Miss Havisham ... it's all about the confidence!

Where did Miss Havisham go wrong? Not enough clinched in waist-belts? Wrap-dresses or control underwear? Was she the subdued pre-curser to Carrie Bradshaw? Should a modern Miss Havisham just ‘change her facebook status to single’ and get over it?

Miss Havisham has become the pin up for pop culture’s anxiety of the unmarried jilted woman, still panging for lost love. Three waves of feminism later and are the current men-less woman any better off? Perhaps we should be more attune to the empty misery of four single women trotting around New York in heels they can’t walk in, desperately trying to secure a man, all in the name of good post-feminist fun!

There is a refreshing honesty, even dignity about the Miss Havisham character, admittedly she has her ups and downs, at one point urging her daughter to secure a man, only to leave him heartbroken – all in the name of revenge. However her dogged adherence to internal misery and utter rejection of any surface values of happiness (sipping saccharine cocktails at a ‘fabulous’ party) is something modern post-break-up women have lost. Katie Price celebrated her newly single status by throwing a divorce bash, and instead of stopping the clocks and living in her wedding dress, Carrie Bradshaw gets in a limo with her girlfriends to Mexico for what would have been her honeymoon. Three jilted women appeared on ‘Good Morning America’ in 2008, all listing the positive effects this had on their lives.

Perhaps this shift in attitudes could be down to the vicarious way we now live through the fictional characters we see before us, on screen they serve a different purpose – to remind us that from an outsiders perspective we probably do look ‘fabulous’, even though we don’t feel it. Contentment has become so interlinked with surface values and body image it feels women are perpetually told they are one waist belt purchase away from a zen-like acceptance of the self. Miss Havisham sees the bigger picture. She spends the rest of her life in her rotting wedding dress, amidst the remains of her cake. While even GCSE students could spot the symbolism, we are instantly seduced by the ‘fabulousness’ of the post-feminist single woman’s life and fail to see that just because the glamorous outfits are changed every scene in Sex and the City, doesn’t mean they serve any different purpose to Miss Havisham’s wedding dress.