... opening enigma is usually a murder, or a theft. The event throws the world into a paranoid state of suspicion; the reader and the protagonist can no longer trust anyone because signs--people, objects, words--no longer have the obvious meaning they had before the event. But the story must move inevitably towards closure, which in the realist novel involves some dissolution or resolution ... the novel we learn that Estella is really an upstart and that she has been trained to be proud and disdainful in order to revenge Miss Havisham on the opposite sex. Miss Havisham's sight of Pip's mise...

• Word Count: 3498
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate