Analysis Of Estella

The name Estella means ‘star’ - she is beautiful, but very distant and out of reach.

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Estella, like Pip, is an orphan and a victim. Both had surrogate mothers who thought they were doing the right things. Both are used by their surrogate parents — Estella by Miss Havisham and Pip by Magwitch — to extract revenge from society. Both share a somewhat passive approach to life that she alludes to when she says they are both unable to follow their own free path but must do the bidding of another. She is an honest character, not evil, and is what she was trained to be. She cannot love Pip or Miss Havisham because she was not taught love, and she says so quite honestly. The one time she responds to Pip and lets him kiss her is when he displays rare aggression and forcefulness in beating the Pale Young Gentleman. There is, deep within her, something that responds to emotional fury. That is the part that is changed and softened by the abuse Drummle hands her in their marriage.

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Pip was met by Estella at the gate of Satis House describing her as "the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed very proud."

‘Though she called me ‘boy’ so often, and with a carelessness that was far from complimentary, she was about of my own age.  She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.’

‘Miss Havisham …. Took up a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom andagainst her pretty brown hair.’

When asked by Miss Havisham what he thought of Estella, he whispered in her ear: ‘I think she is very proud …. very pretty …. very insulting.’

"I am serious’, said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow was smooth)."

"Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground.  She held it in one hand now."

After her marriage had ended, she was described slightly differently... 

"The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable majesty and its indescribable charms remained. Those attractions in it I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was the saddened, softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had never felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible hand."

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/arts/theatre/article841408.ece

Book reference: Dickens et al. 1992 - Great Expectations

Website reference: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/great-expectations/character-analysis/estella