Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy is a dramatic, disturbing and upsetting monologue by Miss Havisham herself. With influences of depression and necrophilia, we see what was her life like in the years after she was left at the altar by the love of her life. Why don't we start by reading into Miss Havisham's character?
Miss Havisham is a character from the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. She's a spinster and a wealthy one too. After inheriting her father fortune, she fell in love with a man named Compeyson who was stealing money from her with her half brother Arthur. On the day of their wedding, she receives a letter from Compeyson which explains that he had been deceiving and stealing money from her and that he obviously wasn't going to marry her. At that point, she had realised that she had just been jilted.
The beginning of the poem already throws you into the deepened within the first two lines of calling her fiance a "Beloved sweetheart bastard" really shows how much she had grown to hate him. There is obviously still a lot of anger there as "Not a day since then I haven't wished him dead". At this point, I suppose her anger is justified. I've never been married but I'd be pretty pissed off if my fiance admitted to defrauding me and doesn't want to marry me.
In the next verse we can see that the depression has taken place as she "stink and remember, whole days in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe; the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this to me?" As we can see, she doesn't wash. She's just existing in yellowing wedding dress in a decaying mansion. It seems as though she can't look at herself in the mirror with trembling with anxiety as she doesn't recognise the reflection of herself. She doesn't recognise the person she has become.
Verse three goes into more detail with "Puce curses that are sounds, not words." the definition of the word 'Puce' is "Some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear then down till I suddenly bite awake.". Miss Havisham is telling us that not only has she used her tongue to seduce Compeyson by kissing him but also by talking to him. Notice how in this line she doesn't use pronouns 'him', 'he' or 'his' but instead says 'the' and 'its'. This implies that she has become emotionally distant to him as her hatred of him grows.
There is a transition of love to hate in the final verse which shows us just how Havisham has gone from being in love to living in hate for the rest of her life. "Love's hate behind a white veil2, the meaning of the colour white is virginity, purity and innocence. Miss Havisham now uses the veil to hide behind, maybe to maintain her virtue?
Another mention of colour is straight away with "A red balloon bursting in my face". I think that the 'red balloon bursting' representsher heart and how it's become consumed with so much hate and rage to the point where it's now bursting.
The final part of the final verse has dark and necropliliac undertone. "Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon." . Obviously when you are on honeymoon, you don't usually have a dead body with you! It does tell you that Miss Havisham has taken the usual happiness and love and turned it all into a darker meaning that again shows how sinister she is.
The final line suggests how her mental and emotional state has declined over the years with "Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-breaks.". The stuttering of the word 'breaks' shows that she is still breaking down. Miss Havisham is consumed with so much hatred, anger and depression that it's all she now knows and will continue to let it get the better of her.
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