Blog Entry 2

Estella is the beautiful young girl who lives with Miss Havisham. Pip views Estella as an angel from above, because she is so beautiful. Charles Dickens chose to name the beautiful girl "Estella" for the reason that her looks and name match up to that of an angel. In the book, Estella is repeatedly described as "the prettiest girl" Pip has ever seen, and is noted for her "pretty brown hair" (pg. 60, 64). Pip seems to see her as something so pretty, that she isn't from our world, and this might be because she is from a different world. Not literally, but in the sense that their lives are so vastly different. The word "stella" means "star" and in Latin, "e" means "from, or out of". The word "Estella" could then be easily translated into "from the stars". In this way of thinking, Dickens had Estella, Pip's angel, have her name as from the stars. Angels are often referred to as from the stars or the heavens, so Dickens was setting Estella up to be as pretty as an angel when he named her.