Estella is widely believed to have been partially based on Ellen Lawless Ternan, a young actress who was Dickens' mistress from 1857 onwards.

However, she shows numerous times in the novel that she holds Pip in a much higher regard compared to other men, and does not want to break his heart as she does with the others that she seduces.

Even after witnessing this scene, Pip continues to live in anguished and fruitless hope that Estella will return his love.

Estella flirts with and pursues Bentley Drummle, a disdainful rival of Pip's, and eventually marries him because she wants to break the other gentlemen suitor's hearts just like Miss Havisham told her to do.

The eventual resolution of Pip's pursuit of Estella at the end of the story varies among film adaptations and even in the novel itself.

Dickens' original ending is deemed by many as consistent with the thread of the novel and with Estella's allegorical position as the human manifestation of Pip's longings for social status: I was in England again—in London, and walking along Piccadilly with little Pip—when a servant came running after me to ask would I step back to a lady in a carriage who wished to speak to me.

I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.As this ending was much criticized even by some famous fellow authors, Dickens wrote a second ending currently considered as the definitive one, more hopeful but also more ambiguous than the original, in which Pip and Estella have a spiritual and emotional reconciliation.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.Though she never knows it herself, Pip finally finds out where Estella comes from.

Pip becomes convinced that Molly is Estella's mother during his second dinner at Jaggers's place, when he realizes that their eyes are the same and that, when unoccupied, their fingers perform a knitting action.

Jaggers tells him the missing bit of the story (only assuming, that it could have been like that): Molly gave the child to him, to be safe in case of her conviction.

At the same time, Miss Havisham was looking for a girl to bring up and save from a misery like her own and Jaggers gave Estella to her.