It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 8. Miss Havisham is depicted as one of the most miserable, grotesque and pathetic victims of love. Jilted at the altar years before, Pip remarks on all the objects in the room that reflect how she is frozen in time and unable to move on from the heartbreak. The stopped clock and watch. The unworn yellowed shoe and ragged silk stocking. The withered wedding dress and veil she wears, compared in similes to grave clothes and a shroud. The dress is foreshadowing of the unhappy lives Pip and Estella will experience.