Havisham's ill-kept mansion, Satis House, ostensibly to satisfy the elder Miss Havisham's "sick fancy" to be entertained by watching Pip and Estella play together. It is
Miss Havisham Pip rushes back in and saves her. However, she has suffered severe burns to the front of her torso (she is laid on her back), up to the throat. The last words she speaks in the novel are (in a delirium) to Pip, referencing both Estella and a note she, Miss Havisham, has given him with her signature: "Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her!'" A surgeon dresses her burns, and says that they are "far from hopeless". However, despite rallying for a time, she dies a few weeks later, leaving Estella as her chief beneficiary,