I am a big fan of the work of Charles Dickens. Few writers of his era, or ours for that matter, wrote with such versatility. He could write satire, drama, and murder mysteries! He consistently wrote from the perspective of outcasts of society and about their interactions with the wealthy and elite. And he consistently and vividly described a Victorian England covered in grit, grease, and soot. He portrayed an England largely ignored by society’s upper crust. While such a dynamic certainly brings to mind Dickens’ Oliver Twist, my favorite work of his (second only to A Christmas Carol) is Great Expectations.

In brief, Great Expectations is told through the eyes of Pip, an orphan who lives with his much older, abusive sister and her kind, blacksmith husband, Joe Gargery. Pip is selected to visit Miss Havisham, an older woman in a dilapidated house who only wears one shoe and an aged wedding gown. He falls in love with Havisham’s adopted daughter, Estella. Once Pip is old enough to learn a trade and take on an apprenticeship, a mysterious benefactor provides him with the money to become a gentleman. Pip assumes that his benefactor is Miss Havisham and that she is grooming him to marry Estella. However, Estella is coldhearted and spurns Pip’s advances; she is more interested in entrapping another young man, albeit with the same cold demeanor. The mystery of the identity of Pip’s benefactor remains, and his confusion and hurt abound. Misery, murder, ex-convicts: the plot contains it all. (Spoilers follow).

There is much that can be said about this book and its wide array of characters, but for my purposes, I will only focus on the tragic figure of Miss Havisham. In her youth, Havisham was left at the altar and swindled out of her wealth. Unable to move past her grief, she lives in only one room of her house, wearing the wedding dress and surrounded by the same wedding cake and wedding breakfast, now decayed and a feast for insects. The clocks have even been stopped at twenty minutes until nine, the exact time she received the letter from her deceptive betrothed. It is out of her heartbreak that Havisham eventually raises Estella to be so cold, saying “I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.” She continually works to emphasize the social chasm that exists between Estella and Pip, all the while encouraging Pip’s suspicion that she is in fact his benefactor.

To see where this ends, I encourage you to read the book. It’s phenomenal. But for my purposes in this Lenten series, I want to focus on releasing that which is dead. Miss Havisham’s character hinges on her inability to let go of her forsaken wedding day, and the end of her relationship with her betrothed.

While she still wears her dress, the more appropriate image of her anger and bitterness appears in the cake and breakfast. The clocks may have been stopped, but time has marched on as the wedding feast has decayed and become infested. It is rotten.

There is no debate that Miss Havisham was once the wronged party, and was betrayed by her lover. But decades later, her grief has given way to bitterness. She herself has turned rotten with the wedding cake. And she now injures and betrays others. She deliberately seeks to break Pip’s heart, and she has knowingly passed on the pestilence of bitterness to Estella.

The observance of Lent beckons us to reflect on what pieces of ourselves are dead, while still desperately clinging to them. For some of us, these pieces may be relationships that are no more. Perhaps we fight to keep them alive in reality, or like Miss Havisham we keep them alive through bitter memoriam, refusing to accept that the wedding cake has gone stale, become infested with insects, and is now a hazard to our health.

May our reflections on our mortality this Lenten season bring us to a place of release, freeing ourselves from the toxic grips of memories and relationships long since over.

Peace.