Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the same.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 15. Pip has romanticized Miss Havisham and Estella so much, that he associates them with great sailing ships upon the sea. In his daydreams he connects them with images of freedom, like sails, sunlight, clouds, water and green hillsides. His youthful imagination sees them as the ship that will transport him on his upwardly mobile journey away from the life of a blacksmith’s apprentice. His view of the Havishams is completely wrong. Ironically they represent the opposite of freedom: they live like prisoners in a dark house filled with decay and stagnation, where the sunlight has been shut out.