Estella is the adoptive daughter of Miss Havisham. We meet her at the beginning of the novel on Pip's first visit to Satis House. She is cold, mean child a few years senior to Pip. Pip Grows fond of Estella and remarks on her beauty many times. Although throughout the book, as the pair grow Estella often treats Pip with disinterest and reminds him frequently that she has no heart and is incapable of love. We discover that Estella has been raised by Miss Havisham as an act of revenge on men, by teaching her to stifle emotion and empathy to break the hearts of young men, most notably Pips. She Marries Bentley Drummle, Pip's enemy, purely for money. Her marriage to Drummle is an unhappy one and it is suggested that drummle is abusive towards Estella. The marriage eventually ends when Drummle is killed and in the last chapter of the book Estella has become somewhat of an independent woman and tells Pip “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.”
Which part of the book do I want to represent?
My depiction of Miss Havisham was centred around our first encounters with her in the novel and the descriptions Pip gives us. I would like to do the same with Estella and focus on representing her as the youthful girl raised and manipulated by Miss Havisham.
In Pips first encounters with Estella, he is far less descriptive towards her than Miss Havisham which I actually consider to be quite a good thing as it allows me a little more freedom to play around with concepts and ideas of what she could have looked like.
“…the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed very proud…”
From this we can gather that Estella is traditionally beautiful, therefore she would possess natural features that coincide with victorian norms of Beauty i.e a pale complexion, a youthful blush
The fact that Pip describes her as 'proud' suggests that her appearance has an air of perfection to it, she wouldn't be seen looking anything less than perfect.
“…being a girl and self possessed”
The use of the term 'Posessed' again reiterates this idea that estella is quite proud and aware of her beauty, making it all the more obvious to Pip.
“..her fair young bosom…her pretty brown hair…”
Pip remarks on her bosom, which suggests to the audience that she has reached the stage of puberty and has a womanly figure. One of the only specific comments Dickens makes about Estella's appearance is the fact her hair is brown.
My understanding of Estella's appearance is that she is a typical beauty of that period, therefore she would adopt traditional conventions of victorian beauty which from my research we know to be somewhat like a porcelain doll including large dark eyes, rose bud lips, subtle rouge and a pale complexioned face.
I find the idea of having Estella looking like a doll to be very intriguing due to the fact that it coincides with her character traits very well - she's cold and hard towards Pip, she describes herself as having no heart and incapable of warmth, she very much resigned to a life of loneliness.
It is this reason that I have decided to look at ways of representing young estella as a cold china doll, a toy of Miss Havisham's created to entrap the hearts of men and break them.
Here's the quote I found during my initial research back in january that's spurred this concept.
Further in to Fenja Gunn's 'The Artificial Face' the author states that the 'Victorian Image of Beauty' was reminiscent of the 'innocent face of a China doll' with a 'rosebud mouth, dimpled cheeks' and 'small neat features'.
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