essay about havisham

Havisham Summary & Analysis by Carol Ann Duffy

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

First published in Carol Ann Duffy's 1993 collection Mean Time , "Havisham" is a dramatic monologue spoken from the perspective of Miss Havisham, the wealthy, embittered spinster from Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations . In the novel, Miss Havisham was abandoned at the altar during her youth and spends her adulthood seeking vengeance against men for her suffering; for example, she schemes for the novel's protagonist, Pip, to fall in love with her adopted daughter, Estella, so that she can break his heart. In Duffy's poem, Havisham (no "Miss") reflects upon how grief has shaped her life and identity, expressing both longing for and vengeful anger toward the fiancé who left her behind.

• Read the full text of “Havisham”

The Full Text of “Havisham”

“havisham” summary, “havisham” themes.

Heartbreak, Sorrow, and Rage

Grief and Identity

• Lines 12-13

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Havisham”

Beloved sweetheart bastard. ... ... wished him dead.

Prayed for it ... ... could strangle with.

Spinster. I stink and remember.

Whole days ... ... open the wardrobe;

the slewed mirror, ... ... sounds not words.

Lines 10-12

Some nights better, ... ... suddenly bite awake.

Lines 12-14

Love's ... ... a wedding cake.

Lines 15-16

Give me a ... ... heart that b-b-b-breaks.

“Havisham” Symbols

• Line 3: “I've dark green pebbles for eyes,”

The Wedding Dress

• Lines 6-7: “the dress / yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;”
• Line 13: “a white veil;”

The Red Balloon

• Lines 13-14: “a red balloon bursting / in my face.”

“Havisham” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

• Line 1: “Beloved,” “bastard”
• Line 5: “Spinster,” “stink”
• Line 13: “behind,” “balloon,” “bursting”
• Line 14: “Bang”
• Lines 1-2: “then / I”
• Lines 2-3: “it / so”
• Lines 5-6: “days / in”
• Lines 6-7: “dress / yellowing,”
• Lines 8-9: “this / to”
• Lines 11-12: “ear / then”
• Lines 12-13: “Love's / hate”
• Lines 13-14: “bursting / in”

Onomatopoeia

• Line 6: “cawing,” “ Nooooo”
• Line 16: “b-b-b-breaks”
• Line 1: “Beloved sweetheart bastard.”
• Lines 3-4: “I've dark green pebbles for eyes, / ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.”
• Line 9: “Puce curses”
• Line 12: “I suddenly bite awake”

“Havisham” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• (Location in poem: Line 1: “Beloved sweetheart bastard.”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Havisham”

Rhyme scheme, “havisham” speaker, “havisham” setting, literary and historical context of “havisham”, more “havisham” resources, external resources.

Carol Ann Duffy's Biography — Learn more about the poet's life and work from this brief biography, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.

The Poem in Performance — Watch a dramatic reading of "Havisham."

An Illustrated Edition of Great Expectations — View American artist John McLenan's renderings of Miss Havisham for an 1861 illustrated edition of Great Expectations, courtesy of the British Library.

An Interview with the Poet — Watch Carol Ann Duffy respond to her appointment as the UK's first woman poet laureate in this 2009 interview with The Guardian. 

LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy

A Child's Sleep

Anne Hathaway

Before You Were Mine

Death of a Teacher

Education For Leisure

Elvis's Twin Sister

Head of English

In Mrs Tilscher’s Class

In Your Mind

Little Red Cap

Mrs Lazarus

Mrs Sisyphus

Pilate's Wife

Pygmalion's Bride

Queen Herod

Recognition

Standing Female Nude

The Darling Letters

The Dolphins

The Good Teachers

Warming Her Pearls

War Photographer

We Remember Your Childhood Well

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Havisham — Carol Ann Duffy’s Havisham: a Critical Analysis

Carol Ann Duffy's Havisham: a Critical Analysis

• Categories: Carol Ann Duffy Havisham

About this sample

Words: 1206 |

Published: Apr 11, 2019

Words: 1206 | Pages: 2 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the haunting of miss havisham, the language of desolation, time as a malevolent force.

• Duffy, C. A. (1993). Mean time. Anvil Press Poetry.
• Dickens, C. (1860). Great Expectations. Chapman and Hall.
• Bell, M. (2016). Embodying Miss Havisham: Trauma and the Gothic Body in Contemporary Rewritings of Great Expectations. Women's Writing, 23(3), 290-306. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2015.1055793
• Heginbotham, E. (2018). Repetition and narrative temporality in Great Expectations: A cognitive linguistic reading. Language and Literature, 27(1), 28-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947017744201
• Hamer, E. (2019). "Love's / hate behind a white veil": Time and Desire in Carol Ann Duffy's "Havisham." Papers on Language and Literature, 55(1), 53-69. https://doi.org/10.1163/24460369-05501005
• Smith, J. (2017). Death in the Nineteenth Century: "Havisham" and "Porphyria's Lover." The Explicator, 75(1), 3-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2016.1207551
• Dickens, C. (1853). Bleak House. Bradbury & Evans.

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Havisham Analysis

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Kelso High School English Department Mrs Changleng

Higher english: set text ‘havisham’ analysis and notes.

Please click on the link below to access yesterday’s powerpoint and analysis Revision notes on ‘Havisham’.

2017 Higher Duffy ‘Havisham notes

July 2017 Havisham-annotated

2017 Higher Duffy Havisham

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Just another blogs.glowscotland.org.uk – Scottish Borders site

by Carol Ann Duffy

Havisham literary elements, speaker or narrator, and point of view.

Miss Havisham from Great Expectations

Form and Meter

This poem is split into four stanzas with four lines each, but it follows no specific poetic form and does not have a steady meter.

Metaphors and Similes

"Prayed for it so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes, ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with."

The speaker has prayed for the death of the man who left her so much that it has changed the color and consistency of her eyes, and she imagines ropes growing out of her hands. These images are metaphors, but they also seem to represent the narrator's degrading sanity, for she seems to believe that her body has changed, grown fantastic.

"Whole days in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall;"

Here the speaker implictly compares herself to a raven or a crow. Through this metaphor, she indicates that she has lost her humanity and lost the ability to do anything but caw, like she does here, from her anguish.

"Love’s hate behind a white veil;"

Here she either says that love is hate disguised by a white veil or that love's hate is behind a white veil. Either way, she compares hate to the bride under that veil, waiting to be uncovered.

Alliteration and Assonance

"Spinster. I stink and remember."

This line uses both alliteration and assonance. The "i" sound in "spinster" is quickly repeated in "stink," and "spinster" creates an internal rhyme with "remember." The repeated "s" sounds create a hissing effect, which feels suitable for this creepy but sensual poem.

"a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake."

This use of alliteration emphasizes the noise of the balloon bursting and the stabbing gesture that the speaker makes.

Miss Havisham's house

The tone borders on insane; the speaker seems at times desperate, at times cynical.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protaganist is the speaker, Miss Havisham. The antagonist is her ex-fiancé, who appears mostly as a body, not a person.

Major Conflict

The main interpersonal conflict in this poem is between Miss Havisham and the lover who once left her at the altar and stole her money. Just as significant, however, is the internal conflict the speaker feels. She has difficulty differentiating between love and hatred, and her obsession with the wedding that did not occur conflicts with the amount of time that has passed since her jilting.

The tone of "Havisham" is fairly steady, but the speaker has what seems like a moment of clarity in the sentence that ends the third stanza and begins the fourth, when she says, "Love's/hate behind a white veil; a red balloon/bursting in my face." This line is complicated by the ambiguity of "love's hate," but when the speaker mentions the red balloon that bursts, she confronts her own disappointment with lucidity.

Foreshadowing

In the first stanza, the speaker wishes the man who left her at the altar dead. This foreshadows the later appearances of the "lost body" and the "male corpse," which seem to represent both that man and his absence.

Understatement

Metonymy and synecdoche, personification.

the dress yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe

This is not a sure case of personification—it could be the dress itself "trembling" (which would be personification), or it could be the speaker herself. This ambiguity has the effect of likening the two.

Onomatopoeia

In this example of onomatopoeia, the speaker draws out the "No" to fully express the extent of her insanity and pain.

"...a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake."

Here, the speaker drily says the sound that the red balloon makes when it bursts; this flatness comes off as sarcastic, emphasizing the equally sarcastic tone of the final line.

"Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks."

Here the speaker stammers over the word "breaks." This is an example of the difficulty she has developed with language; her words become sounds. Yet the tone here is sardonic, almost threateningly so. She does not specify what does break, beyond her language and her heart, but that omission makes the line all the more menacing.

Havisham Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Havisham is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Havisham

Havisham study guide contains a biography of Carol Ann Duffy, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Havisham
• Havisham Summary