Havisham House

When I was in highschool/college, a friend of mine and I came up with this brilliant plan for our old age: we would become eccentric old ladies, living together in a neglected manor, collecting oddities and recalling another age. We decided to name it our Havisham House, à la the cruel and tragic Miss Havisham of Great Expectations. Recently I ran across a picture that reminded me of her, hence this post. She is such a great and vivid character for calling to mind distinct and disturbing images. Although she is not really someone to emulate or truly admire, there is something so fascinating and enigmatic about her and all her ephemera (if I can call rotting wedding paraphernalia such). Ah, Miss Havisham, how oddly enticing is your insanity.

"I had heard of Miss Havisham up town - everybody for miles round had heard of Miss Havisham up town - as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion."
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“The wedding day was set and the preparations made, but the bridegroom did not appear. That was 25 years ago at twenty minutes till nine o’clock, and Miss Havisham has never seen the sun since.”

“I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped like the watch and the clock, a long time ago.”



"She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a Prayer-Book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.…I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow."
"I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn."
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"Also, when we played at cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of Estella's moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods were so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled what to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like, "Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!"


"And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?"






Listening to Looker