Great Expectations; An Introduction

With our first semester over in the first year, we have been given a new brief to start a project concerning ‘Styling for Stage, Screen and Television’. Having finished my previous work earlier than I expected, I started to look into the next project before we’d been properly been introduced to it and my first reaction upon reading the two simple phrases “Charles Dickens” and “Great Expectations” was simply…

Hopefully this visualisation should give the impression I was excited. Unfortunately, I couldn’t determine was the exactly outcome was from the brief and looked forwards to starting the lessons so I could learn what we working towards, which, having now had the brief intro, is to create our own Ms Havisham and Estella. This has only increased my excitement towards the project and I cannot wait to create my final look, however, research into getting the look right is my first priority as I want to achieve the best and most accurate interpretation possible.

To start off I decided to read the plot summary of ‘Great Expectations’ on SparkNotes (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/greatex/summary.html) to gather my first overall impression of the story, I did some work on the story back in secondary school but remember very little about it which is made very misleading by my excitement.

Upon reading the beginning of the summary all of the events seem very random and unconnected, however, as I continued to read Dickens’ has very ingenuously connected all together. The seemingly random occurrence at the start of the story with the escaped convict comes in the play much later in Pip’s life when this man he showed so much generosity towards returns the favour which he shows to be his doing even later in the plot.

However, to focus, I reread the plot to gather my very first opinion of Ms Havisham and Estella.

Ms Havisham seems suck, unable to move on from a certain point in time; "... she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she does and keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time." This quote shows this by pointing out the consistent time kept on the clocks and her inability to change out of her wedding dress. She comes across as very ill mentally and twisted, raising Pip’s hopes just to dash them by putting him down where he used to reside. As the summary continues, it does however show her to be remorseful and regret all she did to him, begging for forgiveness constantly. What I have drawn from this is that Ms Havisham is sick; both in appearance and mind. She gives the impression she no longer cares for herself and has withered in her wedding dress, a key element to her appearance.

I drew this regarding my initial impression of Ms Havisham from the summary, being withered and cruel yet sad, I will develop from this look as I actually read the story and looking into other artists interpretations of her.

To introduce Estella in ye summary they simply put: "... beautiful young girl named Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously." So I instantly viewed her to be uncaring and  stubborn. Though beautiful she’d have a very stern and judging expression towards anyone approaching her, other then perhaps Ms Havisham who was training her to be so. Yet later in the plot she has a complete change in personality due to her abusive marriage, showing her to have matured and realised all her mistakes.

This drawing depicts her as I see her appearing during ost of the story, a beautiful but cold figure whom Pip falls desperately in love with. Once again, this is only my first impression and I will develop upon this with more research.