Havisham (Scottish Highers English): Revision Notes
Havisham
Context and background
Duffy creates a distinctive voice in this poem that belongs to a character rather than to the poet herself. The speaker is Miss Havisham, a character from Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations. Understanding this context helps unlock the meaning of the poem.
In Dickens' novel, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fiancé on the morning of her wedding. Years later, she still wears her yellowing wedding dress and lives surrounded by the remnants of her wedding day. The narrator, Pip, describes her as having once had "the rounded figure of a young woman" but now being reduced to "skin and bone." More than a decade after being abandoned, Miss Havisham remains consumed by resentment and bitterness.
The dramatic monologue approach
Duffy's poem takes this character and gives her a direct voice. Rather than being described by another narrator, Miss Havisham speaks for herself, expressing the intensity of her emotions through dramatic and disturbing imagery. This technique is called a dramatic monologue - where a distinct character (not the poet) speaks throughout the poem.
Oxymoron
The opening line demonstrates one of the poem's most striking techniques. The phrase "Beloved sweetheart bastard" contains an oxymoron - a device that places contradictory terms or ideas together. Here, the affectionate words "beloved sweetheart" sit alongside the harsh insult "bastard." Both aspects are true simultaneously: she still regards this man as someone she loved deeply, but she also considers him a bastard for what he did to her.
Oxymoron in Action: "Beloved sweetheart bastard"
This oxymoron reveals Miss Havisham's conflicting emotions. She cannot separate her love from her hatred. The contradiction captures the complexity of her psychological state - she is trapped between past love and present rage.
Breaking it down:
- "Beloved sweetheart" = affectionate, loving terms
- "bastard" = harsh insult, expressing hatred
- Together = the impossibility of separating love from hate
Another oxymoron appears later in the poem: "Love's / hate behind a white veil." This phrase expresses how her love has transformed into hatred. The white veil, traditionally a symbol that conceals a blushing bride, instead masks the depth of her hatred. The oxymoron shows that her hate belongs to her love - it grew directly from being jilted.
Alliteration and plosives
The opening sentence uses alliteration of the hard 'b' sound: "Beloved sweetheart bastard." The consonants 'b' and 'p' are called plosives - they are the hardest, most explosive sounds in the English language. These harsh sounds emphasise the violence and force of Miss Havisham's feelings.
Combined Techniques in the Opening
The structure reinforces this effect. "Beloved sweetheart bastard" is a minor sentence (a grammatically incomplete sentence), which draws attention to it and creates dramatic emphasis.
The combination creates a powerful opening:
- Plosive alliteration ('b' sounds) = explosive, violent tone
- Minor sentence structure = dramatic emphasis
- Oxymoron = contradictory emotions revealed
Enjambement
Enjambement occurs when a sentence runs over from one line to the next. Duffy uses this technique throughout the poem to create specific effects.
Consider these lines:
"Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then I haven't wished him dead."
The sentence beginning "Not a day since then" spills over onto the second line. The full stop after "bastard" creates a pause (called a caesura), which forces the new sentence to continue across the line break.
Understanding the Effect of Enjambement
Enjambement has several effects in this poem:
- It gives priority to sentence structure over line structure, making the poem feel more like prose or natural speech
- This accessibility helps the reader engage with Miss Havisham's voice more directly
- The way thoughts spill over from one line to the next represents how her anger flows continuously
- Her thoughts run on uncontrollably, reflected in the lines running on after each other, as though she is working herself up through a building stream of rage
Another example shows this building intensity:
"Love's hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake."
The caesura before "Love's" forces enjambement between verses. This links the stanzas and contributes to the build-up of violence that culminates in her stabbing the wedding cake.
Sentence structure and line structure
Enjambement creates another subtle effect. Because we are reading poetry, we pause slightly at the end of each line, even when enjambement occurs. This pause means the beginning of the next line comes as a small surprise.
The Dramatic Impact of Line Breaks
Look at the pause after "Love's," which causes "hate" to arrive as a shock. The word sits alone at the start of the line, emphasising the transformation of love into hatred.
Love's
hate behind a white veil
This positioning gives the word "hate" dramatic impact - it becomes the focal point of the reader's attention as we move to the new line.
Word choice
Duffy selects words that reveal Miss Havisham's psychological and physical deterioration.
The phrase "dark green pebbles for eyes" is particularly effective. "Pebbles" suggests hardness - her eyes have become stone-like, reflecting how bitterness has hardened her. The colour green evokes jealousy, referencing "the green-eyed monster." This metaphor captures both her jealousy and the intensity of her prayers for revenge, which have physically changed her eyes.
Word Analysis: "Spinster"
"Spinster" stands alone as a minor sentence, forcing attention onto it. The word carries a highly pejorative (sneering or insulting) connotation.
Why this word is so effective:
- While it denotes an unmarried woman, it traditionally suggested a woman who remained unmarried because she was unattractive or undesirable
- By using this word to label herself, Havisham acknowledges she has become old-fashioned and accepts she is unlikely ever to marry
- The word has an ugly sound, emphasised by the harsh 's' sounds and the short 'i' vowel, which reinforces its negative tone
The phrase "Whole days / in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall" conveys her depression. Staying in bed indicates her withdrawal from life. "Cawing" compares her voice to a crow's harsh cry, suggesting she has lost her humanity. The extended "Nooooo" represents her prolonged despair, while "at the wall" shows she faces away from the world, trapped in her grief.
The image "ropes on the back of my hands" vividly describes the protruding veins of an elderly person. These veins become instruments she imagines using to "strangle" her former lover. The metaphor transforms signs of ageing into potential weapons, showing how her desire for revenge dominates even her perception of her own body.
Violent Language Throughout
Notice how many phrases contain violent imagery:
- "I could strangle with"
- "stabbed at a wedding cake"
- "Give me a male corpse"
This consistent use of violent vocabulary reveals how deeply trauma has affected her thinking patterns.
"I stabbed at a wedding cake" uses a violent verb that conveys a repeated, desperate gesture. The phrase "stabbed at" suggests multiple attempts, as though she desperately wanted to destroy this symbol of her non-existent wedding. The wedding cake represents everything she has lost, and attacking it becomes an act of violence against her shattered dreams.
"Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon" reveals something deeply sinister. Rather than wanting a living husband, she desires a dead man - someone she could control completely. This macabre wish demonstrates her twisted thinking and suggests her desire for revenge extends to all men, not just the one who jilted her.
Symbolism
Several symbols run through the poem, each representing aspects of Miss Havisham's corrupted wedding day and psychological state.
The "white veil" traditionally conceals a blushing bride, representing innocence and joy. For Miss Havisham, however, it masks hatred rather than happiness, showing how her wedding symbols have been corrupted.
Symbol Analysis: The Red Balloon
The "red balloon" connects to wedding celebrations, but here it is "bursting / in my face." This image works on multiple levels:
- Symbolises her hopes and dreams exploding violently
- The colour red might represent her anger
- The bursting captures the sudden destruction of her expectations
- The plosive 'b' sound reinforces the onomatopoeic "Bang," representing both the noise and violence of the balloon bursting
Capitalisation
Duffy makes an unconventional choice about capitalisation. The first word of each line begins with a lower-case letter (except at the start of the second stanza). This breaks with traditional poetic convention.
Why Break Convention?
The lack of capitalisation makes the poem appear more like everyday speech. It creates an informal tone, as though Miss Havisham is speaking directly rather than performing a formal poetic recitation. This technique helps the reader hear her authentic voice - raw, unfiltered, and immediate.
Rhythm and sound
The poem lacks regular rhyme, which contributes to its prose-like quality. The rhythm is also irregular, though it contains hints of the iambic (weak/strong) pattern that characterises everyday speech.
However, Duffy exploits rhythm for dramatic effect. Consider the word "Spinster." Unlike typical iambic rhythm, this word has two equally stressed syllables: Spin/ster. This pattern is called a spondee. By stressing both syllables equally in this one-word sentence, Duffy draws maximum attention to the word.
Spondaic Rhythm in "Spinster"
The spondaic rhythm emphasises the ugliness of the sound:
Spin/ster (two equally stressed syllables)
- The nasty 's' sounds through alliteration
- The unpleasant short 'i' sound in the first syllable
- Together they create an unattractive auditory effect
The ugly sound supports the word's pejorative tone, reinforcing how the term was used to describe unmarried and supposedly unattractive women.
Structure and tone
The poem consists of four quatrains (four-line stanzas), but the irregular rhythm, lack of rhyme, and extensive enjambement make it feel unlike traditional poetry. These techniques create a voice that sounds immediate and authentic, as though we are overhearing Miss Havisham's actual thoughts rather than reading a carefully constructed poem.
Understanding the Dramatic Monologue Format
The dramatic monologue format allows Duffy to create psychological depth. We hear Miss Havisham's voice directly, experiencing her contradictory emotions, violent fantasies, and disturbed mental state.
The technique makes clear that this is a persona - a voice created by Duffy that is distinct from the poet herself. The hatred and violence belong to the character, not the poet.
Key themes
Several themes emerge through the poem's techniques and imagery:
- Conflicting emotions: The oxymorons reveal how Miss Havisham experiences love and hate simultaneously, unable to separate her past affection from her present rage.
- Psychological damage: The imagery of physical decay ("dark green pebbles for eyes," "ropes on the back of my hands") and her disturbed behaviour (staying in bed, "cawing" at walls) shows how emotional trauma has destroyed her mentally and physically.
- The corrupting power of bitterness: Wedding symbols that should represent joy - the veil, the balloon, the cake - have all become associated with violence and hatred in Miss Havisham's mind.
- Revenge and violence: Her fantasies about strangling him, wanting a "male corpse," and stabbing the wedding cake reveal how bitterness has transformed into violent impulses.
- Time and stagnation: The yellowing dress, the mirror, and her continued fixation on the past show she remains frozen at the moment of being jilted, unable to move forward.
Key Points to Remember:
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Oxymoron creates contradictions that reveal Miss Havisham's conflicting emotions about her former lover - she simultaneously loves and hates him
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Enjambement makes the poem flow like natural speech while representing how her angry thoughts spill over uncontrollably
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Plosives and harsh sounds (particularly in "Beloved sweetheart bastard" and "Spinster") create aggressive, violent effects that match her rage
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Word choices like "dark green pebbles," "ropes," and "stabbed" use vivid imagery to show both her physical deterioration and violent fantasies
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The poem is a dramatic monologue that gives voice to a literary character, allowing Duffy to explore extreme psychological states from the inside
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Miss Havisham's voice is created through multiple techniques working together: enjambement, irregular rhythm, lack of capitalisation, and violent vocabulary all contribute to her authentic, disturbed voice