Miss Havisham shows her Great Expectations can win modern fans
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Eternal bride-to-be Miss Havisham is still looking for love more than 150 years after Great Expectations was first published, and has taken to the internet in order to find it. In support of the Internet campaign the lovelorn lady has also been seen taking to the London Underground in her quest.
Miss Havisham’s profile, including a head-and-shoulders profile image of her still wearing her decaying wedding garb, appears on Facebook as well as online dating sites Guardian Soulmates, Match.com and Tinder. On My Single Friend, she is recommended to potential partners by well-meaning friend Pip.
Miss Havisham’s online quest to find love is part of the campaign to celebrate the screening of Great Expectations on TV channel Drama on Sunday 25 May at 6pm and repeated on Monday 26 May at 4pm.
In the novel, Miss Havisham is left heartbroken when she is jilted on the morning of her wedding by fiancé Compeyson. She stops all of the clocks around her at twenty minutes to nine, the time she receives the devastating news by letter.
Miss Havisham’s imagined online dating profile includes descriptions based on Charles Dickens’ words from the novel, ‘You will find me as I have been for many years: my eyes sunken, my skin waxy, my hair covered with cobwebs. Do not blame me, tanning salons simply don’t exist in 1861, you see. And in shutting out the light of day, I have shut out infinitely more.’ She muses ‘Perhaps my personal style may need a little updating. This gown I wear has been gnawed by mice. But I’ve looked through Asos and Net-a-Porter online and I can find no replacement. Still… I refuse to wear a skater skirt. At my age?’
It also features details of what she is looking for in a partner, including, ‘I dream of a gentleman who loves to laugh; who enjoys staying in as well as going out (I insist on that); a man who doesn’t mind doing a bit of tidying up around the place. Who doesn’t leave his underclothes lying on the bedroom floor…’ She says that ‘Middle Aged Men in Lycra need NOT apply.’ However she describes herself as ‘QPTB (Quite Partial To Blacksmiths)’.
Adrian Wills, general manager of UKTV channel Drama says, “We’re waiting to see how appealing a date with Miss Havisham proves to be but we like to think that despite her past heartbreak, with a little help from the internet , we might be able to find her a modern match!”
Drama is available on Freeview channel 20, Sky channel 166 and Virgin channel 190.
The stunt is the work of agency Taylor Herring.
