Miss Havisham initially appears as an eccentric, imperious old woman. At first, it is unclear whether there is a kind heart behind this forbidding exterior, but, as the novel progresses, it is evident that Miss Havisham is actually much worse than she seems, a thoroughly embittered, cynical character motivated entirely by hatred and vanity. As a young woman she was spoiled and selfish, and the shock of being jilted at the altar unhinged her mind to the point where intense, narcissistic self-pity has become the source of an apparently inexhaustible supply of spite.

Miss Havisham begins and ends Great Expectations as a victim, but hardly the sympathetic kind. Externally, she is the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called Satis House near Pip's village, and who took in Estella as a toddler to raise as her own. Behind closed doors she is manic, if not insane—she wears an old tattered wedding dress, keeps a decomposing banquet on her table, and surrounds herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

Miss Havisham was jilted by her fiancé, Compeyson, at twenty minutes to nine many years before, and she is determined to grieve forever. Estella is the tool for her revenge on all men, a beautiful, cultured monster. She trains Estella to be as cruel and heartless as she feels Compeyson was to her, ensuring that no man will ever be happy if she has anything to say about it.

Dickens uses Miss Havisham as an example of single-minded vengeance pursued purely for destruction: both Miss Havisham and the people in her life suffer greatly from her quest for vengeance. Miss Havisham is blind to the pain her obsessions cause Pip and Estella, being so focused on her own pain.

A victim of a different sort, Miss Havisham is redeemed at the end of the novel when she realizes that she has broken Pip's heart in the same way her own was broken, just more slowly; rather than achieving any kind of revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs for Pip’s forgiveness, reinforcing the novel's theme that bad behavior can be redeemed by repentance and compassion.