Havisham Flashcards
(14 cards)
Theme:
betrayal, destructive power of resentment, time and decay, isolation, madness, gender, power
‘Beloved sweetheart bastard’
-abrupt beginning with the voice of Havisham cursing the fiancés who has betrayed her
-‘Beloved sweetheart bastard’ is an oxymoron, expressing the extremes of emotions that are torturing the speaker
-the plosive ‘b’ suggests the spitting angry nature of the words being spoken
-triad
‘I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes’
-the metaphor ‘dark green pebbles’ suggests frailty jealously: Great Expectations hints to no clear reason as to why she needs to be jealous
-Havisham would be jealous of any woman whose wedding day that proceeds smoothly
‘Pebbles’ are hard and may suggest pain in her eyes caused by weeping
-eyes are soft and sensitive and often express kindness, could convey the idea of hardening emotions and growing hatred
-the metaphor echoes Duffy’s poem Medusa
-the fixed nature that she has become
‘Ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with’
-reference to Havisham aging
-but also could refer to her living in a state of nervous tension which pay cause her veins to bulge
-Ropes tied tightly around a bride’s hands is also a Celtic wedding ritual
-hyperbolic—> violence
‘Cawing Noooo at the wall’
‘The dress yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe’
-suggests that their is still hope that her fiancé will return, so she continues to wear her wedding dress until it yellows with age (colour imagery)
-demonstrates her conflicting feelings; simultaneous hatred and at the same time longing for him to return
-the colours in the poem are vivid and significant. Yellow is the colour of cowardice and may signify Havisham’s fear and inability to face disappointment, unmarried life
-personification of the clothes and the wardrobe
‘The slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this to me?’
‘A red balloon bursting in my face.Bang’
-balloons are usually intended for celebrations, in the context a wedding
-the balloon bursting represents the destruction of her wedding as it exploded and she was abandoned at the altar
-agin the use of colour imagery in ‘red’ acts as a symbol of anger and passion being used to contrast the white veil. It also represents blood, suggesting the source of her life being drained away.
-also may represent menstration and the need, as a woman, to be productive and the pinnacle of being a woman is to have a child which now has been crushed and taken away from her
‘I stabbed at a wedding-cake’
‘Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon’
-another contrast; ‘corpse’ and ‘honeymoon’ being opposites. Suggesting that either Havisham would rather have him dead than not at all, or that she would like to kill him
-suggesting necrophilia, the practice of having sex with a corpse. It indicates her madness. He’ll be dead for a long time, hence the ‘long slow honeymoon’
-the vague description of the ‘corpse’ reveals that she no longer cares if it is specifically her former fiancé. Now indicates her hatred is now more generalised across all ‘males’.
-the request of the corpse is also seen to be a positive thing like receiving a wedding gift, again expressing the extremity of her actions
-deeply disturbed
-‘GIVE ME’
‘Don’t think its only the heart that b-b-b-breaks’
-plosive ‘b’ sound with a stuttering style suggests that she is breaking/crying/collapsing
-breaking of her body
-maybe also alludes to her anger towards the bridegroom who abandoned her and perhaps further emphasis her need for violence against him + also final moment of collapse
Summary:
The poem is a monologue spoken by Miss Havisham, a character from Dickens’ Great Expectations. Jilted by her scheming fiancé, she continues to wear her wedding dress and sit amid the remains of her wedding breakfast for the rest of her life, while she plots revenge on all men.
Context:
-19th century women (unmarried), due to women being places in boxes, has caused her to be trapped in engagement ostracising her from a majority of society
-feminist: with the presentation of women in society
-based on the character Miss Havisham from the novel ‘Great Expectations’ + she was left at the altar some years before + a character who has never changed out of her weddings dress + man hater and wants revenge on all men
Structure:
-4 unrhymed stanzas
-free verse
-enjambed
-dramatic monologue
all suggests Havisham’s deranged psychological state
