Estella (Great Expectations) - References in Pop Culture

References in Pop Culture

• Estella is referenced in Alanis Morissette's 1995 hit "All I Really Want." In the second verse, the song's narrator compares herself to her, "I'm like Estella, I like to reel 'em in and then spit 'em out, I'm frustrated by your apathy."
• The South Park episode Pip features an incarnation of Estella (as it does all of the major characters from "Great Expectations"). Initially, the character follows the role of her literary counterpart fairly closely (aside from her constant, unnecessarily vulgar epithets) until the story finally deviates from Dickens' original, revealing Miss Havisham's intent to use the "Genesis device"- a machine that will transfer her mind into Estella's body so that she might continue to break hearts for another generation. Attempting to free her, Pip tries to convince Estella that she truly has a heart. To demonstrate, Pip takes a baby rabbit from a bag and presents it to Estella. She notes that it is rather cute, but at Pip's hypothesis that someone with a heart would never be able to kill a bunny, she casually breaks its neck. She repeats this process over 20 times without hesitation (leaving a pile of rabbit corpses on the ground) until saying "I don't see the point of this," which Pip takes as evidence that she truly does have an emotional center despite the mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise. Pip rescues Estella and Miss Havisham is destroyed in a fiery blaze; Estella admits to having feelings for Pip herself and all live happily ever after (except for Pocket who dies of Hepatitis B).
• The band The Gaslight Anthem features a song on their album "The 59 Sound" entitled "Great Expectations." A line in this song mentions the character by name, reading "And I never had a good time, I sat my bedside, with papers and poetry about Estella."
• Singer/songwriter Aaron Petrie's debut album features a song titled "Estella." The chorus of the song is sung through the eyes of a young Pip, "Hey Estella, I may think you're a shrew, but I see light in the darkest places if you had the slightest clue."