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I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her.
John McLenan
22 June 1861
11.6 cm high by 11.5 cm wide (4 ½ by 4 ½ inches)
Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly V (22 June 1861): 398.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high.
I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm another thick coat. That I got them off, closed with her, threw her down, and got them over her; that I dragged the great cloth from the table for the same purpose, and with it dragged down the heap of rottenness in the midst, and all the ugly things that sheltered there; that we were on the ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that the closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free herself,—that this occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been her faded bridal dress. [Chapter XLIX, 398; for Plate 29 (facing p. 224 in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861]
Her smouldering resentment of the male gender after being jilted on the very day of her wedding all those years ago and her training Estella to be a breaker of hearts results in this peculiar nemesis. Having shut herself from the light of day for much of her life, Miss Havisham has had to wander the gloomy halls of shut-up Satis House carrying candles. And, indeed, whenever she is depicted in the various nineteenth-century narrative-pictorial sequences (by Stone, McLenan, Fraser, and Green), candles are lit somewhere in the backdrop of the scene. But in this representation of the sensational death of the reclusive heiress the candles which Furniss has prominently displayed (perhaps as foreshadowing) in such scenes as Estella tells Pip of her Engagement to Mr. Drummle in Chapter XLIV disappear in the smoke haze that engulfs her sitting-room. For clarity and dramatic effect Furniss has eliminated "the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire" (381) and made Miss Havisham's withered wedding-dress the kindling for the blaze.
After the early Miss Havisham plates in which she has the rooms and corridors of Satis House illuminated by candles because all the windows have remained curtained since she was jilted, she herself becomes a source of illumination, a human candle. As smoke billows (right) and flames engulf her skirts in this final Havisham illustration, we are still struck by the awkward rigidity of the figures: Miss Havisham's look of horror is utterly convincing, but her waist is not. Pip, on the other hand, is not a figure, but a statue. For the moment, he is paralyzed, incapable of acting.
Left: In Charles Dickens Library Edition, Harry Furniss depicts the sensational moment with Baroque energy: Pip Rescues Miss Havisham from the Fire (1910). Right: F. A. Fraser's sentimental realisation of Pip's comforting Miss Havisham as she confesses her guilt: I entreated her to rise (1876).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
_______. "'We Can Now See That the Days of Illustrated Novels Were Drawing to an End' — Not So." The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 3, pp. 6-7.
Barreca, Regina. "David Lean's Great Expectations." Dickens on Screen, ed. John Glavin. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2003. Pp. 39-44.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "Chapter 16, Marcus Stone." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980. Pp. 203-209.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vol. IV-V (24 November 1860 through 3 August 1861).
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Household Edition in 22 volumes. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Vol. XI.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 12 November 2021