On Estella Havisham in Great Expectations

There always has been, and perhaps always will be, a schism in fiction regarding the way that women are portrayed. Some heroines are very passive while others have a large amount of agency and are always in control of the situation, or always think that they are. Great Expectations, widely considered Charles Dickens' masterpiece, contains one of the greatest examples of a non-passive heroine in the character of Estella Havisham. Dickens took what previous writers, such as Shakespeare, had done and expanded on it by never making Estella likable. Estella's influence can still be seen today.
Estella by no means was the first strong female character in literature. Anyone who is familiar at all with Shakespeare will point to Rosalind and Lady Macbeth. However, Estella is unique in that she never is presented in a way that is likable to the reader. We don't want Pip and Estella to get married, despite the fact that Pip desperately wants it. Lady Macbeth, while never being even slightly likable, is essentially the villain of Macbeth. She manipulates her husband into murder and feeds his madness. She is not the romantic lead and Macbeth never looks at her in a romantic sense. Rosalind, like Estella, gets what she wants just by force of character. However, Rosalind is presented in a likable way, true she does some things that make her unlikable but she means well most of the time, Estella never means well in the novel, never once. She schemes and is more than a little sadistic. She hurts Pip because she feels like it.
It could be argued that Estella is the villain of Great Expectations, and thus follows in the footsteps of Lady Macbeth. However, Estella was raised by Mrs. Havisham, a cruel, cold woman, and she taught Estella to break men's hearts. Mrs. Havisham created Estella and thus we can't really blame Estella for what she does to Pip. She learned it at her mother's knee.
Estella's influence on modern literature is vast. Two of the biggest best sellers of the past few years are The Hunger Games Trilogy and The Millennium Trilogy. Both series have heroines, Katniss and Lisabeth respectively, who are strong and in command, but aren't particularly nice. They can handle themselves and have a large amount of agency. Estella also serves as a symbol in Great Expectations. She symbolizes the love pursued and the novel shows how Pip destroys his life by pursuing Estella so intently. Those themes would later become the centerpiece of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, widely considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written. Fitzgerald own a massive debt to Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, and the character of Estella.
Estella serves a very important role in Great Expectations; the role of a maguffin. She is the grail which Pip searches for, the light on the end of the wharf. It is, however, as testament to Dickens' skill as a writer that he manages to elevate Estella from a simple goal to one of the most interesting and rounded characters that exists in fiction. She is both a strong female heroine and a symbol. Both a maguffin and a character.
It is interesting to contrast Estella with another of Dickens' creations, Nancy. Both women are in abusive relationships and both, if we are to go by Dickens' original ending, end up the worse for wear for it. It would have been fascinating to see more of Estella while she was in her abusive marriage. We see her going in, haughty and nasty, and then coming out, weather beaten and kinder, but we never see what transpired. Did Estella love her husband? Why would she, but then, why would she stay with him if she didn't? It is a bit of a stretch to believe that Estella stays with her husband out of fear, but it is just as big of a stretch to say that she stayed with him out of love. Nancy, by contrast, is only seen while in the relationship, so we don't know what she was like coming into it, and, of course, she never comes out of it. Nancy does not appear to have the force of character that Estella has, yet, it takes a great will to stand up to the man she loves and sacrifice her life for a random boy. It appears that the brutality of her husband makes Estella weaker while it makes Nancy stronger. Thus, it could very well be argued that Nancy is stronger that Estella.