Despite the movies’ depictions of Miss Havisham as an old woman, in the novel it is revealed that she is in her forties, perhaps even in her thirties, when Pip first meets her. Her hair is white and her body is shrunken, which accounts for the mistaken assumption that she is elderly. The wedding dress she wears is yellowing with age and is falling into rags. She wears only one slipper, since that is the state she was in when she learned of her fiance’s desertion of her, with the other one either in her hand or nearby on her dressing table. Her haunted expression blends with her cruelty as she maliciously encourages Estella to break Pip’s heart. She goes into only a few rooms in the upper floor of Satis House; everyone who visits (Pip, the Pocket family) must meet her up there.
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