Satis House

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2064629/GREAT-Expectations-Gillian-Anderson-leads-star-cast-BBCs-festive-adaptation-Charles-Dickens-classic.html

Satis House is a Gothic setting which is of old brick and dismal and some of the windows had been walled up whilst others had iron bars on them. The house is severely neglected and falling apart. The crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that spreads through it signify the decadence of the lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole. Next to the house is the brewery which shows the link between commerce and wealth. Miss Havisham's fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. 

The interior of the house has no sunlight and is just lit by wax candles. On Miss Havisham's long table is her wedding cake which is covered with dust and cobwebs and there are mice running around. Miss Havisham herself never sees sunlight and always stays in her wedding dress which represents death and degenerations and symbolises her past. She wears a long white veil and has bridal flowers in her white hair. Everything in view should have been white, but because Miss Havisham has not changed anything for so long, it was now yellow and looked very faded as everything had lost its lustre and nothing had any brightness left. The stopped clocks throughout the house show her strong-minded attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything from how it was on her wedding day when she was jilted.

Below are some quotes from the novel which describe Satis House:

• "On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay", stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me". (Chapter 11).

• "So!" she said, without being startled or surprised; "the days have worn away, have they?" (Chapter 11).

• So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped time in that mysterious place, and while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still. (Chapter 17).

Source Information: www.sparknotes.com/lit/greatex/themes.html

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