Miss Havisham including: Both "Sunset Boulevard" and "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" were inspired by David Lean's adaptation of "Great Expectations", as were, by extension, the characters of Norma Desmond and Baby Jane Hudson, and their homes. The condition of the "Miss Havisham effect" has been coined by scientists to describe a person who suffers a painful longing for lost love, which can become a physically addictive pleasure by activation of reward and pleasure centres in the brain, which have been identified to regulate addictive behaviour – regions commonly known to be responsible for craving and drug, alcohol and gambling addiction.
Dickens in America two things that Dickens particularly wanted to see on his trip. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and Niagara Falls. Dickens took his flowery pen to the falls and wrote about them eloquently. Miriam is “lost for words.” Dickens said that he heard many voices in the roar of the falls and that one of the voices was of his deceased sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth. Miriam is not at a loss for words when she turns her back to the falls and looks at the town of Niagara. “It’s really ghastly,” she says. Dickens visited the Niagara Falls Museum, which was founded