In Chapter XI of Great Expectations Pip
enters a room from which daylight has been excluded with "an airless smell that was oppressive."
In this room in which every object is covered with dust and mold, there stands a long table on
which a feast had been prepared before time has been halted by Miss Havisham. On this great table
lies the remnants of a wedding cake, a "bride-cake," now ravaged by mice and spiders. Around this
table Miss Havisham has Pip walk with her; they circle it several times as the "toadies" such as
Sarah Pocket tell her how well she looks.
This molded and ravaged
cake represents the past, the end of Miss Havisham's romantic dream of marriage. Along with the
stopped clock, and the curtained windows, the bride-cake and the decaying feast upon the table
symbolize Miss Havisham's joyous life that has ended, as well as her attempt to arrest the
passage of time which no longer has meaning for her. She tells Pip that when she dies, she will
be laid upon the table. For, since her life truly ended for her when the wedding feast was called
to a halt, she wants her body to rest where her dead soul has been for
years.
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