# What happens to Miss Havisham?

> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

## Answer

Miss Havisham is badly burned when her wedding dress catches fire at Satis House; she later dies of the injuries. The fire is not random spectacle. It consumes the costume she has worn as a lifelong monument to betrayal, and it arrives after Pip has forced her to see what her pedagogy did to Estella and to him.

Dickens allows her a late plea for forgiveness without turning the novel into a conversion tract. Pip’s pity matters because he has finally stopped needing her as a fantasy benefactor. The question is useful when readers want the “plot spoiler”; the concept of instrumental love is the longer frame — her death does not undo Estella’s training or Pip’s years of misread expectation.

## Evidence

- [xliv](https://www.betterreads.online/discover/great_expectations_se/chapters/xliv.md): Pip confronts Miss Havisham; she begins to grasp the harm she designed.
- [xlix](https://www.betterreads.online/discover/great_expectations_se/chapters/xlix.md): Miss Havisham’s dress catches fire; Pip burns himself saving her.
- [lvii](https://www.betterreads.online/discover/great_expectations_se/chapters/lvii.md): Pip recovers under Joe’s care after the Satis House catastrophe.

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