In the story Great Expectations there is not only one type of love, there are many different types and perspectives of love, all held by the many characters of the novel. Though there are many other themes in the novel, love seems to stand out more than other themes like money, hate, and revenge. Love is mentioned numerous times during the story in lots of different forms, including friendship, forgiveness, and compassion. Great Expectations is a story in which the characters all have their own views on love and all use the emotion of love in their own ways. .
Miss Havisham is a character who sees love quite differently than most due to her torrid past. She had been engaged and was to be married, but at the last second she was stood up and cheated by her fiancée. It is because of this heartbreak that she is bitter towards love and the male gender. Miss Havisham's explanation of love reveals this, "It is blind devotion, unquestioning self humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!- Miss Havisham becomes more understood when Herbert tells Pip all that he knows about her past, he says, " The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day .
came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote a letter (in which she received at twenty minutes to nine) at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell you, because I don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place to waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.""(Chap.22 Pg.180) By Miss Havisham stopping all the clocks and her being indoors all the time, it shows that she was very hurt by what happened and explains, to a certain extent, why she is so cold.
