Miss Havisham was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby; and her father gave her everything she wanted. Mr.Havisham was rich and very proud. So was his daughter. She was not his only child; she had a half-brother. Her father had married again. He married his second wife secretly, and in the course of the time she died. When she was dead, he told his daughter what he had done, and then the son became a part of the family. As the son grew to be a young man, he became wild and altogether bad. Finally his father cut him off; but he regretted this when he was dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham. He wasted his money and got very much into debt. Then a man appeared on the scene who appeared to fall in love with Miss Havisham. He pursued her closely, and she loved him deeply. He took advantage of her affection and got great sums of money from her. Together they decided to marry. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding guests were invited. The day came but not the husband-to-be. He wrote a letter which she received, when she was dressing for her marriage, at twenty minutes to nine, at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she left everything in the house untouched, and she has never since looked upon the light of day. She named herself of her lost husband's surname; she became Ms.Dinsmoor(Anne Bancroft). On the other hand, Mr.Dinsmoor had become a criminal and fraudulently altered his name as Arthur Lustig(Robert De Niro).
The name Dinsmoor meant for Miss Havisham as the revenge of a loyal lover, a virgin and abandoned lady; revenge from all mankind. Finn(Ethan Hawke) becomes the one and the only palm of her revenge, by courtesy of Estella(Gwyneth Paltrow) becoming her princess holding her revenge sword. Ms.Dinsmoor makes use of Finn to satisfy her ego that a mankind shall love a lady, and the lady shall render to his love with cruelty. As a clue, Ms.Dinsmoor says to Finn, while Finn is drawing a portrait of Estella: "Eventhough she breaks your heart, you'll still pursue her. Ain't love grand?" In fact, Estella had become the one and the only love of Finn's life; and also Estella had loved him secretly, yet never been able to show him. Not from the movie but in the novel, Biddy, a friend of Finn gives him an opinion of hers: "That's a pity! Do you want to be a gentlemen to annoy her or to win her over? Because if it is to annoy her, that might be better done by caring nothing for her words. Yet if it is to win her over, I should think she was not worth winning over." At that moment, Finn realizes for the first time that he has very deep feelings for Estella. After a short period of time, the period of the infantry years of Finn's and Estella's relationship; Ms.Dinsmoor tells Finn with a great deal of joy that Estella has gone to Europe for schooling. They coincide with each other after 8 years, according to the movie, in New York City. In the novel Charles Dickens expresses their meeting by chance from Finn's point of view with these words: "The lady, whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked proudly at me; and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's eyes. But she was so much changed, so much more beatiful, so much more womanly; and had advanced so wonderfully that I seemed not to have improved at all. Before her I felt like the rough and common boy again. She gave me her hand. I managed to say something about the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it for a long long time." They fell in love again. But soon Estella married to someone else. Someone more rich, someone more gentlemen; yet someone without love.
According to the novel, after 11 years from their last seeing each other, after the death of Ms.Dinsmoor Finn sees an imaginary figure of a woman moving towards him, and as he draws nearer he cries out:
"Estella!"
In the movie, Finn sees an imaginary figure of a pretty girl, who is exactly look like Estella's childhood but in a modern dress, at the exact same location where he saw Estella for the first time. Then Finn follows her inside Ms.Dinsmoor's house and finds Estella back, and also finds out that the little girl he saw is Estella's daughter. In the novel Charles Dickens expresses their reunion, from Finn's point of view, with these words:
"In the evening I went out to look at Miss Havisham's old house, for Estella's sake. I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, that she had been separated from her husband, who had treated her with great cruelty and meanness; and I had heard of his death. There was no house now, no brewery, no building; only the wall of the old garden. The figure of a woman was moving towards me, and as I drew nearer I cried out: '-Estella!
-I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me.'
The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable loveliness remained. We sat down on a bench that was near and I said, 'After so many years, it is strange that we should thus meet again,Estella, here where our first meeting was! Do you often come back?' 'No,' she said. Then, after a silence, she added: 'The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not given up. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I have kept this.'
'I have often thought of you,' said Estella. 'You have always held your place in my heart.' I answered. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place, and as I looked across the fields in the calm evening light, I saw no shadow of another parting."
