Writing about Character
Dickens implies that both Louisa and Estella are incapable of expressing their true emotions due to their irregular upbringing and instead are presented as cold, cynical, monotonous characters.
In Great Expectations Estella is portrayed as a dark and bitter character who has been raised to undermine the notion of love and romance which apposes the class system during this period of time. Miss Havisham adopted Estella at 3 years of age and raised her in order to torment men and to ‘break their hearts’ after she was jilted at the alter by Compeyson and vowed that she wouldn't let history repeat itself with Estella. The reader is made aware that Miss Havisham believes this can be her second chance at life in order to compensate for her mistakes. Pip is used as the practice mechanism for Estella and through deliberately projecting her cruelty and coldness upon him she somewhow miraculously manages to win Pip’s deepest love:
‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,’ said
Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no —sympathy—sentiment— nonsense.’'
Estella soon recognises the person Miss Havisham has constructed her to be and warns Pip of what she is capable of. Although we are informed that Estella can never love or display affection towards another person, her statement to Pip could be interpreted as a contradiction as she feels it is necessary to notify Pip to perhaps spare his feelings.
In comparison to Estella, Lousia from Hard Times is also portrayed as an inhospitable, calculated, unfeeling character. Louisa’s education is the root problem of which prevented her from developing traits such as sensitivity and compassion. An example to illustrate this point would be when her father
(Gradgrind) tries to assure her that marrying Bounderby would be the rational thing to do and as he does this, Louisa is gazing out of the window at the factory chimneys:
“There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke.
Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out.”

Louisa is unable to express her discombobulated feelings that are hidden under her sturdy exterior and is only able to observe and declare facts about the factory and the area surrounding. However her remark about the smoke and fire suggests that she knows herself that she is incapable of emotions and is aware of her dull repetitive nature which is perhaps suffocating her, leaving her exhausted to the point where she could explode with anger and frustration due to not being able to experience the emotions of love and passion.
Both characters are very secretive in having the tendency to keep their deepest feelings hidden within and are both replications of their parents in the sense that they are ineligible of infatuation and emotion but instead are capable of analytical and systematical forms. However both characters are aware of their faults and are resentful that they can never experience such feelings due to factors outwith their control and can both never live their lives fully and contently.
Characterisation of the control that both Mrs Sparsit and Miss Havisham have over characters in their individual novels, Great Expectations and
Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
Mrs. Spa rsit, in Hard Times, is Bounderby’s housekeeper who arguably, has severe control over his life. She was born into both money and a high brow family which allows the influence of control to play in her life as she grew up surrounded by this. When Bounderby’s marragie happens to Lousia, we see
Mrs. Sparsit’s control over him as she takes matters into her own hands by looking for any opportunity to bring Louisa down. Mrs. Sparsit’s ambiguous role in the house causes a lot of problems as it allows both her and
Bounderby to fall under the false pretences of what her role actually is. She demonstrates herself to be both wife-like and loyal to the work that she is doing within her house. However she is portrayed to also be a servent of
Bounderby, as she is merely the housekeeper. When Bounderby marries
Louisa, Mrs. Spasit acts drastically in order to keep control of Bounderby and does so by keeping control of what her role is in his life, by making it her mission to undermine and destory the marriage and to catch Louisa in the act of adultery. As an individual, Mrs. Sparsit comes across as scheming and scorning to all characters in the novel as at the beginning she despises the man she comes to wish to marry.
Miss Havisham keeps control of character Estella by influencing her emotions and the way she outlooks life throughout the whole entire novel. By doing this, she keeps control of the romantic aspects of her life such as Estella’s relationship with Pip. Due to her own failed marriage, Miss Havisham takes control of the relationship and the feelings that Pip and Estella have for each

other by stopping their relationship from blossoming into something that is even more. By trapping Estella in Satis House, she is segregated away from the community and the lives of others, and ultimately allows Estella to become a reflection of Miss Havisham’s character. When confronting Pip, Miss
Havisham gives the perfect representation of her feelings on love:
"I'll tell you what real love it. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against you and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter –as I did!"
With this we are able to comply with the fact that Miss Havisham has ultimately robbed Estella of the ability to love by forcing her to entrap Pip and break his heart. She does this for practice as we see that she does not want
Estella to be hurt the way that she had been before by other people. We see that, through the novel, by controlling Estella, Miss Havisham is portrayed as a manipulative and selfish character in terms of love and caring, as she ultimately controls the relationship that Estella has with any man that could come close to loving her. Even though she took Estella into her home, she doomed her into forever having the outlook that she does, and also made her into a closed off and ‘too-herself’ person so that Estella, similar to Miss.
Havisham, is unable to let anyone else into her life.
Writing About Character
As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations is a novel that focuses on the development and growth of the central protagonist Philip Pirrip, most commonly known to friends and family as Pip. Throughout this novel Pip is both the narrator of the novel as well as the protagonist which allows the reader to understand fully the development he goes through as a character.
As a result of this narration the reader is capable of understanding to a great extent both the occurrences of the novel and the changes that Pip goes through throughout the novel. In contrast, the narration throughout Hard
Times allows for a different portrayal of Louisa contrast to Pip. Louisa is taken through development as well from a reserved young lady to women of her own imagination. The qualities in both Pip and Louisa aid their characterisation to further enhance the readers understanding of them as characters and at times as relatable human beings.
Two notable traits of Pip throughout the novel that aid his development are his desire for love and self improvement It is both of these traits that lead to his eventual downfall of debts that is eventually turned into a point of realisation.

Upon his realisation he does not think of the effects that his changes has had on other characters such as Joe but instead focuses on himself.
“Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I had.”
Through the narration of an older and maturer Pip, this illustrates to the reader the selfishness of Pip. Although the reader feels a sens of sympathy for him this is overuled by his concern for his own wellbeign and not thoughts of those that he has harmed through his jounrey. His sense of selfishness is an aspect of life that readers are personally accustomed with making Pip relatable to those that are also selfish and to those who are aware of selfish people around them.
Similarly Louisa of Hard Tiems can be portrayed as a silent, cold and seemingly unfeeling female character at times of the novels which reflects on a sense of a uncaring attitude to others, similar to Pip. This can be conveyed through her unresponisve manners to particular questions.
“There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke.
Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out.”
When she is uable to convey her boisterous feelinghs that lie beneath her monotonous behaviour towards everyone around her, she is only capable of stating the facts around her, something she has grown up with. Yet this fact that she states, by analogy reflects upon her own emotions that she represses within her. Her repression of her own emotions is an aspect that the majority of readers are accustomed too. It is a common occurance in life to restrict yourself from revealing feelings and thus this makes Louisa a relatable character to those that read of her.