Miss Havisham In Great Expectations

Dickens including the scene where Miss Havisham dress catches fire is symbolic in that she has been wasting her life away, while her house falls to ruin around her. At this time she is finally feeling remorse in how she raised Estella, treated Pip and in wasting her life. She is begging forgiveness, seeking to be absolved and something so tragic happens to her is symbolic and ironic.

Pips vision of Miss Havisham hanging from a beam and going back to check on her is foreshadowing in what he will find. Miss Havisham surely would have died immediately if Pip didn’t return to save her. Miss Havisham also foresaw years earlier, her own lying on the table in the room, after the fire and the surgeon attended to her burns.

Pip does his best to ally her guilt, in that she is a shell of a person with no family that loves her. With Estella married and gone she has no one and is alone. There is nothing but time, for her life to think about what she has done to the people she cared about the most, if her
Wearing a dry rotted wedding dress could also have contributed to her catching fire, which itself is symbolic in that being left at the altar stopped time for her, so wasting away for years wearing the wedding dress could have caused a lit ember to burn the dress quickly.

Earlier in the story when Miss Havisham's family is allowed into her home, there is a fire lit, but Dickens states “there is more smoke than fire and seems to make the room colder rather than warmer”. This is symbolic of Miss Havisham, allowing her family into her house but is not warm to them. She is not welcoming them, but tolerating them. She doesn’t really want them to visit, and she accepts them on false pretense because they come on false pretence. The family doesn’t really care for her, but are only concerned about getting their hands on her