Literature · 2
In Charles Dickens's 'Great Expectations,' what is the name of the wealthy recluse who stops all the clocks and wears a decaying wedding dress?
Answer
Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham is the eccentric, embittered aristocrat in 'Great Expectations' who was jilted on her wedding day and responded by freezing time in her crumbling mansion Satis House — stopping all the clocks at the moment she was abandoned and never removing her wedding dress.
💡 Did you know?
Dickens may have based Miss Havisham on Eliza Emily Donnithorne, an Australian woman reportedly jilted on her wedding day in 1856 who allegedly left the wedding feast rotting on the table for decades.
Other options people guess
- Lady Dedlock
- Mrs. Jellyby
- Madame Defarge
Topics
- charles-dickens
- victorian-literature
- great-expectations
- characters
Know your literature trivia?
Play a free Literature quiz and see how many you get right — no signup needed to start.
More Literature facts
Literature
In Charles Dickens's 'Great Expectations,' what is the profession of the convict Abel Magwitch, who secretly becomes Pip's benefactor?
Dickens based the Australian convict-transportation subplot on a real government policy that sent over 160,000 British convicts to Australia between 1788 and 1868.
Literature
What genre of writing did Arthur Conan Doyle want to devote more time to when he killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893?
Arthur Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes in 1893 because he wanted to focus on historical novels, sparking the first major fictional character death outrage.
Literature
Which Charles Dickens novel features the character Miss Havisham, a wealthy recluse who stopped all the clocks on her wedding day?
Dickens originally wrote a different, unhappy ending for Great Expectations, but rewrote it after a friend argued readers would prefer a more hopeful conclusion.
Literature
After his release from prison, Oscar Wilde spent his impoverished final years in exile in which country?
Oscar Wilde wrote 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' while imprisoned, then spent his final years in exile too poor to buy the book he'd just published.
Literature
Which bestselling romance author uses the pseudonym J.D. Robb for her crime fiction so retailers shelve the books separately?
Nora Roberts writes romance under the pen name J.D. Robb, keeping the identities separate so bookstores stock them in different sections.
Literature
At whose Swiss villa did Mary Shelley first conceive the idea for 'Frankenstein' during a rainy summer in 1816?
Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein during a ghost-story contest with Lord Byron and her husband, after reading about galvanism experiments on dead frogs.