Styling
'She was dressed in rich materials - satins, lace, and silks - all of white.' Miss Havisham was very well off so she would have been able to afford a grand and expensive dress and would have been able to afford these materials. 'Rich materials' makes me think that the clothing was made of great quality and that at the time of her wedding, the dress was beautifully fitted and brand new. Miss Havisham would have got married in the late Georgian era, towards the early Victorian era, and in both these eras, synched in corsets and big skirts were very popular so I think her wedding dress would have taken this shape. It says they were 'all of white' which shows that they would have been perfectly white on the say of the wedding.
'She had a long white veil dependant from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white'. This shows that she was wearing a veil that was secured in her hair and when I looked up Victorian veils, they were almost always full length and touching the floor. In my final image you will not be able to see the length of the veil or all of the wedding dress, however I still wanted to look into this as it gives me a better idea of what she would be wearing and her overall look. I am thinking of incorporating a veil and the top of a wedding dress in my final look as I think it would real add to the final image. The 'bridal flowers' in her hair would have died in her hair and shrivelled up so I would need to make sure the flowers looked dead and off colour.
It says that 'some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands' so if I want to incorporate this into my look, I would have to do some research into the type of jewels that a well off woman would have worn in the early Victorian era.
'She was dressed in rich materials - satins, lace, and silks - all of white.' Miss Havisham was very well off so she would have been able to afford a grand and expensive dress and would have been able to afford these materials. 'Rich materials' makes me think that the clothing was made of great quality and that at the time of her wedding, the dress was beautifully fitted and brand new. Miss Havisham would have got married in the late Georgian era, towards the early Victorian era, and in both these eras, synched in corsets and big skirts were very popular so I think her wedding dress would have taken this shape. It says they were 'all of white' which shows that they would have been perfectly white on the say of the wedding.
'She had a long white veil dependant from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white'. This shows that she was wearing a veil that was secured in her hair and when I looked up Victorian veils, they were almost always full length and touching the floor. In my final image you will not be able to see the length of the veil or all of the wedding dress, however I still wanted to look into this as it gives me a better idea of what she would be wearing and her overall look. I am thinking of incorporating a veil and the top of a wedding dress in my final look as I think it would real add to the final image. The 'bridal flowers' in her hair would have died in her hair and shrivelled up so I would need to make sure the flowers looked dead and off colour.
 |
| Example of a Victorian wedding dress and veil that Miss Havisham could have worn. http://www.confetti.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/VictorianDress.jpg |
In the book Pip notices that 'she had not quite finished dressing .. her veil was but half arranged'. This made me think that I could expand on this and make it so that other aspects of her look were not finished, like her hair or her makeup. For my final image, I will make it look like the veil was half way through being arranged but not finished, to keep accurate with the book. If I did want to develop the idea of Miss Havisham not being completely ready, then I would have to think about the aspects of the look that could not yet have been finished and add these to the look.
'I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow.' This shows that it must have been a very long time since her wedding day because everything that was once perfectly white has lost its colour. I will have to look into a way of making her wedding dress and veil look very old and slightly yellow to make this look realistic. I could do this by dying the dress and staining it to make it look old and dirty.
Health/Appearance
Pip describes Miss Havisham as being ' the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see'. This makes me think that there must be something different or uncanny about her, and that she looks different to anyone else that Pip has ever seen. This could be shown through a burn on her face or scarring or rashes, anything that would make her stand out from a crowd.
'I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but that brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young women, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone.' When it says the bride had 'withered' it makes me think that she has lost weight and lost muscle and that she is getting a lot older. I looked up the definition of withered and it said it meant "to fall into a decay" which makes me think she is giving up on looking away herself and she is getting ill and tired. It says that she has 'sunken eyes' and that the dress now 'hung loose' which suggests that she used to be a fuller and healthier young girl but has now lost a lot of weight so that her dress doesn't fit anymore. In a lot of the Miss Havisham portrayals her dress fits her, whereas here it shows that the dress should be hanging off her and loose because it was supposed to fit her when she was plumper than she is now.
Miss Havisham tells Pip that she has 'never seen the sun since you were born' and at that point in the book, he was about 10 or 11. There are many effects of not seeing the sun that I could touch on and show through my portrayal of her. If you don't see the sun in years then your body will have a lack of vitamin D. You need vitamin D to help absorb calcium from your diet which gives you healthy bones and so a lack of sun light, and therefore a lack of vitamin D, can cause weak and soft bones, called osteomalacia. Osteomalacia causes severe bone pain and muscle weakness and this could be reflected in her movement. A lack of sunlight would also obviously mean that she had very pale skin and this would make sense as Pip describes her as 'ghostly'.
Pip describes her as 'a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress' which puts the image in my head of a skeleton wearing a ripped up and eroded wedding dress. This again made me think that Miss Havisham had lost a lot of weight and was now very skinny. Describing her as a skeleton, makes me think that she has very hollowed out cheek bones and that a lot of her body is very sunken in and fragile looking. The word skeleton also gives me the impression that she has stopped eating or is just eating the minimum amount necessary to survive. I could really expand on this aspect of her look by looking into affects of not eating and anorexia. Pip says that he has 'never' seen Miss Havisham eat or drink, which also gives me another indication that Miss Havisham has stopped eating all together.
Pip describes Miss Havisham's wedding dress as 'grave-clothes' and says he has never seen a 'veil so like a shroud'. This is another reference to her looking dead and skeleton like. This gives the impression that the veil looks heavy with dust and grime because shrouds are more heavy looking than the traditional lace veil. Pip also describes her as 'corpse-like' which is another reference to her looking like a dead body or skeleton. Pip says that 'the drillings and trimmings on her bridal dress' looked like 'earthy paper' which suggests the ends are fraying and looking really uneven and ripped. This also made me think of the material that is used to wrap up a mummy. I could go into further detail with this mummy aspect of her look to give a unique twist on my portrayal of Miss Havisham.
Pip says 'she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.' I could include an old and dusty looking stick in my portrayal to add a witch-like feel to her look. I could do further research into witches and how they were portrayed in the Victorian era and incorporate that into her look. However I think I either need to focus more on my portrayal of Miss Havisham having a skeleton/mummy look or more of a witch look because I think if I do both, the message could get lost and look messy.
There are many quotations in the book that suggest that Miss Havisham is very skinny and unhealthy such as 'She was not physically strong', "I am yellow skin and bone", "It and I have worn away together", 'her withered arms', 'thin arm'. All of these show how weak and skinny she has become. Her 'yellow skin' suggests she is very ill and run down. If her skin is very yellow this could also suggest that she had Jaundice which is when your skin and the whites of your eyes turn a yellow colour because of a build up of bilirubin in the blood and body tissue. The fact that she is so skinny, again has a reference to skeletons and how she could look skeletal in my portrayal.
Age
In the Victorian era, people aged a lot more quickly than people do today. There was not as much medicine or knowledge about growing old and diseases, and even though anaesthesia and antiseptic was discovered around this time, people still didn't know how to treat or recognise certain illnesses. Women in the Victorian era were expected to get married at a younger age than today, the average age being around 21 years. Miss Havisham describes herself as a 'spinster' which means that she is an unmarried woman, that is past the usual age of getting married at that time. In the Victorian era that was not very old at all, however in today's society the average age of a woman to get married is 30. I want my portrayal of Miss Havisham to be when Pip has grown up and come back from London, just before Miss Havisham goes up in flames. I think that Miss Havisham would have planned to get married at around 21, as this was the average age at the time. From the day she got married, Miss Havisham has kept everything exactly the same, so I think this is when she stopped going out ingot he sun light. She says to Pip that she hasn't seen the sunlight since he was born, and at the time she said that, Pip was around 10 years old; this would make Miss Havisham about 31. After Pip has grown up and come back from London to visit her, I think that about 10 years had gone by, which would make her around 41, and this was very old in the Victorian era. The average age that that people died in the Victorian era was 25 to 30 in cities and around 41 years in more rural areas. This would have meant that Miss Havisham was near or past the average age of death and so would have looked very old and frail at this point. I have decided to use a model that represents 'old' more in today's society so that it translates well for a modern audience, as if I used a 41 year old, I don't think they would fit the decryption written by Charles Dickens.
Miss Havisham was described to have 'old restless fingers' and a 'tremulous right hand' which could suggest that she has an essential tremor, where your a certain part of your body shakes uncontrollably. However the fact that her hand is 'tremulous' could also be a sign that she is very nervous and uneasy. Pip describes her hair as looking 'gray' and 'white' which suggests that she is old enough for this to have happened naturally. People's hair turns grey at all different ages, some people's hair turns grey in their 20s, whilst others don't start to see grey until they're in their 50s, however when I think of grey hair, I automatically think of an old person. I found quotes, that I have spoken about previously, that suggest Miss Havisham looks like a skeleton or a witch and, again, both of these things give me the impression that she would look old and frail. Pip describes Miss Havisham's face as looking 'haggard' which makes me think that she looks exhausted and unwell, but also in today's society people use the word hag to describe an old person, which again makes me think that she would have looked old. Pip also describes her face as looking 'worn', which makes me think it looks very tired and gaunt, and says her hands are 'wasting' which makes me think of very boney and veiny hands. Pip says she has an 'old ghastly bridal appearance'. The word 'ghastly' makes me think of being shocked and scared and horrified, which are all words that could be used to describe Pip's feeling when he first sees her. Then of course the word 'old' emphasises that Miss Havisham should look like she has been living for a very long time.
Paused Time
Pip said that he 'began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up.' Ever since Miss Havisham's wedding day, she has kept everything exactly the same, so she has kept everything in its place and has stopped all the clocks round the house; this is an interesting concept to think about. This gives me the impression that however she looked on her wedding day, is how she left herself looking for the rest of her life. This would mean that she hadn't washed or changed out of her wedding dress in about 15 to 20 years! I thought of what would happen if I didn't wash for that many years and it's quite a scary thought! I think that my hair would get very greasy and dirty and smelly and also, because I don't think she would have brushed it in all those years, her hair would also be very matted and close to forming dreadlocks. I think her body would also be very smelly and dirty looking. I think it would be more noticeable on her hands because dirt would form around, and under, her nails and she would be touching dusty and grimy things so her hands would be full of bacteria and dirt. I think her hands would also be very dry and flakey and sore if she didn't wash them for that long.
Resources:
http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/summerhealth/pages/vitamin-d-sunlight.aspx
http://www.webmd.boots.com/a-to-z-guides/jaundice
http://www.schoolsliaison.org.uk/kids/aston/changingtimes/victorian/medicine.htm
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Tremor-(essential)/Pages/Introduction.aspx
http://www.angelpig.net/victorian/engagement.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8415852/Average-age-for-women-to-marry-hits-30-for-first-time.html
No comments:
Post a Comment