The Meaning of Fire - Cleansing 

• The Element of Fire

The element of Fire is both creative and destructive, its qualities are Brightness, Thinness and Motion and its mode is Active. It is fire that we and our ancestors used to warm our homes, we use it to cook our food, we sit around it to ward of the darkness of night, and it fuels our passions. Fire, unlike the other elements, does not exist in a natural state. Its physical form can only take place by consuming some other element. Fire is the transformer, converting the energy of other objects into other forms: heat, light, ash, and smoke.

• Fire

Fire can also be seen as a force of purification. In a more modern context, forest fires, while looked upon as destructive and costly by modern society, are actually from a scientific and ecological point of view quite positive as a mode of purification - old growth that is burned away makes way for new growth to begin, and the entire ecosystem is rejuvenated.

Miss Havisham being Consumed by Fire
https://dickens2013.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/screen-shot-2013-11-21-at-2-21-25-am.png

I wanted to research into more depth of the meaning of Miss Havisham being consumed by fire. 

'Fire begins and ends things it can cleanse an area for new growth, but it can also destroy'

The fire at Miss Havisham’s house is indeed symbolic.  It represents her passion, or her life-force.  The house, like Miss Havisham, is wasting away.I personally feel as if that it's Miss Havisham's escape from all the sadness she has experienced in her life, for example being left at the altar and being betrayed by her own brother. When I watched the BBC's adaptation it's as if she is embarrassing the fire as if she thinks it will clean her of the pain she has had and also the stuff she has put Pip through, like the fact she used Estella as her dummy and how she used her on Pip who then feel in love with her. The fire for me represents to cleansing  and penitence of remorse on her soul

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'I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky'. (Chapter VIII, 45)

Websites Used :

• http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/the_elements/fire.asp
• http://www.umich.edu/~umfandsf/symbolismproject/symbolism.html/F/fire.html