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 dressing, Miss Havisham received a letter from Compeyson and realised he had defrauded her and she had been left at the altar. Humiliated and heartbroken, Miss Havisham suffered a mental breakdown and remained alone in her decaying mansion Satis House – never removing her wedding dress, wearing only one shoe, leaving the wedding breakfast and cake uneaten on the table, and allowing only a few people to see her. She even had the clocks in her mansion stopped at twenty minutes to nine: the exact time when she had received Compeyson's letter. Time passed and Miss Havisham had her lawyer,