Why Estella didnt married Pip - Great Expectations (1999) Discussion

[–] 18 years ago

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Because Miss Havisham was so cold and against men, and she raised Estella, she drove her mindset into Estella. So, she grew up completely incapable of loving anyone, and although she cared for Pip deeply, she knew she could never love him, and knew that they could never be together.

.:Every song ends. Is that any reason not to enjoy the music?:.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] TreasureHunterGirl 17 years ago

I fail to see how being British makes a film hard to follow, however I will answer your question.
For starters it helps if you have read the book but we won't get into that right now.
Estella married Drummle instead of Pip because she didn't love or even like Drummle and she did like maybe even love Pip.
You see she knew that because of her unbringing she was incapable of love so she thought that it was kinder to Pip to not get him a false idea; ie that she loved him. It's complicated and much better explained by Dickens than me.
After her marriage with Drummle is over Estella comes out a different person and although she is scared of loving Pip she finally can (The fact that Miss Havisham is now out of the picture helps too), the ending in this adaptation is different to the ending of the book so the message is clearer in the book.
I hope that has helped your understanding of this British film.

"I mean, if we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something." - Westley

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[–] Bethie513 17 years ago

In the book it has two endings, I guess you can choose which one is better. But I believe in the one ending they (Pip & Estella) leave Mrs.Havisham's old property (the house is gone... I think) together. I guess you are soppose to imagine what happens to them next weather it is them getting married, or just becomming friends. But, I am really sorry if this is wrong, but my English teacher made us read the beginning of the book, to chapter 19, then she made us skipped the middle until the 58th chapter, so I am so totally confuesed, that its not even funny! May I also add that we are only sophmores, and no one understood the book!! Great Expectations was soppose to been read when we were Seniors, but she made us read it now... why?... I donno... But maybe someone can fill me in on the middle??

All my life people have told me I dont fit in, maybe I've just been in the wrong place.

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[–] TreasureHunterGirl 17 years ago

Why don't you just read the middle of the book or watch the movie.

"I mean, if we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something." - Westley

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[–] abukhadijah 17 years ago

Before writing the scene in which Pip finds Estella in the garden and sees “no shadow of another parting from her,” Dickens wrote another, less romantic ending to the book. In this version, Pip hears that, after Drummle’s death, Estella married a country doctor in Shropshire. Walking through London one day with Joe and Biddy’s son, Pip runs into Estella and they have a very brief meeting and shake hands. Though they do not discuss the past, Pip says he could see that “suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.”
Dickens changed this ending at the suggestion of a friend, the novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton. He seems to have been motivated, at least in part, by the desire to please his reading public with a happy ending. Some critics have felt that the original ending of Great Expectations is more true to the tone of the novel, that the process of Pip’s redemption as a character is exactly the process that would make his continued love for Estella impossible. Others have felt that the original ending is too harsh, that their common past has destined Pip and Estella for one another, and that the main story of the novel is the story of their mutual development toward the conditions in which their love can be realized.
There is no clear historical reason to favor one of these endings over the other. Dickens stuck with the final version through every subsequent edition of the novel, but the original ending, changed only through outside influence, was Dickens’s first sense of how the story ought to end. Though the romantic ending remains the “official” ending of the book, each reader of Great Expectations may interpret the novel for him- or herself and decide which ending best fits his or her own understanding of the story.

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[–] mkj6080 15 years ago

Estella could not marry Pip at the end because she is only separated not divorced from Drummle. Divorce was next to impossible in the Victorian age.

'I am a man. I claim the right of expressing my feelings.'

Mr. Thornton from North and South.

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[–] Flippitygibbit 14 years ago

I have just watched this version on DVD, after finally getting around to reading the book, and I can understand the OP's confusion! It was as if the screenwriter wanted to build on Dickens' ambiguous ending, by giving Pip and Estella their Happy Ever After, but couldn't bring themselves to contradict the original so blatantly. So Estella inherits and restores Satis House, instead of finding it demolished ten years later, and Pip comes to her and forces her to finally crack and show some emotion; she cries, they hug, he kisses her ... But then both realise that this is not what Dickens' intended, and Estella gives some weak line like, 'We can't do this!' I thought it was very mixed-up - either ignore the original and have them finally find love, or stick to the book, and have the (widowed) Estella still behaving coldly towards Pip, even though she has changed ('broken into a better shape') and he is still in love with her.

(Excellent signature, btw - I'm re-reading North and South at the moment, and love the series! Now that is how to make an adaptation!)

"Tony, if you talk that rubbish, I shall be forced to punch your head" - Lord Tony's Wife, Orczy

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