(Re)Imagining the (Neo)Victorian Spinster: Gothic, Sensationalist and Melodramatic Reflections of Miss Havisham
By Maria Dimitriadou
A dissertation submitted to the Department of English Literature and
Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
January 2014 (Re)Imagining the (Neo)Victorian Spinster: Gothic, Sensationalist and Melodramatic Reflections of Miss Havisham
By Maria Dimitriadou
APPROVED:
1. ______
2. ______
3. ______
Examining Committee
ACCEPTED:
______
Department Chairperson Table of Contents
Acknowledgements...... v
Abstract...... vi
List of Figures...... vii
Introduction...... 1 Chapter 1: Victorian Representations of the Spinster
1.1 Before Miss Havisham: The Gothic/Sensationalist Background of Great Expectations...... 9 1.2 Dickens and Gothic Fantasy: Imagining Miss Havisham in Great Expectations...... 20
Chapter 2: Miss Havisham in 20th Century Film
2.1 Adapting the Dickensian Novel in the Age of Modernity...... 30 2.2 Miss Havisham in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946)...... 35
Chapter 3: Re-Imagining Miss Havisham in 21st Century Adaptations
3.1 The Neo-Victorian Approach in Adapting the Victorian Novel...... 41 3.2 Miss Havisham through BBC: Brian Kirk’s Great Expectations (2011) and Mike Newell’s Great Expectations (2012)...... 46
Chapter 4: Beyond Adaptation
4.1 Tim Burton’s Gothic Fantasy: Representing the Victorian Culture through Animation and Parody...... 56 4.2 The Tragicomically Grotesque: Reflections of Miss Havisham in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005)...... 59
Epilogue...... 66
Works Cited...... 69
Appendix...... 75
Dimitriadou v
Acknowledgements
My engagement with Great Expectations and Miss Havisham in particular began in 2012, when I decided to write a paper for the conference “Charles Dickens:
Births, Marriages, Deaths” that was organized by the School of English in fall, in order to celebrate Dickens’s bicentenary. The paper on Miss Havisham’s death was written and rewritten several times and this gave me the opportunity to think on it and expand it into my thesis. Apart from my own efforts, I feel that I wouldn’t have been able to finish without my family’s support that had to put up with my constant talking about
Dickens, Miss Havisham and the films all this time. I also feel obliged to thank my dear friend and colleague Lizzie who was always eager to listen to my ideas, comment on them and share my enthusiasm. Finally, I want to thank my supervisor Katerina Kitsi-
Mitakou for her valuable advice and feedback on my thesis, as well as for her support during the conference.
Dimitriadou vi
Abstract
This project explores the representation of Miss Havisham in Dickens’s Great
Expectations and in cinematic adaptations of the 20th and 21st century through the gothic, sensationalist and melodramatic artistic modes. I will examine how the Victorian spinster is imagined by Dickens in the novel and how it was shaped by earlier writings.
Moving on to Dickensian cinematic afterlives, I will explore how this image is transformed in films that reflect contemporary popular culture and our own perception of the Victorians. I refer to David Lean’s classic masterpiece Great Expectations (1946) as a brilliant example for all films that follow and I adopt a postmodern and neo-
Victorian approach to examine the most recent adaptations: Brian Kirk’s Great
Expectations (2011) and Mike Newell’s Great Expectations (2012); however, my interest in contemporary representations of grotesque jilted brides does not stop at films based on Dickens’s novel. I consider animation equally important and therefore I will also refer to Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) as another film that reflects on Miss
Havisham in a dark and humorous way.
Dimitriadou vii
List of Figures
Fig. 1. Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham...... 76
Fig. 2. A more detailed view of the room with the bridal decorations...... 77
Fig. 3. Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham...... 78
Fig 4. Helena Bonham Carter acting the role of Miss Havisham...... 79
Fig. 5. Anderson’s Miss Havisham exhibiting signs of hysteria...... 80
Fig. 6. Miss Havisham committing suicide...... 81
Fig. 7. Carter’s acting of Miss Havisham’s death...... 82
Fig.8. The corpse bride grabbing Victor’s arm...... 83
Fig. 9. Emily’s appearance as a dead bride...... 84
Fig. 10. The maggot popping out of Emily’s eye...... 85
Dimitriadou 1
Introduction
As Linda Hucheon argues in A Theory of Adaptation “the Victorians had a habit of adapting just about everything” and, as their immediate ancestors, “we postmoderns have clearly inherited this same habit” (xi). In Great Expectations1 (1860-1861) Dickens propels the reader into a world of dream and gothic fantasy. It is difficult to interpret the novel as an exclusively realistic, given the fact that Dickens draws on several genres including Gothic and sensationalist fiction, melodramatic conventions and even fairy tales in order to create
Miss Havisham and her surroundings. Taking into consideration how these genres influenced Dickens’s writing, this project will initially explore the Victorian representations of the jilted bride reflected in Dickens’s fiction. Then I will examine how this figure has been re-constructed and re-imagined over the years in the different subversive versions that cinematic adaptations offer.
Robert Higbie writes in Dickens and Imagination that the fictional world of Miss
Havisham is “a nightmarish world that closes out reality and, by indulging imagination’s selfish desires, cuts off the self from belief as Miss Havisham cuts herself off from light”
(146). Like Pip, every time the reader enters the Satis House scenes, he/she enters the realm of the fantastic. Tzvetan Todorov mainly argues in The Fantastic that the reader is unable to answer the following question – what is real? Todorov describes the fantastic as being the feeling of confusion and hesitation of the reader to decide whether what is described is real or not. In the case of Miss Havisham it is not only the reader, but also the character
(Pip) who is unsure whether he is in a state of dream or wakefulness. To put it in Todorov’s words:
1 The abbreviation used in the parenthetical references for Dickens’s novel is GE. Dimitriadou 2
The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must
oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living
persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the
events described. Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a
character; thus the reader’s role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at
the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of
the work – in the case of naive reading, the actual reader identifies himself
with the character. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard
to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as “poetic” interpretations. (33)
Therefore, the fantastic according to Todorov is a genre that causes an uncertainty as to whether an event or the representation of a character is based on natural or supernatural sources: “The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event” (25). As readers of Great
Expectations, once we are confronted with one explanation or another – especially with regard to Miss Havisham – we have to decide whether we will believe or not her supernatural condition.
Dickens’s fantastic realism together with all the other genres he employs in Great
Expectations creates a fragile literary form which can easily shift from the real to the fantastic– the uncanny or the marvelous as explained by Todorov. This hesitation between the two makes the novel fantastic and proves the power of imagination over reality. Chapter
1 of my thesis examines the gothic/sensationalist background of Great Expectations and how Miss Havisham was born out of Dickens’s imagination. In Dickens and The Invisible
World: Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Novel-Making, Harry Stone views the novel as an Dimitriadou 3
“inverted fairy tale”, a gothic/sensationalist autobiography that contains elements of a fable: a Cinderella prince and princess – referring to Pip and Estella – and a fairy godmother that eventually turns out the frightful witch (299, 311). Much of Dickens’s writing about Miss
Havisham has an exaggerating quality, since she is too bizarre to be considered in realistic terms. Stone notices that this Dickensian figure had been reworked and re-imagined by
Dickens years before the genesis of Great Expectations. Some of the sources include
Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and Dickens’s essay “Where We Stopped Growing”, in which he describes a strange lady in a bridal dress wandering in London. Moreover, a spectral figure of a secluded bride appears in the fourth chapter of “The Lazy Tour of Two
Idle Apprentices” which was a series of mystery tales written by Dickens in collaboration with Collins. The eccentric lady wandering in Berners Street, lunatic Anne Catherick in The
Woman in White, and the dead bride in “The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices” offer premonitions of a desolate, heartbroken bride and a ruined house. Therefore, the figure of
Miss Havisham in Great Expectations is a continuation of all these “unadorned realities” that were transformed into a gothic “fairy-tale art” (Stone 312).
Moreover, Dickens’s unrealistic representation of the Victorian spinster surrounded by decay and death reflects Victorian preoccupations and anxieties concerning unmarried women. In 1862 William Rathbone Greg published an article in The National Review entitled “Why Are Women Redundant?” and discussed the rising number of unmarried women in England. One of the writer’s views on the topic reflects the main stereotype about spinsters or jilted brides in Victorian period; according to this view, women “who remain unmarried constitute the problem to be solved, the evil and anomaly to be cured”
(440). This statement clearly describes spinsterhood not only as a social threat, but also as a disease that rapidly spreads over society. Miss Havisham is perhaps an exaggerated model of Victorian spinsterhood that belongs to the sphere of the fantastic, but still she is an Dimitriadou 4
example of how Victorian old maids could end up. Her witch-like death has remained vivid ever since, as there have been numerous adaptations of Great Expectations so far, including some very recent ones in the year that marked the bicentenary celebration of Dickens’s birth.
Cinematic adaptations of Dickens’s novels date back to the early 20th century and are as old as cinema itself. My main argument concerning adaptations in this thesis is that adaptations should be viewed as separate texts that stand on their own and should not necessarily be judged on whether they are faithful to Dickens’s original text. Thus, I adopt
Linda Hutcheon’s view that “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second without being secondary” (A Theory of Adaptation 9). In Chapter 2, I deal with a 20th century adaptation of Dickens’s novel that is considered to be a classic masterpiece. As Joss Marsh argues in “Dickens and Film”, David Lean’s Great
Expectations (1946) is a rarity among film adaptations of classic novels, because it satisfied both “literary purists and the mass audience” (211). It might seem that Lean sticks to the
Dickensian representation of Miss Havisham and keeps the gothic mood of the novel. But since the film was released in a postwar society, he gives an optimistic turn to the finale of the story by having Pip and Estella escape together from the ruins of Satis House and the haunting influence of Miss Havisham. Thus, Lean’s Miss Havisham, played by Martita
Hunt, could be characterized as one or all of the following:
A caricature of Melanie Klein’s bad mother; a demonically powerful
untapped well of feminine sexuality; a representation of the crumbling,
rotting, degenerate caste system in England just after (or, if Lean’s film is
under discussion, just before) the half-century mark; Medea in a wedding Dimitriadou 5
gown; the evil almost-mother, the distinctly non-maternal guardian of every
child’s fairy tale and nightmare. (Barecca 39)
Chapter 3 moves into the field of neo-Victorian studies and postmodern theory of adaptations, as I focus on two contemporary re-visions of Miss Havisham: the BBC mini- series broadcasted in 2011 and Mike Newell’s Great Expectations (2012). Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter’s acting offer the most recent interpretations of Miss Havisham, who is given a more youthful air. My main argument is that these adaptations aim to subvert popular Victorian stereotypes concerning spinster and unmarried women in a caricatured and melodramatic manner. In re-conceptualizing Victorian culture, BBC’s short
TV serial and the film serve as powerful subversions of Dickens’s novel and transform the figure of Miss Havisham through practices of hybridity and parody. The main question to be answered is this: Why is the jilted bride, the secluded spinster beautified in 21st century adaptations? Clearly Anderson and Carter present Miss Havisham as a heartbroken mess, ghostly and deranged. But, as adaptation is based on imagination and reflects contemporary ideas, the post-millennial Miss Havisham – the spinster which is a hilarious example to be avoided by all contemporary single women – is even more defiant of society’s rules, grotesque but at the same time romanticized and beautiful. This paradox is not present in
Lean’s film, because it has its roots to postmodernism and its basic principles of representation. Thus, in a postmodern neo-Victorian context, these films imply that contemporary spinsters should not necessarily be aged and ugly. However, they still represent a group of women that frightens most men, precisely because they are independent, bold and active.
In “Neo-Victorian Dickens”, Cora Kaplan points out the importance of Dickens in contemporary popular culture and, thus, in neo-Victorian studies: “The vogue for Dimitriadou 6
reimagining the nineteenth century, especially through its novels and novelists, depends on the continuing currency of Dickens and his work, for without his celebrity, one suspects that a good percentage of the cultural capital that keeps this ever-expanding enterprise afloat would rapidly depreciate” (81). It is no wonder then that Dickens’s writings have provided a huge stock for neo-Victorian fiction and film. The heritage of the Victorian culture and the figure of Dickens as a distinctive representative of the period’s literature offer a way through which contemporary popular culture explores the Victorians and attempts to “return” to this past through cinema. According to Kaplan, these cultural and literary returns to the Victorian period should be better called “neo-Dickensian” rather than
“neo-Victorian” (82). It is because Dickens remains an authoritative and influential figure that “seems to hover over the neo-Victorian like an avuncular but reticent deity” (81). He certainly influenced not only his contemporaries with his writings but also writers and film producers of our own time. However, it is also important to keep in mind that adaptations based on Dickens’s works not only interpret the past, but also reflect and comment on the present; therefore, as Joss Marsh rightly argues “all interpretation is time-bound” (205).
For instance, Lean’s film and his interpretation of Miss Havisham bear the mark of post- war Britain and the need to move forward and break away from the haunting horrors of the past. Contemporary interpretations of Dickens’s most famous jilted bride have a postmodern twist, which is based on the way society views single women nowadays.
Furthermore, according to postmodern theory, adaptations do not dehistoricize the present or represent history in an incoherent pastiche, but they work through parody and legitimize and subvert what they parody (Hucheon, The Politics of Postmodernism 101).
The image of the Victorian spinster, jilted and caricatured, represented as tragicomically grotesque and melodramatic in her sudden outbursts, is parodied by contemporary Dimitriadou 7
adaptations. But, in many ways, Miss Havisham as a character “lends herself to neo-
Victorian interpretation because she embodies the idea of a visible commentary on the past.
In one sense, she is eminently and recognizably Victorian, yet in another, she is strangely indefinite and mutable” (Regis and Wynne 36). Through cinema and BBC’s television series, Miss Havisham is re-shaped differently each time. Therefore, this particular figure that appeared in Dickens’s novel and its predecessors and reappeared in adaptations is constantly transformed. Therefore, in studying the latest adaptations of the novel in neo-
Victorian cinematic texts, I will agree with Charlotte Boyce and Elodie Rousselot that
“both an appreciation and a revision of the nineteenth century, the neo-Victorian adequately conveys the idea of celebrating while contesting, of looking back while moving forward”
(2).
Adaptations of classic novels are generally thought to be inferior, but their most intriguing characteristic is that since they are based on imagination, they open up possibilities of multiple interpretations and this is where the pleasure of re-reading and re- viewing adapted texts lies. In chapter 4 I will refer to Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) which strays away from what is perceived as an adaptation. In his book Gothic Fantasy:
The Films of Tim Burton, Edwin Page argues that, like Dickens who was fascinated by gothic and fairy tales, Burton found inspiration in a 19th century Russian folktale (243).
Furthermore, he writes that Burton “toys with usual conventions” and presents Victorian afterlife not in a gloomy tone, but in a fun and lively manner, thus parodying 19th century conceptions of death (247). To be more precise, I view Emily as the animated version of
Miss Havisham, the heartbroken, jilted bride, who is nevertheless more active than
Victoria, the conventional Victorian “angel in the house” engaged to Victor. Like Miss
Havisham, Emily was deceived and led to a life of sorrow and mourning. But unlike the Dimitriadou 8
Dickensian spinster, Emily is not bitter in remorse and vengeful; she remains uncannily beautiful and kind even in death.
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride hilariously represents Victorian preoccupations with death and subverts them by associating death with beauty. The challenge for Tim Burton and the designers of Emily was to parody Victorian stereotypes about jilted brides by representing her as “ghoulish but not gruesome, dead but beautiful” (Salisbury 36). As I will argue in the last chapter, this twofold nature is something that Dickens’s Miss
Havisham lacks in Great Expectations, because in this case there is not an ambiguous connection of death and beauty. Therefore, in complete contrast to the Victorian conceptions between death and decay, the dead in the film are even livelier than the living.
Unlike the gloomy, tomb-like atmosphere of Satis House in adaptations of Great
Expectations, Victorian afterlife here is displayed as colorful and happy. Finally, the genres of the Gothic and melodrama are present in the film, because of the way the characters and settings appear.
To summarize, after having set the main points of my exploration in this project, I will attempt to draw conclusions in the Epilogue about how this particular model of womanhood has evolved from Dickens’s time to the present, through the theoretical framework of postmodernism and the neo-Victorian. This will be achieved by bringing together Dickens’s novel and the films based on it – or even seemingly irrelevant films like
Corpse Bride – which are products of contemporary popular culture and therefore indicative of our realization of the Victorian period and our contemporary life.
Dimitriadou 9
Chapter 1: Victorian Representations of the Spinster
1.1 Before Miss Havisham: The Gothic/Sensationalist Background of Great
Expectations
In his exploration of nineteenth century literature of terror, David Punter recognizes
Dickens’s greatness as an author, whose writing fuses different genres and creates a distinctive style, “in which a certain kind of social realism and the grotesqueries of melodrama enter into a seemingly impossible alliance” (187). Through realist writing,
Dickens brings into his novels the social anxieties of the period and at the same time elements of fantasy. Elements of eighteenth and nineteenth century fantasy can be traced in fairy tales, folklore and ghost stories, but they developed primarily through the Gothic genre (Jackson 68). In particular, the origins of the Gothic are found in late eighteenth century, when Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto (1764) and the genre became immensely popular throughout the century with writers such as Ann Radcliffe,
Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin, Mathew Lewis, the Brontës and others (Jackson 96). The genre reached its peak during the first two decades of the 1800s and established a canon of fantasy literature that inspired many others and qualities of the genre were utilized by prominent Victorian writers including Dickens himself.
One could argue that the comeback of Gothic fiction and ghost stories in the second half of the century was quite popular and influential for many writers. Dickens recognized that Radcliffe’s Gothic romances, and crime tales with a touch of mystery could fascinate the mass reading public (Punter 188). He even recognized that “fear is the quickest and most effective way of commanding continuous audience attention” (Punter 189). This is a direct reference to the publication of most of Dickens’s novels, because they were usually Dimitriadou 10
published as monthly installments in periodicals. Therefore, fear and suspense were important in order to keep the reader interested and eager to read on. The plethora of tales of supernatural events and crime that appeared in weekly periodicals such as Household
Words and All the Year Round indicates that such readings were at the heart of popular culture of the period. Writers such as Wilkie Collins, whose The Woman in White (1860) was as popular as Great Expectations (1860-61) at that time, and Elizabeth Gaskell were among those who wrote for Dickens’s periodicals (Punter 189).
The literature of the fantastic was indeed a powerful literary form that reflected late
Victorian anxieties and questioned the social norms of the time. The themes of monstrosity, the supernatural and the unfamiliar, the grotesque and the blurring of beauty and strangeness usually occurred in gothic novels and ghost stories, which overwhelmed
Victorian readers. Ghost stories had a disturbing effect on the reader, because they blurred the defining lines between reality and fantasy, life and death. In “Sensation and the
Fantastic” Lyn Pykett sums up all the basic elements of the fantastic and its function:
The fantastic is itself a liminal and transgressive mode, concerned with and
moving between borderlands and boundaries: the boundaries of the
conscious and the unconscious; the rational and the irrational; the “civilized”
and the “primitive”; the religious and the secular; the material and the
numinous; the natural and supernatural; the self and the not-self. (194)
As such, stories of the fantastic created a sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity, an uneasiness while reading and “without providing any explanation for the strangeness”
(Jackson 25). Through the use of supernatural and fantastic elements, the Gothic seemingly makes the reader feel distanced from the uncanny environment of the novel, at least in conscious ways. However, taking into consideration what Sigmund Freud said about the Dimitriadou 11
unconscious practices of the psyche in “The Uncanny”, the Gothic might represent not something entirely unfamiliar, but the familiar that was forced to remain hidden. The uncanny, in Freud’s words is something that “arouses dread and creeping horror” and turns the familiar into the unfamiliar (75). The uncanny environments and monsters are distorted images of the familiar; they make us encounter the “other” side of the self, the unfamiliar.
In other words, “the uncanny is in reality nothing new or foreign, but something familiar and old-established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process of repression”
(Freud 90). Thus, an uncanny threat to us is everything that we project our own repressed impulses upon.
Taking into consideration what was previously mentioned about Todorov’s theory on the fantastic and the transition of the Gothic from the marvelous (supernatural), through
Fantasy (unnatural) to the uncanny (natural), Jackson notices that “the history of the survival of Gothic horror is one of progressive internalization and recognition of fears as generated by the self” (24). Furthermore, if we assume that in many novels of the Victorian period there is a camouflaged and uneasy use of Gothic conventions that remains underneath the realist text, then “this inner text reveals itself at those moments of tension when the work threatens to collapse under the weight of its own repression” (Jackson 124).
Especially in the case of Dickens’s Great Expectations the subplot of Miss Havisham transgresses its realistic “frame”, which is what happens outside Satis House. Like Miss
Havisham, her story seems to be marginalized in the novel, but this is the story that hides the darkest secrets in the book. Thus, in nineteenth century fiction and particularly in
Dickensian texts there is a constant dialogue between the narrative modes of Fantasy and
Realism and this is analogous to the dialogue between the Self and the Other as proposed by Freud (Jackson 124). Dimitriadou 12
The constant conflict between Victorian Fantasy and Realism is expressed in
Dickens’s writings through a “polyphonic mixing of realistic, grotesque, comic, fantastic and horrific styles” that stubbornly “resist being incorporated into the general ideological flow of his novels” (Jackson 130-131). This “unreason” of gothic and ghostly scenes in realist texts irrupts into the main discourse, and expresses all the terrifying things that have been excluded from the realist narrative (Jackson 131). As it becomes obvious not only from Great Expectations, but also from earlier stories, Dickens relied upon the Gothic tradition for the creation of the subplot of Miss Havisham and, by engaging also melodramatic excess and sensationalism, he created one of the most controversial yet bestselling novels of the 1860s. Therefore, in ghost stories that preceded Great
Expectations and give a first glimpse of Miss Havisham, he exploits the typical horrid imagery and melodramatic narrative technique of the Gothic as a sensation novelist, yet shifts them in order to criticize and appeal to the Victorian social conscience.
Francis O’ Gorman examines in “The Dead” the Victorians’ preoccupation with the idea of death and afterlife. Even though ghosts did not suggest Christian afterlife, they were imagined by the Victorians as a moral reminder of the behaviour of a once-living person that would come back to haunt the living (261). Ghosts in Dickens’s short stories, such as A Christmas Carol (1843) among others, allowed him to “deal with a robust sense of how properly to be alive” and reinvented “the notion of a moral awakening” (261). Apart from that, when it comes to the story itself, ghosts quicken the reader’s imagination and keep him interested possibly more than a purely realist narrative. As pure products of fantasy, ghost stories have an exceptional capacity of intriguing the reader, leaving “an affective impression” and signing “memory as a retainer of the dead” (262). Can the dead survive? This was the main question which revealed the basic Victorian anxiety about Dimitriadou 13
afterlife and the Christian doctrine. Nevertheless, Dickens’s ghosts do not only function as a chilling aspect of his stories, but also comment on Victorian society. Miss Havisham is one of these characters, a ghost-like woman dressed in white and a jilted bride who haunted
Dickens’s imagination long before he wrote Great Expectations.
In Dickens and the Invisible World: Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Novel Making, Harry
Stone tells the fascinating story of the genesis of Great Expectations and the character of
Miss Havisham. In an essay called “Where We Stopped Growing”2 Dickens described a woman wandering around Berners Street in London, a figure that was stuck in his mind for the following thirty-five years and provided one of the sources for the creation of Miss
Havisham:
The White Woman is her name. She is dressed entirely in white, with a
ghastly white plaiting round her head and face, inside her white bonnet. She
even carries (we hope) a white umbrella. With white boots, we know she
picks her way through the winter dirt. She is a conceited old creature, cold
and formal in manner, and evidently went simpering mad on personal
grounds alone — no doubt because a wealthy Quaker wouldn’t marry her.
This is her bridal dress. She is always walking up here, on her way to church
to marry the false Quaker. We observe in her mincing step and fishy eye that
she intends to lead him a sharp life. We stopped growing when we got at the
conclusion that the Quaker had had a happy escape of the White Woman.
(363)
2 The essay was published in All The Year Round in 1853. Dimitriadou 14
Stone recognizes that all she is more than a figure of Dickens’s boyhood (281). Miss
Havisham gathers all the basic qualities of this woman – the bridal dress, her eccentricity and feelings of hatred towards men, the wealthy man who left her just before the wedding and even her implied madness.
Gothic images of the jilted bride and the spinster do not stop in this boyish recollection. In another section entitled “Narrative of Law and Crime”3, Dickens comments on an incident of Victorian everyday life. He gives the description of an old woman named
Martha Joachim, who was wealthy and secluded in a mansion with her only companion a bull-dog and two cats (Stone 282). After having witnessed the suicide of a suitor she goes mad and finally one morning is found dead by tax collectors (Stone 283). Again the same story is reproduced, the unmarried woman who lives secluded and meets a tragic end, deserted by everyone. One cannot help but notice the similarities between Miss Havisham, the White Woman of Berners Street and Martha Joachim – they are all associated with crime, undergo “an instantaneous breakdown” caused by their suitors, are secluded or wander around London half-witted, hate men and as they remain frozen in time they too have stopped growing (Stone 281, 283). Therefore, Dickens’s imagination was beyond doubt magnified “by his lifelong fascination with the grotesque and by his early introduction to the lurid delights of Gothic literature and nightmarish fairy tales” (Stone
283-284).
During the 1850s Dickens produced another ghostly female figure that also served as a premonition for the novel. In 1857 Dickens collaborated with his lifelong friend Wilkie
Collins and wrote for Household Words a series of short travel stories called The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices. One of its chapters, which is often called “The Bride’s Chamber”,
3 Published in Household Narrative in January 1850. Dimitriadou 15
deals with the issue of killing an unwanted wife and her return as a ghost dressed in white
(Stone 289). There are several themes that are recycled in order to create a chilling ghost story: an evil man marrying a rich widow, tormenting her and exploiting her financially, then after her sudden death marrying her daughter in order to usurp her property and again do away with her. The method of killing the young bride is cruel and after some years she dies in seclusion, yet returns to haunt him as a ghost. The unfortunate creature was “a fair, flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl, who had no character, no purpose. A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless nothing” (Collins and Dickens 387). She remained secluded for eleven years in a dark house with a walled garden and the man “surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation” (Collins and Dickens 388). By cursing and abusing her day by day she finally came to beg for her life: “paler in the pale light, more colorless than ever in the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him—a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending hand” (Collins and Dickens 389). When he finally succeeded killing her, the murderer took advantage of all her property, but as it usually happens in ghost stories, the usurper does not meet a happy end: “he had got rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune without endangering his life; but now, for a death by which he had gained nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope around his neck” (Collins and Dickens 391). Even in his death the husband is not at peace; his ghost is visited by those of his victims and is doomed to eternal suffering, as he has to narrate his story to those who pass by the haunted mansion.
Like the ghost story, the sensation novel of the 1860s was another “ghost” of gothic fiction (Pykett 195). Sensation novels were considered to be a subgenre of gothic and crime fiction and became the “buzzword” of the period primarily because they projected and confronted all the preoccupations, hidden fears and anxieties of the Victorian society Dimitriadou 16
(Hughes 260). Moreover, the sensation novel “functioned as something of a Pandora’s box within this larger context, collecting and then releasing what the culture found most disturbing about itself” (Hughes 273). To connect Dickens with sensationalism one has to mention the representative master of the genre, Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White, also published in the weekly journal All the Year Round, was an archetype of the genre and another inspiring text for Dickens, concerning the creation of Miss Havisham in Great
Expectations. Collins utilized all the basic conventions of the Gothic, such as the wicked villain, the middle-class hero, the fragile heroine and the decayed mansion. The major characteristics of the sensation were murder, blackmail, adultery, bigamy, fraud, and sometimes even real life crimes borrowed from newspaper reports (Pykett 202-203).
As Collins’s literary mentor, Dickens often advised and praised his work. This is an abstract of a letter4 to him: “My dear Wilkie, I have read this book with great care and attention. There cannot be any doubt that it is a very great advance on your former writing, and most especially in respect of tenderness. In character it is excellent. [...] The story is very interesting and the writing of it admirable” (310). With this novel, apart from being recognized as a successful author, Collins earned the reputation of “Mrs. Radcliffe brought down to date”, but at the same time his novel created a debate about the genre in general; as
David Punter argues, “on the one hand, massive tales indicating the willingness of a wide range of readers to indulge in sensation, and on the other some critical annoyance, indicating the unwillingness of the Victorian literary establishment to admit to sensation as a valid source of literary enjoyment” (195).
4 Dickens often shared his experience as an author and advised authors, among them Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins. The above letter was written in 7 January 1860. In Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, Ed. by David Paroissien. Dimitriadou 17
Melodrama was another genre that characterized novels like The Woman in White and Great Expectations, as it is closely related to sensationalism. Melodrama is used by
Collins and Dickens as a “theatrical taste for alternation between scenes of calm and scenes of violence” and its roots are unsurprisingly identified in the Gothic (Punter 193). Some of the features of melodrama include extreme states of being, acting and behaving, dark plots and suspense. One can only bring to mind the sudden bursts of lunatic Anne Catherick and
Miss Havisham and their overall exaggerating appearance. This kind of writing that aroused the reader’s senses was of course associated with female authorship. In Dead Secrets:
Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic, Tamar Heller comments on Collins’s ambiguous position as a professional writer, since the term “female gothic” was not necessarily associated with women’s writing, but also with “what is ‘other’, subversive, and marginal”
(9). Furthermore, this feminized writing was criticized as being concerned primarily with plot and not character and it was even accused as “sexually charged” (83, 87).
Perhaps this accusation of being sexually arousing is based on the belief that generally in gothic fiction the sudden terror that is caused in an uncanny environment bears sexual undertones (Pykett 204). Walter Hartright first encounters Anne Catherick, the so called woman in white, under peculiar circumstances. Like Miss Havisham, she is ghostly in appearance and so bizarre that it is almost impossible for Walter to believe that he is awake: “There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road stood the figure of a solitary
Woman dressed from head to foot in white garments” (Collins 15). She is furthermore described as “colorless”, “meager and sharp to look at” and “nervous” (Collins 15). But what complicates the plot and gives it a sensational twist is the fact that Laura Fairlie has exactly the same outward appearance; she is described as “a white figure” that is “in her attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in the shape of her face, the living Dimitriadou 18
image, at that distance and under those circumstances, of the woman in white!” (Collins
51). The association of whiteness and women in an important feature in the novel, as the appearance in total white symbolizes “a virginal bourgeois femininity” (Heller 124). The white dress, veil, bonnet and other garments form an appearance that both Collins and
Dickens’s women in white share.5
The tragedy for Laura Fairlie, Anne’s double, is that the man she married is a villain who aims to exploit her financially and kill her. As Dickens succeeds in Great
Expectations, Collins also criticizes in the novel the “disadvantaged economic and legal position” of Victorian women (Heller 112). Anne Catherick is the only one who knows the dark secrets of Sir Percival Glyde, who plots with Count Fosco to steal Laura’s money by substituting the ‘woman in white’ for Laura. Thus, Laura is forced to take the place of lunatic Anne Catherick in the asylum from which Anne had formerly escaped; she becomes the woman in white and Anne is killed in a manner that looks as if she committed suicide.
In the following chilling quote, Walter Hartright describes the moment when he realizes the switching of identities between the two women as he is standing in front of the grave of
Laura: “But the veiled woman had possession of me, body and soul. She stopped on one side of the grave. We stood face to face, with the tombstone between us. [...] The woman lifted her veil. Laura, Lady Glyde, was standing by the inscription, and was looking at me over the grave” (Collins 377-378). It is revealed in the end that Laura is the victim of a fraud, believed to be dead by everyone and most importantly “socially, morally, legally dead” like all women in the Victorian conscience (Collins 380). In my opinion, the way
Laura returns alive, standing right in front of the tombstone that was made for her, alludes
5 Allusion to Laura, Anne and Miss Havisham. Dimitriadou 19
to the way a ghost returns to take revenge for the wrongs of the living in a gothic tale or to the way Miss Havisham returns as a living-dead bride to avenge herself on all men.
Bringing together all that has been argued about the gothic and sensationalist background of Great Expectations and despite the fact that sensation novels and ghost stories were considered by some as scandalous products of “low” culture, I believe that a writer who loved experimenting and fusing different genres in his works would not remain indifferent. Considering all the common elements that Great Expectations shared with The
Woman in White and the ghost stories “Dickens found himself in the odd position of being both forerunner and imitator of the sensation vogue” (Hughes 272). Finally, I will adopt
Harry Stone’s view that Collins’s novel and all the other sources previously discussed fed
Dickens’s imagination for the creation of Miss Havisham:
For Collins’s novel, with its monetary motivation, imprisoning mansion,
victimized woman in white, manipulated identities, and murderous
aggressions, was profoundly influenced by “The Bride’s Chamber”, the
Gothic fairy tale that Dickens had told less than two years earlier in their
joint work, The Lazy Tour. When Dickens read The Woman in White,
therefore, he was reading an echo of what he himself had written, a
recension of scenes and subjects that had stirred his imagination since
childhood. (296)
Dimitriadou 20
1.2 Dickens and Gothic Fantasy: Imagining Miss Havisham in Great Expectations
“Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace – they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship – they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel”
(Collins 162). The above words, spoken by Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White summarize the bitter truth about the fate of women in Victorian times. Married women – let alone spinsters like Marian who can only live in the shadow of her happily married half- sister6 – did not have many choices in life and certainly had little chance to control their lives. This was especially true about women who were abused by their husbands or jilted by their suitors. In the Victorian public view, spinsters were grim figures of womanhood, often scorned and pitied, considered abnormal, alienated or even mad.
Dickens frequently portrays rejected and bad-tempered spinsters in his novels but in
Great Expectations he presents one of the most haunting and nightmarish figures of
Victorian spinsterhood. Therefore, apart from the social critique, the novel is closely bound to sensationalism and the Gothic. Harry Stone is the critic who first adopted a reading of the novel as a fairy tale. For him, Miss Havisham is a pretend fairy-godmother who turns out to be the witch; she is “witchlike in her appearance, witchlike in her isolation, witchlike in her adobe, witchlike in her vengeance, and witchlike in her fiery destruction” (310-311).
In this light, unlike other spinsters in Dickens’s novels, Miss Havisham is not simply a bitter and aggressive man-hater; she appears as a witchlike manipulator and despite her self-inflicted seclusion manages to influence people’s lives without leaving her domestic space. Furthermore, she blurs the qualities of bride and corpse. But most importantly, Miss
Havisham is an empowered and at the same time diseased figure of Victorian spinsterhood.
6 Laura finally marries Walter Hartright after Sir Percival meets an ugly death by fire. Dimitriadou 21
She seems to subvert Victorian stereotypes of gender and even associates spinsterhood with images of decay and death.
Whereas an individual unmarried woman was a laughingstock, as a group, spinsters were threatening to society and redundant. Being old and single was not only a terrible waste and a failure to serve society, but also unnatural. In his article, William Rathbone
Greg underscores how problematic the rising number of unmarried women had become in
Victorian England. He describes the plight of being a spinster in the following terms:
“There is an enormous and increasing number of single women in the nation, a number quite disproportionate and quite abnormal; a number which, positively and relatively, is indicative of an unwholesome social state, and is both productive and prognostic of much wretchedness and wrong” (436). This is indicative of the problem and the danger it presented to Victorian values. It can be argued that unmarried women subverted gender roles by acting in an unfeminine way, in the sense that they served no man, and therefore their independence threatened the core of patriarchy. Greg also points out that these women
“are compelled to lead an independent and incomplete existence of their own” (436).
Therefore, a woman’s existence meant nothing if she was of no use to patriarchal society.
The dominant Victorian ideology about the spinster’s position in society viewed single women as “angels in the house” and thus reinforced their angelic, domestic nature.
Especially in the Victorian male imagination, the spinster was also “a familiar domestic appendage and a frightening social harbinger” (Auerbach 109). According to this statement, the Victorians got over earlier preoccupations or anxieties about spinsters and “ceased to burn single women as witches” (Auerbach 110). However, considering Miss Havisham’s case, I cannot help but bring into mind how Dickens finally “kills” this spinster. Not only her witchlike death, but also the overall representation of Miss Havisham implies that she is Dimitriadou 22
more than a “piteous victim” of society (Auerbach 145). She is a perverted version of the angel in the house who, after having been jilted on the day of her wedding, haunts not only the space she inhabits, but also the people around her. Compared to the image of the conventional Victorian spinster, Miss Havisham goes beyond the common stereotype of the unwanted and caricatured spinster who is deprived of power. She serves as a model of subversion in terms of spinsterhood, because she is presented as a deranged yet empowered woman who controls and manages to change people’s lives.
In my view, Dickens’s imagery and symbolism are particularly concentrated on his representation of Miss Havisham and Satis House. Dickens’s writing shows that he was aware of how reality could be blurred with nightmares and hallucinations and, as mentioned in the previous section, he knew how to use the Gothic and sensation genres. Dickens succeeds in arousing terror by introducing images of Miss Havisham to the reader through the innocent gaze of a child. Following Pip’s point of view, Miss Havisham resembles
“some ghastly waxwork at the Fair” and “a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress” (Dickens
50). Furthermore, she gives the impression of being “the Witch of the place” (Dickens 69).
The once white dress, now withered and yellow, epitomizes her as a ghost of a bride. Later in the novel Herbert’s narration of her story informs Pip and the reader about how Miss
Havisham came to her present condition after having been jilted: “When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste…and she has never since looked upon the light of day” (Dickens 143). Thus, the images of decay and death surrounding Miss Havisham reinforce the idea of a fantasy world, in which Miss Havisham is the mad, evil witch. Dimitriadou 23
For critics like Michael Hollington, the most important aspect of the novel is its grotesque tragicomic7 representation of Miss Havisham; Pip’s initial illusion that she is his benefactress contradicts her grotesqueness (220). Dickens thus initially creates a world in the childish eyes of Pip and in this fairy-tale world Satis House is a palace, Miss Havisham a fairy-godmother and Estella a princess. He actually thinks that Miss Havisham prepares for him the ground to “do all the shining deeds of the young Knight or romance, and marry the Princess” (Dickens 179). Stone associates Miss Havisham to fairy tales in the following manner:
She is […] a Sleeping Ugly – she waits in deathlike immobility for a
promised prince, a prince who will never come, who will never kiss and
waken her. Or, yet again, with her one shoe on and one show off, she is a
blighted Cinderella. Betrayed by her faithless prince, she has turned
witchlike and infernal. […] Witchlike Miss Havisham now broods over Satis
House, intent, crouching, deadly. (313)
Despite the fact that she is referred to as a witch, one cannot feel only contempt for her, but pity as well. Though Miss Havisham’s wealth allowed her to escape seclusion in an asylum, her confinement to Satis House serves as “a metaphor for entrapment in a society whose functioning depends in part on females’ complicity with their own imprisonment” (Raphael
706). It seems that everything about Miss Havisham and her surroundings is entirely subjective in terms of imagination. As a child, Pip is convinced about Miss Havisham’s true nature, but is gradually disillusioned; Satis House is not a palace, but a place of decay and
7 In his influential book The Grotesque, Phillip Thomson gives the following definition for the term grotesque: “The grotesque is the expression of the enstranged or alienated world, the familiar world is seen from a perspective which suddenly renders it strange (and presumably this strangeness may be either comic or terrifying or both)” (18). Dimitriadou 24
mourning; Estella is not a princess, but a seductress whose heart is replaced by ice; and
Miss Havisham is certainly not a fairy-godmother.
Victorian psychiatrists considered seclusion as an acceptable solution to marginalize deviant women and detach them from what was considered to be the healthy part of society.
Showalter points out in The Female Malady that Dickens himself was particularly interested in visiting asylums and observing mad women (51). She also supports that Miss
Havisham became “the prototype not only of the deranged woman in Victorian literature and art but also of the young female asylum patient” (90). Anne Catherick in The Woman in
White, who was imprisoned in an asylum by Sir Percival, lived in a constant state of obsession; Miss Havisham might not be an asylum patient but leads a life as if she were institutionalized life (Raphael 707). Thus, Satis House is for Miss Havisham both a social and a psychological prison (Ayres 89).
Although the Victorians ostracized female insanity, locking away and marginalizing mad women was proved to be not the best possible treatment. Seclusion reinforced the appearance of hallucinations, loneliness and depression that led most women to mental breakdown. Miss Havisham stops every clock in Satis House at twenty minutes to nine, the exact time of Compeyson’s betrayal, wears only one shoe, and leaves the bridal decoration untouched. Pip realizes that “everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago” (Dickens, GE 51-52). Miss Havisham is quite unbelievable in representation and has “sick fancies” (Dickens, GE 51). The room with the bridal decorations is a metaphor of the spinster’s inner state. It is as frozen as her heart and has the atmosphere of a mausoleum. The disused brewery, the overgrown, neglected garden and the rotting barrels are among the images of decay and death that manifest Miss Havisham’s denial of life. Despite her desperate attempt to stop time, Miss Havisham turned it into a Dimitriadou 25
destructive instead of preservative force. Therefore, as Dickens describes, Miss Havisham, the room and everything in it are “in a state to crumble under a touch” (GE 73).
The once great bridal cake, like the once beautiful bride, has now become a feast for the mice according to Miss Havisham’s description: “It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it and sharper teeth than the teeth of the mice have gnawed at me”
(Dickens, GE 72-73). The rotten cake is a striking symbol of death in the novel and like all food it remains untouched by Miss Havisham. Pip never sees Miss Havisham eat or drink and he never will, because “she wanders about in the night and then lays hands on such food as she takes” (Dickens, GE 206). Dickens does not represent Miss Havisham’s psychology in a realistic manner. Instead, he uses this powerful symbol and allows the rotting cake to act as an extension of her body and soul. Perverted Miss Havisham ties her body to the cake, as she expects to be eaten by her greedy and parasitic relatives when she is laid on the dining table after her death, just as the spiders and mice are feasting upon the cake (Dickens, GE 73).
The tragedy for a spinster like Miss Havisham is that she is “out of nature” and
“unwanted even by the devil” (Auerbach 109). Her state was caused by her desperate investment of love in the wrong man. Deranged and embittered, she defines love as “blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your heart to the smiter” (Dickens, GE 184). There is nothing “natural” about Miss Havisham in the way the Victorians defined the nature of women. Having been deprived of a husband’s love, Miss Havisham decides to fulfil the role of motherhood in a subversive way, as she is unmarried and her aging body is barren.
Consequently, having discarded her feminine nature and the nature of a proper Victorian lady, Miss Havisham acts as a “gender offender” (John 213). It is mainly through Estella that she exercises her power. To be more precise, in her quest for revenge, Miss Havisham Dimitriadou 26
infects Estella with her vengeful ambitions and shapes her character according to her own deformed image. Her only chance to avenge herself and gain some satisfaction is by causing pain through Estella, who ultimately becomes the weapon to be turned against all men. It is no wonder that despite her efforts to detach herself from this deviant, perverse mother, even when she seemingly succeeds, Estella cannot get rid of Miss Havisham’s haunting influence.
Miss Havisham’s deviance and ability to define herself sets her free of patriarchal values, “even if she chooses to be a macabre bride ghost and angry matriarch” (Ayres 89).
Her hatred for men and her power are made manifest when she clearly enjoys tormenting
Pip every time he visits Satis House and encourages his feelings towards Estella in a way that can be interpreted as a curse: “Love her, love her, love her! How does she use you?
[…] If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!”
(Dickens, GE 184). Again she adopts the position of the “potent witch and harbinger of death” who casts a spell over her victim (Stone 317). Furthermore, I would agree with
Linda Raphael who argues that Miss Havisham “represents the Victorian male figure rather than the female: she owns property and she possesses a female – and her own female addition to this is that she also gains power over a male, Pip” (708). Dickens’s spinster assumes a position of authority unlike other marginal women in his novels. Like Estella,
Pip does not escape from this nightmare as Miss Havisham often haunts him both in reality and in his dreams.
Dickens is also playing around with premonitions. Strangely enough, Miss
Havisham foresees her own death and finally casts her last curse on Compeyson “when the ruin is complete and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table”
(Dickens 73). It is noteworthy that Miss Havisham poses such a great threat that it is not Dimitriadou 27
enough for her to die only once. Her death is imagined by Pip throughout the novel in various ways before it actually happens. Pip’s vision of Miss Havisham hanging from a beam in the disused brewery reappears in the novel and towards the end it is a genuine premonition (Dickens 299). As I see it, she failed to identify with the model of the socially acceptable woman, internalized her failure and was resurrected into a corpse-bride.
She ultimately has the tragic fate of the spinster by earning a pitiful death by fire. I believe that Dickens’s description of this horrid scene is one of the most memorable points in Great Expectations. Pip tells the reader: “I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high” (Dickens 299). This scene has a surreal intensity and, as in the other Satis House chapters, its description blurs dream fantasy and daytime reality. The cloth that Pip uses to extinguish the flames, “the heap of rottenness”, “and all the ugly things that sheltered there” symbolize Miss Havisham’s diseased existence that must be destroyed in order to stop poisoning the lives of others (Dickens 299). Also the fact that Miss Havisham bursts into flames when Pip leaves the room, somehow implies that he is responsible for her death.
Could this be Pip’s wishful thinking, his revenge or Dickens’s way to rid and cleanse society of a madwoman? If Miss Havisham “embodies the congested sick body of society” then the fire in this case has a purifying function and “the burning symbolises Dickens’s attempts in his writing to impose some sort of order on the chaos” (Thornton 88, 94).
For Pip the image of Miss Havisham burning in her bridal gown arouses feelings of pity and terror. At the time of her death, and even after it, Miss Havisham continues to haunt not only Pip’s dreams but also the reader’s imagination. In the following quote
Dickens narrates Pip’s nightmare in a distinctively theatrical manner:
I found it painfully difficult, I might say impossible, to get rid of the
impression of the glare of the flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce Dimitriadou 28
burning smell. If I dozed for a minute, I was awakened by Miss Havisham’s
cries, and by her running at me with all that height of fire above her head.
This pain of the mind was much harder to strive against than any bodily pain
I suffered. (301)
Death by fire is excruciating, but in the case of Miss Havisham the body’s death releases her from a continuing diseased mental state and, especially after Pip’s forgiveness, it could possibly denote catharsis.
I have argued that, though she is a marginal woman, Miss Havisham is in a position of power in the novel and subverts certain patriarchal rules. But this does not change the fact that outside marriage women could not survive in society. If we judge by the way that
Dickens eliminates her, does she eventually take her revenge on Compeyson and on society or does she fall into her own trap? Dickens’s treatment of this spinster leaves no room for doubt that deviant women have no place in Victorian society. Consequently, it is true that
“Miss Havisham’s cumbersome and putrid gown constantly reminds her and the reader that she wears the cloak of womanhood” (Ayres 89). The fact that she refused to take out the bridal gown and die in it suggests that despite her wish to avenge herself, she always carries her “failure” with her and the weakness of her sex – at least from a Victorian male perspective. What she merely succeeded in was turning herself into “a monument of female suffering at the hands of men” and becoming “a monument of female masochism” (John
228). Miss Havisham was trapped into the illusion that by using Estella, torturing Pip and manipulating others as well would offer her moral gratification. As Raphael concludes,
Dickens “unmasks this illusion” and offers no alternative for Miss Havisham:
We have no reason to suspect that Miss Havisham understands her own
misery as a consequence of more than having been jilted. […] She acts on
the belief that it is only through dehumanizing and often brutal deceit and Dimitriadou 29
abuse that desire can be satisfied. Miss Havisham thus fails to offer a hope
for a different future for the next generation. This is the Dickens at his most
pessimistic – the Dickens who reveals the vicious circularity of individual
and social misery. (709)
The cult and supernatural figure of Miss Havisham stands in complete contrast to the figure of the stereotypical Victorian spinster, as she is given the opportunity to exercise some sort of power and resistance to patriarchy. Miss Havisham is represented as a figure born out of a fairy tale, since she is an exaggerated model of Victorian spinsterhood. But still she is an example of how Victorian spinsters could end up. Her tragedy is not simply that she was jilted on the day of her wedding or that her step-brother plotted with
Compeyson in order to withdraw money from her. It is that she stood against a deeply conservative society that condemned deviant women and actually expected to triumph. As one would expect, Dickens proves that this is impossible.
Dimitriadou 30
Chapter 2: Miss Havisham in 20th Century Film
2.1 Adapting the Dickensian Novel in the Age of Modernity
The reception of the Victorians during the first half of the century (1901-1945) was characterized by contempt and disdain. Dominant figures of early 20th century intelligentsia and particularly those involved in the Bloomsbury Group8 created a spirit of anti-
Victorianism at least up to 1945 and shaped a negative image of all things Victorian (Boyd and McWilliam 6). For the modernists and especially for those related to the Bloomsbury
Group, anti-Victorianism became a way of life as “their liberal views and bohemian life style were deliberately intended to undercut what they perceived as stifling Victorian prudery which suppressed the kind of creativity and honest conversation (particularly about sex) that they valued” (Boyd and McWilliam 8). However, since my purpose in this chapter is to examine a post-war interpretation of a Victorian novel, it is important to note that this rejection of the Victorians was reconsidered both by society and the academia, as after the
Second World War it became necessary for the British to look back and evaluate their past.
Therefore, the post-war period was “less concerned with recrimination than with attempting to develop a serious understanding of the Victorian world in all its complexity” (Boyd and
McWilliam 12).
As Samantha Matthews argues in “Remembering the Victorians”, one basic reason for the appreciation of Victorian ways and values after the war was that they were associated with “a conservative myth of English identity connoting patriotic ideals of sturdy independence and self-sacrifice” (281). This concept of Victorian Englishness was
8 In his Eminent Victorians (1918) Lytton Strachey attacked Victorian manners with mocking irony. Among others who also contributed to the spread of anti-Victorianism were Sigmund Freud and Virginia Woolf (Boyd and McWilliam 8). Dimitriadou 31
somehow necessary for the people after the hard years of the war, as they looked back with nostalgia “for a more secure, stable past” (Matthews 282). As Dickens was one of the most famous and influential Victorian writers, British film directors of that period turned to his works. Traces of nostalgia for Dickens’s England are found in two films of the 1940s directed by David Lean, Great Expectations9 (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). The post-war
British audience found these adaptations comforting, as they also provided “the romance of difference, the familiarity and escapism of costume drama” (Matthews 282).
The 1940s was also the decade that Dickens gained the reputation of a great literary author, representative of all Victorians, and an influential figure for film. In his essay
“Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today”, published just two years before the appearance of
Lean’s Great Expectations, film critic Sergei Eisenstein recognized Dickens as the “father” of film and the Victorian novel as the source from which the first cinematic adaptations stem (195). Furthermore, after connecting Dickens to David Wark Griffith and the birthplace of cinema, America, Eisenstein writes: “I don’t know how my readers feel about this, but for me personally it is always pleasing to recognize again and again the fact that our cinema is not altogether without parents and without pedigree, without a past, without the traditions and rich cultural heritage of the past epochs” (232). This is an argument based on the fact that after the Second World War there was a boom in literary adaptations, with a particular focus on the Victorian period. But why do critics consider the Victorian novel and Dickens’s novels in particular as the starting point and inspiration for film?
Eisenstein was the first who noticed that Dickens’s narrative techniques and representation of characters resemble the way that film reproduces such visual images.
Contemporary critics examine Dickens and film and situate the adaptations of his novels
9 The abbreviation used for Lean’s film in parenthetical references is GE. Dimitriadou 32
within film history in the twentieth century. Critics like Joss Marsh and Kamilla Elliott share Eisenstein’s view. Joss Marsh writes that “there is a more striking affinity between
Dickensian modes of narration and film’s developed techniques of story-telling (including editing, camerawork, and design) than exists between film and any other author” (205).
Kamilla Elliott argues in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate that Eisenstein discovered the so called “cinematic novel” by bringing into attention the characteristics of Dickens’s narrative technique, which included visual details, his sentimental and often sensationalist tone, his melodramatic excess when representing characters like Miss Havisham, his shifting of viewpoints and empirical psychology (118). What is more, she explains:
Formally speaking, the myth of a cinematic nineteenth-century novel rests
on two claims. The first maintains that the novel shares with film a realist,
empirical, visual representational style. [...] The second insists that novel
and film alone share a practice of shifting back and forth between groups of
characters and of cutting between various points of view within a scene – a
practice of montage or editing that is, paradoxically, also film’s uniquely
defining aesthetic attribute. (122)
Therefore, according to this argument, the nineteenth century realist novel has cinematic characteristics, such as visual images, multiple viewpoints and an insight to character psychology that enables the text to be transformed into film.
The most interesting point that Elliot makes is about the anachronism of the
Dickensian novel, when it comes to cinematic adaptations. It is argued that cinematic novels, like Dickens’s Great Expectations, were discovered before the birth of cinema itself and theorists insist on the historical influence of the Victorian novels on film (113).
However, Elliot insists that cinema was not born through the words or illustrations of the Dimitriadou 33
novel. We cannot but acknowledge the cinema’s debt to the novel’s text and illustrations and to other arts such as painting and theater: “Under this configuration, film’s tangible mothers, like visual arts and theater, are first displaced by the invisible visualities and unseen scenes of the paternal novel. Then the novel’s words, which conveyed these effects, are exiled as ‘uncinematic,’ leaving only a mystical and figurative father” (124). Therefore, as she concludes, the inheritance that the Victorian novel left to film was its invisible visualities and the novel’s montage, which consists of “blank spaces between words, paragraphs, and chapters” and proves that “film’s inheritance from the novel is thus one of absence rather than presence” (124).
The task of adapting a canonical novel like Great Expectations means that one is not only fully aware of the “uncinematic” elements of the novel (words, illustrations) but also of the “cinematic” elements. Turning a novel into a film requires the ability to deliterarize literature, dissolve the novel and interpret it in a particular way (Elliott 129).
This is the true nature of adaptation and for this reason literary cinema is frequently termed as “anti-cinema,” because it is considered to be hostile and antagonistic to the novel (Elliott
129). When adapting a novel, the question of fidelity always comes up in order to criticize the film either as a “good” or “bad” derivative. For most literary audiences an adaptation is viewed as translation of a particular novel and for a film to be characterized as successful it is necessary to be faithful to the novel (Elliott 127). Kamilla Elliott asks whether this is possible and claims that if this is the case then “adaptation is doomed to failure before it begins” (128).
For contemporary critics who study adaptation, like Julie Sanders and Linda
Hucheon, an adaptation is certainly not inferior to the original text. If an adaptation does not prove to be a commercial success, it is not because of the film’s supposed inferiority as Dimitriadou 34
a medium, but because of the failure to “deliterarize” or to “dehistoricize” the novel. In
Adaptation and Appropriation Julie Sanders argues that all adaptation is (re)-interpretation, as the author appropriates a particular story line or a character in the novel (19). As it becomes obvious from Lean’s film, in films certain things are added and others are taken out (such as the character of Orlick) because this is the main purpose of adapting. Linda
Hucheon also studies adaptations as adaptations, not as inferior derivatives of a classic novel, and rejects the “critical abuse” towards them (A Theory of Adaptation xiv).
In my view, if we consider not only David Lean’s Great Expectations but also all the rest of the films that followed in the twentieth and twenty-first century, adaptations cannot be entirely faithful. We have to admit that there are certain degrees of infidelity. It is not only the director and the scriptwriter who are adapting. The script functions as an instructive manual and can be interpreted by the actors in various ways. Furthermore, the casting, the location, the costumes and make-up, the cutting and the camera shots all shape a particular interpretation. For example, David Lean’s film interestingly opens with the novel, showing the first page of chapter 1 and an adult Pip reading the opening paragraph
(GE). This initial shot misleads the spectator by creating the illusion that the film is going to be a cinematic translation of the novel, but unlike most films that open and close with such images, Lean’s film does not end with a closing shot of the book. In conclusion, the following argument perfectly fits the film that I am going to examine: “This opening simultaneously credits and erases the novel on which the film purports to be based in much the same way that film history credits and erases the novel as a foundation for film more generally” (Elliott 130).
Dimitriadou 35
2.2 Miss Havisham in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946)
As Regina Barreca argues, in his Great Expectations “David Lean didn’t film
Dickens’s novel. He remade the novel into David Lean’s film” (39). If we consider the various changes in the plot, omissions and most importantly the alternative ending of the film, then it is certainly “a brighter fable than Dickens’s novel” (Marsh 215). Steven Organ writes in his David Lean Interviews that, when he was asked about what he thinks of adaptations in general and his own approach to adapting a classic novel, Lean said the following:
I think the thing is to not try to do a little bit of every scene in a novel,
because it’s going to end up a mess. Choose what you want to do in the
novel and do it proud. If necessary, cut characters. Don’t keep every
character and just take a sniff of each one. When we were going to do Great
Expectations, we thought that we were completely incapable of tackling
such a master as Dickens, and so we looked around and asked “Who really
is an expert at Dickens?”[...] I got the book and quite blatantly wrote down
the scenes that I thought would look wonderful on the screen. (72)
Lean’s discourse seems to echo Hucheon and Sanders’s theories on adaptation as a time- bound interpretation. Furthermore, since the film was released in a post-war society, the dominant atmosphere was celebratory and optimistic. But, although it could be misjudged in terms of fidelity, it must be noticed that after the war there was an urging need for the
English to rediscover their past and evaluate the cultural heritage that Dickens left. Amber
K. Regis and Deborah Wynne argue that “by adapting a classic and celebrating the past,
Great Expectations re-imagined the future and seemed to prophesy an escape from wartime austerity” (43). Moreover, they contextualize Lean’s film within the social conditions of the Dimitriadou 36
period, as the film “demonstrates that hallmark of modernity: a synthesis of old and new”
(43). When it comes to Miss Havisham though one cannot help but wonder, how is it possible for a jilted bride, an outsider who remains frozen and attached to the past to fit into this world? Lean does not simply adopt Dickens’s representation of Miss Havisham through gothic horror; as I will argue, by changing the end of the story he proves that “Miss
Havisham has no place in this progressive future society” (Regis and Wynne 43).
The role of Miss Havisham is memorably portrayed by Martita Hunt, who captures the despair of the jilted bride and portrays each gesture in a melodramatic manner. In an article written for The Dickens Magazine, Harmon Greenblatt describes how David Lean met Martita Hunt and chose her for, perhaps, the most challenging role of the film. Martita
Hunt formerly played the role of the jilted bride in Alec Guinness’s West End stage production of Great Expectations. Greenblatt writes that “Lean had said that if he had not seen the stage version, he would never have done the film” (8). Concerning the reception of her performance, Gene D. Phillips argues in Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David
Lean that Hunt did not receive an award for her outstanding portrayal of Miss Havisham – even though she deserved it – because she “was so eccentric in real life, it was assumed that she was playing herself when she enacted the role of the eccentric dowager” (121).
Additionally, as Barreca argues, the overall portrayal of Miss Havisham is “so replete with both conventional and subversive images of women” and it is as if Lean “took into account the complete catalogue of possible readings of the character and then created from them a character powerfully unlike any other” (39). I will therefore repeat once again the argument
I developed in chapter 1, that Miss Havisham appears to be too unreal, witch-like and manipulative, as if she sprung out of a ghost story or a fairy tale. Dimitriadou 37
Taking a close look to the film, it is obvious that Miss Havisham is associated “with candles, an unseen fire, and empty hearth, and her vanity table” (Barreca 40). The use of light in the film is very important and the juxtaposition of black/white images contributes to the creation of a gothic and sensationalist mood. When young Pip first encounters Miss
Havisham, the camera moves towards her direction and the spectator adopts Pip’s point of view (Lean, GE). The shots shifting from light to darkness have the following function in representing a horrifying figure of the jilted bride: “The effect of this close juxtaposition of images is to make Miss Havisham seem already damned in some genteel hell, full of cobwebs and old ribbons, or already on her funeral bier lit dimly by candles which offer no warmth” (Barreca 40). Moreover, in the scene where Miss Havisham is urging Pip to love
Estella in such a way as if she was cursing him, “she is framed against a bare, black, cold hearth, which acts as a kind of visual correlative to her heartless, cold, and bitter words”
(Barreca 40). The image of Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham bears all the qualities of the
Dickensian spinster. Her hair is white and messy, the bridal dress is withered and her tone is bitter and scornful (Lean, GE). Likewise, the room with the bridal decorations and the cake are displayed in dark tones, full of cobwebs and filth10. The themes of seclusion and madness reappear on screen, because “Lean’s film emphasizes her enclosed and trapped feeling as well as the sense that whatever Miss Havisham creates, she creates out of her own bile and waste” (Barreca 43).
Critics Amber K. Regis and Deborah Wynne focus on Miss Havisham’s gown in order to explain the state of being a ghostly spinster and an outsider to society. Not only
David Lean, but also contemporary film-makers11 use the withered bridal dress in order to
10 See Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 in Appendix, pages 76-77. 11 This is also the case for the other adaptations that I am going to examine. In chapter 3 I will return to the issue of how the directors of BBC’s Great Expectations of 2011 and 2012 use the bridal dress as a symbol. Dimitriadou 38
make certain statements; they use it as “a visual and material symbol of her resistance to modernity” and as a sign that Miss Havisham “invokes the pernicious dangers of nostalgia and is positioned as an outsider, superfluous to society” (43). In the novel and adaptations
Miss Havisham is preoccupied and obsessed with the past; she cannot move forward and forgive or forget, in other words she becomes a living relic of the past. Therefore, her gown signifies her being “anachronistic,” because it “lies outside the time and fashions belonging to both the film’s audience and its period setting” (Regis and Wynne 45). Miss Havisham’s death in the film resembles the way she dies in the novel. A burning coal falls accidentally on her dress and, as she is devoured by flames, Pip rushes into the room trying to save her; he uses the tablecloth to cover her body and lays her on the bride’s table (Lean, GE). It seems that it was important for Lean to dramatize her destruction in every detail and by the book, so that it would become clear that all the “material obstacles” and the “symbols of the forces of anti-progress and anti-modernity” disappeared (Regis and Wynne 54). Thus, in
Lean’s film the burning of the dress and Miss Havisham’s body releases Pip and Estella and opens up a bright future for the younger generations. However, the last scene leads the film to an unconventional end that is certainly not Dickensian; in the book the ending is not as optimistic as it is in Lean’s film, which does not leave any doubts for Pip and Estella getting together.
The idea for the alternative and more optimistic ending was proposed to Lean by his wife Kay Walsh (Phillips 118). Miss Havisham continues to haunt Pip and the house even in death. After her death Pip returns to Satis House and as he enters it hears voices from the past (Lean, GE). There he finds Estella who was, interestingly, jilted by Drummle and lives in the house deserted just like Miss Havisham (Lean, GE). Pip urges Estella to leave Satis
House, because “it’s a dead house” and “nothing can live here” (Lean, GE). For Lean Miss Dimitriadou 39
Havisham’s influence over Estella was so pervasive that she could not help but lead “a life of neurotic withdrawal” (Phillips 118). But as a rescuing prince, Pip turns to the haunting spirit of the evil witch and defies her: “I have come back Miss Havisham! I have come back to let in the sunlight!” (Lean, GE). Finally, he symbolically tears the curtains and lets
Estella see that in the mansion there is nothing but dust and decay. He rescues the princess and as they run out of Satis House, it is suggested that Pip and Estella will live happily ever after, as it happens in fairy tales.
The last shots of the film find Estella choosing Pip and freedom out in the daylight over Miss Havisham, darkness and the shadows of the past. But this ending does not simply allude to the post-war optimism. It makes an important statement about women’s position in society during the 1940s. We should keep in mind that “twentieth-century film audiences were even more conservative and demanding than nineteenth-century novel readers”
(Barreca 44). It was apparently unacceptable for a deeply conservative society to accept the fact that a woman would marry someone, divorce and then reunite with somebody else. If
Estella was jilted before getting married, then she remains a virgin. Therefore, Lean produces an ideal ending, in which “she comes to Pip broken-hearted but with everything else intact” (Barreca 44). Finally, it is implied that “a reading public nearly ninety years earlier than the late-1940s film audience was tolerant enough to accept Estella as Pip’s future wife despite the fact that she had been married, divorced, and widowed” (Barreca
44).
To conclude, Lean’s Great Expectations has been characterized as a successful adaptation and continues to be considered one of the best films on the novel ever made. It engages several artistic modes such as gothic horror, sensationalist suspense and romance and it even provides the audience with a surprising, yet welcoming ending. In his Dimitriadou 40
representation of Miss Havisham, Lean took into account not only the literary content, but also the social and cultural context of his age. Critics rightly praise his choice to end the story differently; if we contextualize the ending of the film within the social conditions of post-war England, then the heroically romantic ending could be interpreted in the following way: “The men returning after World War II to find women in their peacetime jobs needed to extend military rescue to a myth of domestic rescue, to tear down the blackout curtains, and lead women back out into freedom (though in reality, to put them back into the home)”
(Elliott 160). Either ending – the one that Dickens and the other that Lean provides – does not favor women as leading figures in society, and the spinster is feared and rejected in both cases. Yet, the witch-like figure of Miss Havisham does not die with Lean’s adaptation. It returns over and over again like a ghost in twentieth century films and, of course, in the latest twenty first century adaptations: BBC’s mini-series Great Expectations (2011) and the Mike Newell’s film Great Expectations (2012).
Dimitriadou 41
Chapter 3: Re-Imagining Miss Havisham in 21st Century
Adaptations
3.1 The Neo-Victorian Approach in Adapting the Victorian Novel
In their influential work Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First
Century, 1999–2009 Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn construct a broader definition for the term neo-Victorian: “To be part of the neo-Victorianism we discuss in this book, texts
(literary, filmic, audio/visual) must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians” (4). True, the term neo-Victorian does not only include historical fiction set in the nineteenth century,12 but also cinematic adaptations, works of art, interior and exterior decoration, fashion, etc. The purpose of any neo-Victorian work of art is to appreciate and revise the nineteenth century. According to the critics, this contemporary aesthetic movement goes beyond mere nostalgia for Victorian culture; Charlotte Boyce and Elodie Rousselot argue that this postmodern preoccupation with bringing an author such as Dickens “back to life”
“may be linked to contemporary culture’s broader concern with memory, memorials, and remembrance” (5). They conclude that “heritage is not history at all, but a version of the past made to best suit the needs of the present” (5). This is true especially when it comes to cinematic adaptations, as they are products of our own imagination and interpretation of a particular Victorian novel.
12 The genre started to flourish in the second half of the 20th century with the publication of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969). Some of the contemporary popular writers of Neo-Victorian fiction refer directly to Dickens’s novels, such as Peter Carey (Jack Maggs 1998), Sarah Waters (Fingersmith, 2002) and Dan Simmons (Drood, 2009). Dimitriadou 42
Cinematic adaptations of Victorian novels and television series are the easiest and most accessible way for the public to get to know the Victorians. As mentioned in chapter
2, during the first half of the twentieth century films such as David Lean’s Great
Expectations (1946) expressed nostalgia for the glorious past and evaluated the Victorians.
Kelly Boyd and Rohan McWilliam argue that in the postmodern era and after the 1980s scholars passed from the “Age of Evaluation” to the “Age of Representations” in their approach to Victorian studies (23). This means that the aim of contemporary scholars is not merely to evaluate the Victorians and the heritage they left, but rather to represent the
Victorian age through the lens of popular culture and society. Imagination determines representation and can therefore provide unlimited cinematic versions of the same novel, thus making contemporary adaptations extend beyond nostalgia. For this reason, adaptations act as “literary and cultural ghosts” and by echoing Victorian ideas and values they perform an “intertextual weaving with the present moment” and “exhibit a simultaneous recognition of and departure from that past” (Bowler and Cox 3). In
“Introduction to Adapting the Nineteenth Century: Revisiting, Revising and Rewriting the
Past”, Alexia L. Bowler and Jessica Cox explain how adaptations are constructed and place emphasis to their function as Neo-Victorian works of art:
These strategies of blending and blurring of the boundaries between discrete
works of fiction, along with their hyperreal and hyper-stylized visual forms,
bear the stamp of twentieth and twenty-first century film and popular
culture’s attraction to and adaptation of action and comic book heroes.
Moreover, these films also partake in the practices of interpolation,
intertextuality and hybridization that typifies postmodernism, gesturing
towards the “mash-up” practices heralded by the advent of new media. (7-8) Dimitriadou 43
Having watched adaptations of the previous century, but also recent ones based on
Dickens’s Great Expectations, I assume that this is probably what most directors have in mind when screening the novel.
Recent adaptations of Dickens’s novel are going to be examined through the prism of the neo-Victorian. Our literary and cultural heritage is surrounded by the figure of
Dickens, who remains one of the prominent Victorian writers. For this reason, as Cora
Kaplan explains, our returns to “the period and its literary forms” should be called “neo-
Dickensian,” rather than “neo-Victorian” (82). It is not an exaggeration to claim that
Dickens’s influence and overpowering figure in Victorian culture cast a big shadow over other Victorian writers. Kaplan rightly argues that “sometimes Dickens seems to hover over the neo-Victorian like an avuncular but reticent deity; at others, he is all too intrusive; transformed into a quasifictional character, he stalks his virtual world and makes guest appearances in our own” (81). Dickens is, therefore, reinvented in various ways through the neo-Victorian; the scope of Dickensian “rewritings” does not stop at adaptations, but includes reading groups, graphic novels, performances, storytelling and even digital versions of his works.13
When it comes to adapting a popular Victorian novel such as Dickens’s Great
Expectations, one has to consider the following questions: “What, now, does it mean to adapt the Victorians? And what are we adapting: the Victorians/Victorian text or the mediation they/it have already undergone in popular culture?” (Heilmann and Llewellyn
212). When a new film or television series comes out, one of the things that might happen is that the audience has already in mind previous adaptations of the same work. Dickens’s works have been adapted on screen numerous times over the 20th century and continue to
13 The website “Dickens 2012” is an example of the international collaboration to celebrate the bicentenary of Dickens’s birth by organizing various events in the UK. The celebrations included festivals, theatre performances, exhibitions, public readings and film showings. http://www.dickens2012.org/ Dimitriadou 44
arouse the interest of filmmakers. Therefore, it is true that “in the age of adaptation, what comes into play is not only the dialogue between new text and old but also the intertexts and interplays between different adaptations in their own right (Heilmann and Llewellyn
212). It is likely then that the past texts adapted today are palimpsests, texts that have been written and rewritten in popular culture. For this reason, the following section will examine how Miss Havisham is represented in two contemporary British productions, bearing in mind Martita Hunt’s version of the jilted spinster in David Lean’s film.
The approach to adaptations by theorists such as Julie Sanders and Linda Hucheon seems to be in agreement with the basic principles of the neo-Victorian. Through the multiple forms of appropriation, adaptations actually comment on the source text. Apart from that, they are “supplementing and complementing” the original text and create
“multiple interactions and a matrix of possibilities” (Sanders 160). A characteristic example that proves this statement could be found in David Lean’s film, in which the character of
Orlick has been removed. Later in this chapter I will give further evidence through references to the most recent adaptations of Great Expectations. In reference to the neo-
Victorian practices Sanders comments:
So the Victorian era proves in the end ripe for appropriation because it
throws into sharp relief many of the overriding concerns of the postmodern
era: questions of identity; of environmental and genetic conditioning;
repressed and oppressed modes of sexuality; criminality and violence; the
urban phenomenon; the operations of law and authority; science and
religion; the postcolonial legacies of the empire. In the rewriting of the
omniscient narrator of nineteenth-century fiction, often substituting for
him/her the unreliable narrator we have recognized as common to Dimitriadou 45
appropriative fiction, postmodern authors find a useful metafictional method
for reflecting on their own creative authorial impulses. (129)
In plain words, as the neo-Victorian rewrites the original, adapting Victorian texts is a simple attempt to familiarize the broader audience with the text. Nowadays, the Victorian novel can return in as many forms as possible and through various mediums.
In A Theory of Adaptation Linda Hutcheon defines the term “adaptation” as “an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works,” “a creative and an interpretive act of appropriation/salvaging” and “an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work” (8). If we relate this definition to the films discussed in this paper, then adaptations tell the same story over and over again only through a different perspective and therefore call for different interpretations each time. Furthermore, as supported by other critics, Hutcheon finds that we spectators “experience adaptations (as adaptations) as palimpsests through our memory of other works that resonate through repetition with variation” (8). For critics such as Hutcheon, watching various adaptations based on the same novel offers pleasure; this is probably why Dickens’s admirers, including myself, will always welcome new cinematic adaptations of his works. It is explained by Hutcheon as follows: “Part of this pleasure [...] comes simply from repetition with variation, from the comfort of ritual combined with the piquancy of surprise. Recognition and remembrance are part of the pleasure (and risk) of experiencing an adaptation; so too is change” (4).
To sum up, cinematic adaptations that appeared after the year 2000 exhibit an increasing interest to all things Victorian and pay homage especially to Dickens and the
1860s, as the particular decade represented “a decisive turn in terms of postmodern rethinkings of the Victorian novel and its deeper context of Victorian social and cultural values” (Sanders 128). It is not accidental that the novel which was chosen to be adapted in order to celebrate Dickens’s bicentenary was one of his most psychologically complex Dimitriadou 46
novels set in that period, Great Expectations. The neo-Victorian is the link between us and our nineteenth-century ancestors, the Victorians. For this reason, I will adopt Kelly Boyd and Rohan McWilliams’s view: “The Victorians are likely to continue to fascinate us because they created us. The ways in which they did this are complex and we are likely to continue finding new ways of understanding the Victorian past. Every time we think we understand the Victorians, a new work comes along to show how much more we have still to learn” (37).
3.2 Miss Havisham through BBC: Brian Kirk’s Great Expectations (2011) and Mike
Newell’s Great Expectations (2012)
In most adaptations of Great Expectations14 that have been produced so far, Miss
Havisham is perhaps the only character that seems to be too eccentric to be real and for this particular reason she cannot be presented realistically. She incarnates the worst nightmare of every Victorian lady: jilted on her wedding day, pitied and scorned, of no use to society and therefore secluded. In this chapter I will have to return to the basic argument of chapter
1 that Miss Havisham is represented as an evil witch that is falsely believed by Pip to be his fairy godmother. However, both in the book and the films she is presented as a man hater and demon-mother rotting in her lonely mansion. The way she is portrayed by Dickens in the book certainly influences 21st century films. Therefore, in contemporary adaptations this
Dickensian spinster embodies in her outward appearance qualities of the gothic and the
14 The abbreviation for both adaptations in the parenthetical references is GE. Dimitriadou 47
grotesque and in her attitude towards others – especially men – melodramatic excess and even hysteria, the stereotypical qualities of the lunatic woman.
Both the television series of BBC broadcasted during the Christmas holidays of
2011 and the film that followed in 2012 see the figure of Miss Havisham through gothic melodrama and sensationalism. They also take seriously into consideration 19th century conventions about the appearance and conduct of the spinster, which was based on theatricality and melodrama. This was the usual attitude towards women and their conduct in the Victorian period:
Women were frequently seen within the framework of melodrama. They
could be viewed as intrinsically good and requiring protection by men (as in
the virginal heroines of the stage) or alternatively as evil (particularly in the
form of the femme fatale, popular in the later nineteenth century). Shaped
around binary opposites, melodrama did not allow any moral complexity
(which is why the intelligentsia disliked it). Melodrama also colluded in the
Victorian tendency to label women as inherently hysterical and prone to
emotions they could not control. (Boyd and McWilliam 33-34)
Sudden outbursts, bitter cynicism and despair are the emotions that Miss Havisham expresses every time she appears in the book or on screen. In my view, the actresses that embody this character in the BBC television series and the 2012 film, Gillian Anderson and
Helena Bonham Carter respectively, successfully adapt Miss Havisham by combining the gothic look and the neurotic temper of the jilted spinster.
Acting the role of a deviant woman in a Dickensian adaptation was not something new for Gillian Anderson15. She acted the role of Lady Dedlock in BBC’s television series
15 See Fig. 3 in Appendix, page 78. Dimitriadou 48
Bleak House (2005), but as she stated later she enjoyed playing Miss Havisham more
“because she’s slightly mischievous and naughty and her dialogue is more poetic. And also,
Miss Havisham seems a lot more eccentric” (qtd. in Gordon 1). After watching several adaptations of Great Expectations on screen, I believe that she represented the jilted spinster a bit more hysteric and vulnerable than other actresses. In her own review16 of the series, Anderson explains in more detail why she decided to take the role: “I wanted to play
Miss Havisham because she’s an iconic character who pervades our world in various forms.
So many people have written about her or based other characters on her over many decades.” Furthermore, she admits that she was initially drawn to this role out of curiosity, but after reading the script she fell in love with Miss Havisham’s complexities and her deeply, “psychotically manipulative” conduct.
The biggest issue that was discussed among reviewers was the fact that both
Anderson and Carter’s interpretations of Miss Havisham were quite youthful. Although
Anderson has white hair and wears a withered, yellowish dress, “she looks spooked, not ancient, as Miss Havisham is usually portrayed” (Cutler 1). At the age of 43, Gillian
Anderson is the youngest actress to play the role (Osborn 2012). In the first episode of the series Miss Havisham tells Pip that she is “the ghost of a bride” but at the same time asks him: “I was a beauty once. Am I beautiful still?” and he reluctantly replies “Yes, miss”
(Kirk, GE). Beauty and youth are not concepts linked to the Dickensian spinster, who has always been introduced as old, wrinkled and loathsome of visage. Yet in this adaptation the spinster appears younger and nurtures Estella with her teachings that beauty is a destroyer, happiness is deception and love is death (Kirk, GE).
16 “Great Expectations: Falling in love with Miss Havisham”. From the BBC blog, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2011/12/great-expectations-gillian-anderson.shtml Dimitriadou 49
Helena Bonham Carter was also considered quite young at 45 to play Miss
Havisham. When the first pictures and the trailer of Mike Newell’s Great Expectations
(2012) were released, the main questions that were discussed among film critics concerning the role of Miss Havisham were the following: “Is she too young for the role? Or has she
‘goth’ what it takes? Is this the most glamorous ever Miss Havisham?” (Pulver 2011). As
Helena Bonham Carter was already known for her gothic style and the eccentric roles she took on,17 it was inevitable for the critics to have gothic/great expectations18. Moreover,
Carter had already played the role of the jilted bride in the past, as in 2005 she voiced the character of Emily in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and therefore the role of the Dickensian spinster served as “an uncanny return” (Regis and Wynne 55). However, this was not a role that she accepted without doubts and it was “like a slap in the face” (qtd. in Nikkhah
2012). In her review “Taking on Miss Havisham” she also admits that at first she was shocked to be offered the role, because she did not consider herself that old (Carter 2012).
Miss Havisham is one of Dickens’s most disturbing and unattractive women and her grotesque femininity is “a monstrous reminder of fading glamour” (Regis and Wynne 55).
Consequently, bringing this character into life through television and cinema was a great challenge for both actresses.
The visual representation of the spinster by both actresses shares more similarities than differences. The directors, Brian Kirk and Mike Newell, take into account the
Dickensian description of Miss Havisham and her surroundings, such as the dress, the rotten cake and the room with the bridal decorations. Through television and cinema, it is suggested that “Miss Havisham is a figure who lends herself to neo-Victorian interpretation
17 Among these roles were the evil witch Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter film series (2001-2011), the deadly Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and ), the Red Queen in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010).
18 See Fig. 4 in Appendix, page 79. Dimitriadou 50
because she embodies the idea of a visible commentary on the past” (Regis and Wynne 36).
Her dress, as it is described in the book, and also the costumes displayed on screen are an indication of her past and present condition. The costumes enabled Anderson and Carter to give new interpretations of the Dickensian spinster. For instance, Carter refers to the theme of gothic and fairytale imagery, as she explains:
It was real dress-up time, there was a lot of fairytale imagery, there’s
Rapunzel in there with her long veil, as the years go by the veil grows
longer. And she’s got all these stars in her hair, all the jewels with stars
which I thought could twinkle to show all her money. She’s often seen as a
fairy godmother, she appoints herself as a fairy godmother to Pip. And then
Cinderella too, in the book she was putting her shoes on when she heard the
news, so I played the whole part with one shoe on and one off. [...]
Everything was desiccated and so dry and that’s partially why she goes up in
flames so quickly at the end. There’s so much detail you don’t necessarily
see. We had actual animals in my veil, because of the decomposition.
(Carter 2012)
This description of the actual process of transformation takes us to the heart of re- constructing a Victorian character and representing her on screen. For critics Regis and
Wynne, the ragged wedding gown functions as a “visual rejection”; it stands for social status and a promise of union to a man (38). However, at a symbolic level, the once- luxurious dress, now withered and yellow, “replaces this traditional climactic moment with the image of a woman long past youth and perpetually signaling the failure of her wedding day” (38).
Miss Havisham’s real motives and vengeful agony are expressed mainly through her body and gestures. Apart from the obvious decayed and sickly appearance that Dimitriadou 51
characterizes the jilted spinster in every adaptation, this time she seems to be even more exaggerating in behaviour. For instance, Carter mentions in her review that she hunched and adopted an osteoporosis body posture so as to represent Miss Havisham even more decayed and grotesque (Carter 2012). If we look back to David Lean’s film and think in terms of the gothic melodrama conventions, Martita Hunt’s performance “immortalized the dignified otherness of Miss Havisham”, whereas Carter and Anderson’s treatment of the character aimed to “win the viewer’s identification with the spurned, lonely individual precisely through melodramatic physical acting” (Laird 29).
The interpretation of the spinster in the 2011 adaptation is actually based on the character’s psychological state and her traumas. Moreover, when it comes to speech, reviewers have noticed that the whispering, spacey voice Anderson gives to Miss Havisham contributes to her “ethereal” and fragile image (Cutler 1). Miss Havisham’s body in the
2011 adaptation is victimized and her fragile figure arouses pity: “her lips are desiccated and she claws her skin at moments of stress, while dark circles frame her eyes” (Osborn
2012). Her body does not become a feast for mice like the rotten cake, as described in the novel, but this time it becomes prey to her relatives:
Miss Havisham: “They are crows gathered round my corpse waiting to feast on me”
Pip: “But you are not dead miss”
Miss Havisham: “Am I not?” (Kirk, GE).
As it seems more emphasis is given on her being sickly, tortured and a “heartbroken mess”
(Osborn 2012). Miss Havisham expresses her heartbreak as follows: “The agony is exquisite, is it not? A broken heart! You think you will die. But you just keep living day after day after terrible day” (Kirk, GE). This caused reviewers to criticize her “for her frenzied hyperbolic enactment that included neurotic hand scratching, a falsetto voice, and
Gothic look” (Laird 29); and it actually reminded a reviewer of Lady Gaga’s shocking Dimitriadou 52
aesthetic (Craven 2012). In conclusion, I believe that Anderson’s acting alludes to the concept of the hystericized body, which is an interesting interpretation of Miss Havisham’s state if we consider that hysteria was a disorder associated to lunatic women in the 19th century19.
On the other hand, Helena Bonham Carter appears as a more vicious and bitchy
Miss Havisham in terms of speech. She is pretty close to that woman called the “witch of the place” in Dickens’s novel than Gillian Anderson, who represents a less aggressive version of the spinster. In the film she can be seen looking angry and tortured, as the wealthy heiress trapped in the past. She mocks and degrades the Pockets, or “the vultures”, and at times bursts in hysterical laughter (Newell, GE). One of the most important features of the film is that it also represents important scenes of Miss Havisham’s past. While
Herbert is narrating her story to Pip, the spectator is watching Miss Havisham as a young woman dressing for her wedding, ready to wear her shoe and Magwitch delivering
Compeyson’s letter (Newell, GE). We also get a glimpse of her hysterical reaction as she reads the letter, dismisses everyone invited and locks herself in the mansion (Newell, GE).
This is the first time that an adaptation of Dickens’s Great Expectations provides more details about Miss Havisham’s past and the sensationalist background of the novel. But what I consider a crucial point in the film is the final encounter she has with Pip, moments before her death. Miss Havisham explains that her initial motives in adopting Estella were kind and pure: “I just wanted a little girl to love and to rear, to save from my fate. [...] Pip believe me when she first came to me I just meant to save her from misery like my own.
But as she grew more beautiful, I gradually did worse. And with my praises and my jewels and my teachings, I stole her heart away and put ice in its place” (Newell, GE). The film
19 See Fig. 5 in Appendix, page 80. Dimitriadou 53
provides Miss Havisham with a last attempt to redeem herself in the eyes of Pip and ask for forgiveness just before her death.
In every adaptation of the novel that I have examined so far, the scene of Miss
Havisham’s death is the most visually dynamic and spectacular moment. Nevertheless, there are crucial differences between the way Miss Havisham dies in the novel and in the adaptations, and between the ways each adaptation separately represents this scene.
Whereas in the book she is running towards Pip shrieking in flames, in BBC’s television series Miss Havisham’s death is not caused by accident; she deliberately puts fire on her dress by burning Compeyson’s letter and throwing it on her body20 (Kirk, GE). Before committing suicide, she asks Pip to forgive her, though not as wholeheartedly as expected:
“I’ve hurt you. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to hurt everybody. You forgive me? Forgive me!” (Kirk, GE). After his reply “I forgive you, Miss Havisham,” he leaves the room and she is left alone; then she puts on her veil and tiara, takes in her arms the withered flowers and Compeyson’s letters and sets herself on fire (Kirk, GE). Surprisingly, even though flames start covering her body, she does not scream or run, but remains standing and simply leaves a sigh before she is entirely covered by fire (Kirk, GE). This is hardly convincing as death by fire – obviously not excruciating as it is always meant to be. Pip is unable to help, as he only watches from a distance and rushes to save her, but by the time he gets in the bride’s room she is already dead (Kirk, GE).
Miss Havisham’s death as represented by Helena Bonham Carter is a bit more melodramatic and also includes elements of horror. Mike Newell follows the scene described in the book and he also seems to refer back to David Lean’s film. After having explained to Pip why she adopted Estella and how she became responsible for his misery,
20 See Fig. 6 in Appendix, page 81. Dimitriadou 54
Miss Havisham begs for his forgiveness: “Pip are you very unhappy? Do you hate me much? I know you must hate me, but if you can ever bear to forgive me...” (Newell, GE). It is important to notice here that he does not answer, or does not have the time to answer, as at the moment she rises and walks towards him, a lighted candle falls on her dress and she immediately catches on fire (Newell, GE). This time Miss Havisham screams in terror and pain, she is running in flames and while Pip uses the table cloth and curtains to put off the fire, she falls down (Newell, GE). An extra feature of the film is the burnt flesh that is exposed and functions as an element of gothic horror21. Her burnt skin is revealed under the cloth, covered with blood and ashes and her eyes are open with terror as she whispers to
Pip: “Forgive me! ... Forgive me! ... Forgive me!” (Newell, GE). It is the first time that
Miss Havisham’s death is represented in such a way and I can only assume that the film suggests that only through torment and agony she can deserve Pip’s forgiveness. Finally, bearing in mind both the BBC series and the 2012 film, I have the impression that Carter’s acting is much closer to horror than Anderson’s.
What I have attempted to do in this chapter was to bring the neo-Victorian theory together with the most recent adaptations of Dickens’s Great Expectations. In my view, the neo-Victorian has taken a similar approach to adaptation studies, since its basic aim is to
“adapt” the Victorian culture and represent it through contemporary works of art. Screen adaptations of popular Victorian literature are as old as film technology and, as the neo-
Victorian, exploit the idea of the Victorian period by re-imagining or making a pastiche of certain aspects of a novel. Brian Kirk’s Great Expectations (2011) and Mike Newell’s
Great Expectations (2012) were examined as direct references to Dickens’s novel.
However, as I will argue in the last chapter, even when films do not refer back to a single
21 See Fig. 7 in Appendix, page 82. Dimitriadou 55
Victorian text, they remain compatible with contemporary definitions of the neo-Victorian adaptation, because they appropriate the Victorian culture and borrow its basic principles.
This is what happens in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005), where the jilted bride is re- imagined through animation and parody.
Dimitriadou 56
Chapter 4: Beyond Adaptation
4.1 Tim Burton’s Gothic Fantasy: Representing the Victorian Culture through
Animation and Parody
Film adaptations based on particular works such as Dickens’s Great Expectations are not the only means through which we get a glimpse of Victorian culture and society.
Animated films such as Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride22 (2005) represent the Victorian era through humor and exaggeration and reveal Burton’s awareness of 19th-century English society. In his study Gothic Fantasy: The Films of Tim Burton, Edwin Page argues that
Burton’s films are not realistic in nature, but like fairy tales they communicate through symbolic imagery, as they speak of “things far deeper within our conscious and subconscious minds than most films would dare to delve” (7). His films are believed to be personal and reflect dark humor, as he combines elements of fairy tales, the gothic, parody and grotesque. Most importantly, Burton usually identifies himself with subordinate characters in horror films that exhibit grand melodramatic emotion and also finds himself
“identifying with the monsters rather than the heroes, as the monsters tended to show passion whereas the leads were relatively emotionless” (13). The monsters in his films symbolize the outsider and the alienated, a figure that defies society and is almost always exaggerated in representation. Significant examples from his numerous films include
Edward in Edward Scissorhands (1990), demonic Mrs. Lovett and the blood thirsty barber in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and the tragicomically grotesque jilted bride Emily in Corpse Bride (2005).
22 The abbreviation used in parenthetical references for Burton’s film is CB. Dimitriadou 57
The major issue that runs through the film that I am going to discuss in this chapter is that there are elements of the gothic, grotesque and melodrama functioning together in order to represent the Victorian era and Emily as the jilted bride in particular. The exploration of life and death, insanity and alienation are only some of the themes that his films communicate to us. What is more, Burton has an artistic style that successfully combines the comic and the terrifying aspect in one single film. In chapter 1, I referred to the term “grotesque” as a means through which the figure of Miss Havisham is represented in Dickens’s Great Expectations. Here, the grotesque is the most important artistic mode that Burton uses in order to create an imaginary world loosely based in the Victorian era.
As Phillip Thomson explains, “the grotesque is a game with the absurd, in the sense that the grotesque artist plays, half laughingly half horrified, with the deep absurdities of existence”
(18). Moreover, the grotesque can take either the form of the terrifying or the comic, and therefore the artist is called to abide by one of these subforms. In Burton’s case the grotesque is visually expressed through “the burlesque and the vulgarly funny,” the extravagant, but at the same time he insists on keeping the uncanny and supernatural mood in his films (Thomson 20).
Corpse Bride (2005) is one of Burton’s animated movies that is distinctively characterized by its dark humor; its purpose is not merely to assimilate the Victorian reality through animation, but to parody and subvert it. If cinematic adaptation is a
(re)interpretation of a narrative text, as examined in chapters 2 and 3, then animation is an equally powerful artistic mode that “should be seen as an art and a craft across multiple platforms and disciplines, and the tool by which art, science, culture and the human condition has been imagined and re-imagined” (Hardstaff and Wells 184). Animated films are one of the most creative forms of the 20th and 21st centuries and do not address only Dimitriadou 58
children; they can be entertaining and at the same time didactic for adult audiences too. In
Animation: Genre and Authorship, Paul Wells mentions some of the basic characteristics of animation and the process of creating an animated character. He acknowledges drawing as the starting point that leads to “photographing” a character and finally creating “lifelike movement” (4). Therefore, animation is a “craft-oriented process” because it requires the creativity of many different artists that draw, create puppets and use digital technologies in order to bring the characters into life (Wells 4).
Animation and parody frequently go side by side, especially in Tim Burton’s films.
If one considers the caricatured Victorian ladies and gentlemen in Corpse Bride and the
Victorian setting of the film then, clearly, the film’s aim is not to historicize or merely represent the past, but rather to criticize it. Linda Hucheon gives the following definition of parody in The Politics of Postmodernism: “Parody – often called ironic quotation, pastiche, appropriation, or intertextuality – is usually considered central to postmodernism, both by its detractors and its defenders” (93). Moreover, as already mentioned in previous chapters, like the neo-Victorian, postmodern parody is not nostalgic, but “instead, through a double process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference”
(93). In films and other visual arts, parody works its way through representation and as
Hucheon argues it “works to foreground the politics of representation” and stands as “a value-problematizing, denaturalizing form of acknowledging the history (and through irony, the politics) of representations” (94).
Therefore, I will argue that the postmodern parody of the Victorians and the gothic, melodramatic mood are key concepts of the film. In order to represent the heartbroken, jilted bride that interestingly reflects Miss Havisham, Burton mixes elements of gothic Dimitriadou 59
fairy-tales, melodrama and parody. His aim in Corpse Bride is to humorously subvert conventional Victorian beliefs about marriage and gender roles and to give an animated reflection of Miss Havisham.
4.2 The Tragicomically Grotesque: Reflections of Miss Havisham in Tim Burton’s
Corpse Bride (2005)
As I argued in the first chapter of my thesis, the creation of a fictional character – or cinematic in this case – relies heavily on the author’s personal experiences that feed his imagination. The literary background of Dickens’s Great Expectations was quite rich and included ghost stories, fairy tales and childhood memories. Likewise, Burton’s Corpse
Bride does not rely only on Victorian cultural stereotypes, such as the dichotomy of the virginal/wanton young woman, the hero and the villain, the pious and oppressive parents, but also on folklore. The creation of Emily was inspired by 19th -century Russian or Eastern
European folktales that had roughly the same plot with Burton’s film (Salisbury 17). Their origins, however, date back to 16th-century Jewish folktales such as “The Finger,” “The
Demon in the Tree,” and “The Other Side,” which are included in Howard Schwarz’s
Lilith’s Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural. The film and these stories share the basic elements of the plot, which is the following: A young man is travelling home in order to wed his fiancée. On his way home he is practicing his vows, just like Victor did in the film, and mistakenly places the wedding ring on a finger23. The finger belongs to a murdered girl, who was deceived by a villain that promised to marry her and eventually killed her.
Thus, she returns from the grave and insists that she is legally married to the young man.
23 See Fig. 8 in Appendix, page 83. Dimitriadou 60
He is then forced to go to the underworld with her in order to set things right, while his fiancée remains in the world of the living, waiting for him to return (Salisbury 18).
Burton certainly borrows several points both from folktales and the Victorian culture, but in the film the place and time are not explicitly mentioned. As Salisbury comments, “while the original folktale had been of Russian origin, Burton didn’t want to set Corpse Bride in any particular country” (20). As in most fairytales, in the film the time and place are unknown and the beginning of it recalls the clichés found in most folk tales: once upon a time in a distant land or kingdom. Still, as spectators we can clearly distinguish certain Victorian stereotypes and values, the conflict between the lower classes and the aristocracy, the wedding traditions and especially the place of unmarried women in society.
By refusing to set a date and place Burton keeps a distance from the formalities of the
Victorian period, so that he can easily parody and subvert them.
The Victorians were preoccupied with the idea of death, which is one of the major topics that are parodied in the film. Burton emphasizes the dichotomy of life and death by toying with Victorian stereotypes (Page 247). Whereas the Land of the Living is inspired by the Victorian era, the Land of the Dead is solely based on imagination. The film is about inversion and represents the Land of the Living as “a gray, dead place where the people are lifeless, hopeless and sad” whereas the Land of the Dead as a place “full of vivacious dead people with a lust for life and joy” (Salisbury 56). As we notice in the film, the environment, the buildings and all the surroundings in the world of the living reflect the dull inner world of the people.
However, the dead inhabitants of the underworld form a more humane society and, ironically, express more emotion than the living, as they are “free of the social boundaries they are subjected to life” (Page 246). Furthermore, their attitude towards death is based on humor and can be summarized in a few verses taken from the song “The Remains of the Dimitriadou 61
Day”: “Die, die, we all pass away. But don’t give a frown because it’s really okay. You might try and hide, you might try and pray, but we all end up the remains of the day”
(Burton, CB). Burton points out the differences of these two worlds also by using light and colour in particular ways. The colors in the world of the living are “muted” and they reinforce the zombie-like images of the people (Page 346). Although there is not a natural source of light in the underworld, the atmosphere is festive and supported by music and dance. Therefore, the way Burton creates this dreamlike world that comes into juxtaposition with the “real” world of the living reflects his unique aesthetics that combines the magical and the mysterious (Page 253).
Turning now to Emily, the main protagonist of the story, it is important to notice that, like her surroundings, she is also represented through the scope of “the carnivalesque- grotesque”; this term refers to the mixture of comedy and grotesque that defies the status quo and applies to her in terms of appearance (Weishaar 52). Apart from some moments of melancholy, Emily is cheerful and dances or sings with the rest of the corpses in the underworld. Her world celebrates life and joy over death and is “ruled by the carnival spirit through the logic of grotesque imagery that connects this film with the theme of death as rebirth” (Weishaar 65). Emily is portrayed through Burton’s gothic imagination, whose intention was to represent the corpse bride as “ghoulish but not gruesome, dead but beautiful” (Salisbury 37). Burton succeeds in representing her through paradox, as she is deadly blue, but her large eyes and long blue hair could be compared to those of a fairy tale princess24. Her body is half-decomposed and has some parts loosely fixed, but she is slim and fragile.
24 See Fig. 9 in Appendix, page 84. Dimitriadou 62
Emily’s appearance does not arouse pity and horror as Miss Havisham’s figure does in the cinematic adaptations of Great Expectations. Helena Bonham Carter provided the voice for Emily and in the most recent film of Great Expectations (2012) she plays the role of the heartbroken jilted bride. The difference however in voicing an animated character from physically representing a fictional one is huge. Carter explained the following regarding the character of Emily:
She’s eternally young, which is a nice paradox with being so aged in her
body. There’s a genuine innocence to her and purity and openness. I love
doing these things because in a way it’s pure, pure acting. It’s like radio. It’s
so nice to act something where it’s not dependent on what you look like, so
you completely create a character and you’re not limited by your physical
appearance. It’s very liberating that way. (Salisbury 82)
Apart from that, this time the jilted bride is a hilariously funny figure as she is paired with a funny maggot that lives inside her head. According to Page “this Emily/Maggot pairing shows Burton’s enjoyment of juxtaposing humor with horror” (254). Finally, one of the funniest moments that occur in the film is when the maggot pops Emily’s eye out and frequently interrupts her or acts as the voice of her conscience25 (Burton, CB).
Emily’s appearance shares some common features with that of Miss Havisham, but as I explained it is also different in other ways. Despite her tragic fate, Emily is not vengeful and bitter, and she does not manipulate others. However, the structure of Burton’s
Corpse Bride reveals, like Dickens’s Great Expectations, the idea that single women, jilted brides and spinsters were always the victims of a patriarchal society that has a villain on the top. Lord Barkis serves as Compeyson in this story because he took advantage of Emily,
25 See Fig. 10 in Appendix, page 85. Dimitriadou 63
murdered and robbed her; he even plans to kill Victoria after he has married her in order to collect the dowry that goes with the bride according to tradition. Emily’s story, which is narrated by the skeletons in “The Remains of the Day” song, depicts a beautiful and innocent girl who decides to run away with her beloved because her father disapproves of him (Burton, CB). She waits for him at the graveyard, however, he shows up only to kill her and steal all her money and jewels. When Emily awakens she is “dead as dust” with her jewels missing and her heart “bust,” so she makes a vow under the tree she was murdered to “wait for her true love to come set her free” (Burton, CB). Emily’s tragedy is that she is
“always waiting for someone to ask for her hand” until Victor comes and accidentally puts the ring on her finger (Burton, CB).
Unlike Miss Havisham Emily is nothing like a demonic figure. On the contrary, she is kind, caring and emotional. This becomes obvious from her reaction to the fact that she is
“the other woman” and her marriage with Victor was accidental, as he does not belong to the world of the dead (Burton, CB). When she finds out about Victoria, Emily reacts as a heartbroken but generous woman who realizes that Victor and Victoria are meant for each other. She does not plan revenge or turn mad like Miss Havisham. Furthermore, she is the one in the story that has friends, the maggot and the black widow spider, dreadful little creatures who appear to be as sensitive as Emily herself. As they sing in the song “Tears to
Shed,” Emily has a great personality and has nothing to be jealous of, but she is fully aware of her state and replies in melancholy: “If I touch a burning candle I can feel no pain. In the ice or in the sun it’s all the same. Yet I feel my heart is aching, though it doesn’t beat, it’s breaking. And the pain here that I feel, try and tell me it’s not real. I know that I am dead, yet it seems that I still have some tears to shed” (Burton, CB).
Though Emily shares with Miss Havisham a grotesque and carnivalesque physical appearance, she is represented entirely different in terms of social behaviour and character. Dimitriadou 64
She is more than sociable and kind to others, as explained above; Edwin Page rightly argues that the film is “ultimately a love story underpinned by sacrifice” (255). In the film,
Victor is prepared to give his life in order to keep his promise to Emily and marry her, despite his feelings for Victoria. Emily has sacrificed her own life for a man who never loved her and in the case of Victor she sacrifices her dreams of becoming a bride and a wife for a second time. Despite her misfortunes, Emily is not driven by revenge or hatred for men and her end has nothing in common with Miss Havisham’s tormenting death. As she realizes that Victor belongs to Victoria, she turns to Victor saying: “I was a bride. My dreams were taken from me. Now, I’ve stolen them from someone else. I love you Victor.
But you’re not mine” (Burton, CB). Emily thus sets him free of his vow, returns the wedding ring and offers her wedding bouquet to Victoria before leaving the church
(Burton, CB). Returning a wedding ring is certainly not something that a typical Victorian lady would do. The symbolic importance of a wedding ring for a woman of that period is that is stands as “a life-affirming means by which women may wield power, realize a kind of union with nature, and subvert the official patriarchies in the religious and political spheres” (Weishaar 66). This final act of returning power to Victor and refusing to trap his love for another woman, reveals Emily’s true character. The film ends with Emily stepping into the moonlight and transforming into hundreds of blue butterflies, finally finding peace.
To sum up, in most films the figure of the Victorian spinster or jilted bride is represented through the grotesque and the gothic, always arousing feelings of horror and pity. Even though we cannot examine Corpse Bride as an adaptation of Dickens’s Great
Expectations and Emily as a direct reference to Miss Havisham, it could be argued that she serves as a kind of reflection, an animated and parodied reflection of this fictional character. As it happens, in every adaptation of the classic Dickensian text, especially contemporary ones, the directors and actresses that represent the Victorian jilted bride aim Dimitriadou 65
to subvert certain Victorian stereotypes and represent them through a modern or postmodern view. My point is that in Corpse Bride Burton manages to reveal traditionally criticized issues about Victorian society and especially its attitude towards unmarried women. As it happens in Burton’s films, social criticism is represented through witty songs, dark humor and fairy-tale elements. In contrast to the rest of the films discussed in my thesis, I believe that in Corpse Bride Burton uses animation as a way of reflecting Miss
Havisham and this strategy helps us digest the film’s point about the fate of unmarried women in the Victorian period.
Dimitriadou 66
Epilogue
In this paper I attempted to answer the following questions: How was the character of Miss Havisham imagined in the first place and developed by Dickens in his stories and later in Great Expectations? Later on, in what aspects has the image of the jilted bride been changing throughout the years? And how do all these different Miss Havishams offer alternative, fresh readings of Dickens’s text? All the adaptations discussed represented a different reflection of Miss Havisham, as they were produced and influenced by 20th and
21st century popular cultures respectively. It has been argued that movies began during the
Victorian age; furthermore, Victorian literature provides us with a rich stock of stories about fictional characters caught up in gothic fantasy, mystery and sensationalism.
Focusing on Miss Havisham, I aimed to examine how the cinematic figure of the
Dickensian jilted bride progressed through film history. Whatever the medium – fiction or film – and period in history, Miss Havisham has always been viewed through the prism of gothic, sensationalism and melodrama. Finally, I also intended to show that Victorian stereotypes can inspire animated movies that do not necessarily function as immediate cinematic adaptations of novels; this is the main reason I chose to include an animated film in my thesis.
Considering the fiction and films that I discussed, despite the differences in plot, images and representation, Miss Havisham’s figure remains haunting and awesome either from a Victorian or neo-Victorian perspective. Starting from Dickens’s novel and the other texts discussed in chapter 1, Miss Havisham is portrayed as old and grotesque, heartbroken and thus bound to avenge all the male sex. Drawing examples from ghost stories, fairy tales Dimitriadou 67
and even a novel by one of Dickens’s contemporaries26 it is evident that there was a long prehistory before Miss Havisham’s appearance in Great Expectations. In David Lean’s version she remains old and heartbroken, though not as gruesome as described in the book.
Martita Hunt’s acting and the film in general were quite close to the book, but there were certainly moments where the mood of post-war England was projected; such a moment was the altered, optimistic ending of the film. Moving on to the most recent 21st-century adaptations, she is gothic and deviant, but definitely younger and more beautified than ever.
The versions of Miss Havisham by Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter offered a visually dynamic and hysterical representation that, in my opinion, appealed to contemporary audiences. Finally, imagining her beyond adaptation, a reflection of this jilted bride appeared in popular animation films, and this time she was represented through
Tim Burton’s dark humor. Emily could be characterized as a caricatured version of the jilted bride that subverts major Victorian preoccupations about death, single women and marriage. It is through the carnivalesque and the grotesque that she and her world are represented and laugh at Victorian stereotypes.
As for the theoretical scope of the paper, I considered film theory and the neo-
Victorian important in order to examine the films. Starting with Soviet filmmaker Sergei
Eisenstein, contemporary film theorists such as Kamilla Elliott, Linda Hucheon and Julie
Sanders have been interested in the interrelationship between Victorian literature and films.
Dickens’s novels continued to attract the interest of filmmakers and television producers even in the 21st century. But my main concern was not merely to compare and contrast the fictional and the cinematic representations of Miss Havisham. I believe that nowadays, classic Victorian novels that are adapted – for instance, by BBC television – encourage
26 Referring to Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. Dimitriadou 68
people to read the books and this makes them even more popular to re-adapt for the big screen. By adapting a well-known Victorian novel such as Dickens’s Great Expectations producers know that they will pull in viewers. Of course, cinema or television and the
Victorian novel are two entirely different media and there is no point in deciding which of the two can be termed “high art”. Eventually, for other adaptations that are to come, we should keep in mind that an adaptation is all about setting imagination free and re- constructing a text and fictional character.
Dimitriadou 69
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Appendix
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Fig. 1. Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham showing Pip the rotten cake. Source: David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946).
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Fig. 2. A more detailed view of the room with the bridal decorations. Source: David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946).
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Fig. 3. In this caption Gillian Anderson represents Miss Havisham minutes before her death, descending the stairs and holding Compeyson’s letters in her arms. Source: Brian Kirk’s Great Expectations (2011).
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Fig. 4. Helena Bonham Carter acting the role of Miss Havisham in her signature gothic style. Source: Mike Newell’s Great Expectations (2012).
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Fig. 5. Anderson’s Miss Havisham exhibits signs of hysteria, as she is constantly scratching the rash on her hand in moments of distress. Source: Brian Kirk’s Great Expectations (2011).
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Fig. 6. In BBC’s television series Miss Havisham commits suicide, which gives an entirely new reading of her death. Source: Brian Kirk’s Great Expectations (2011).
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Fig. 7. Carter’s acting of Miss Havisham’s death. Her eyes are wide open with terror, as her burned skin is exposed. Source: Mike Newell’s Great Expectations (2012).
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Fig. 8. The corpse bride grabbing Victor’s arm, right after he has placed the ring on her finger. Source: Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005).
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Fig. 9. Emily is beautiful even in death. In this caption her appearance resembles more that of a princess than that of a hideous corpse. Source: Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005).
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Fig. 10. The maggot popping out of Emily’s eye is one of the funniest moments in the film. Source: Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005).