Miss Havisham — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Miss Havisham
Characters
What you need to know
How Dickens presents Miss Havisham, and how the character develops across the text: the jilted bride who stops time, uses Estella for revenge on men, and repents too late.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I want diversion, and I have done with men and women', 'Do you know what I touch here?', 'You can break his heart', 'It and I have worn away together', 'The day came, but not the bridegroom', 'Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?', 'Love her, love her, love her!', 'giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter', 'I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place', 'until I saw in you a looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I had done'.
Form: Satis House as a Gothic setting, and the stopped clocks, rotting wedding cake and yellowed dress as symbols of a life halted at the moment of betrayal.
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
