Havisham (SQA National 5 English): Revision Note

Here is a guide to Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Havisham’ to help prepare you for the SQA National 5 English exam. It includes:

• Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations

• Writer’s methods: an exploration of Duffy’s methods and techniques

• Understanding the poem: an exploration of the themes and ideas within Duffy’s poem

• Linking the poems: an understanding of how ‘Havisham’ connects to Duffy’s other prescribed poems for the Scottish text section

Overview

In order to answer questions on any poem it is vital that you understand what it is about. This section includes:

• An overview of the poem

• A ‘translation’ of the poem, section-by-section

• A commentary of each of these sections, outlining Carol Ann Duffy’s intention and message

‘Havisham’ overview

Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Havisham’ is a dramatic monologue. The narrator, Miss Havisham, is a character from Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations who was abandoned on her wedding day by her fiancé. She describes her life, her enduring grief and her anger towards the man responsible for her misery. 

‘Havisham’ translation

Lines 1-4

Translation

• Havisham describes her ex-lover with hatred and wishes for his death every day

• Her eyes and the veins on her hands have been transformed by her constant prayers for his death

Duffy’s intention

• Duffy’s opening oxymoron “Beloved sweetheart bastard” draws attention to the final word, “bastard”, which combines the harsh plosives of the previous two words:

  • The alliteration of the ‘b’ and ‘t’ sounds make them sound as though they are being spat out, conveying the depth of Havisham’s bitter hatred

• Duffy uses imagery of “dark green pebbles” and “ropes” to bring together the elements of grief, death, rage and sexual jealousy, setting up the tone of the whole poem:

  • Havisham’s eyes, tired with constant praying for her ex’s death, have become cold and dead, like stones:

    • Their green colour evokes jealousy, perhaps of brides who haven’t been betrayed

  • The ropes of veins on the backs of her hands link with her desire to use them to “strangle” her former fiancé

Lines 5-7

Translation

• Havisham refers to herself as a spinster (a derogatory term for an old, unmarried woman) 

• She describes her grief-struck behaviour and the white wedding dress she has never taken off, which is now yellow with age

Duffy’s intention

• Duffy again uses the sounds of words to emphasise Havisham’s enduring rage and desolation: 

  • “Spinster”, whose plosives sound spat out, is isolated in a sentence of its own, signifying Havisham’s isolation:

    • The ‘st’ of “stink” echoes the ‘st’ of “spinster”, convey her disgust at her unmarried state

• The reference to “days” links to the earlier “every day” to reinforce the fact that this is a situation that Havisham experiences continuously

• The poet dehumanises Havisham using animal parallels and onomatopoeia:

  • The “cawing” aligns her with crows 

  • The extended “Noooo” sounds animalistic, rather than speechlike 

Lines 7-9

Translation

• Havisham trembles with fear if she opens the wardrobe and sees her reflection in the “slewed” (crooked or twisted) mirror

• She asks who is responsible for her state of spinsterhood and curses him with inarticulate sounds rather than words

Duffy’s intention

• Duffy conveys Havisham’s alienation from herself:

  • She is afraid of what she will see in the mirror, which shows her aging reflection 

  • She refers to herself in the third person, “her”, then acknowledges that the terrible reflection is, in fact, “myself”

• The poet reinforces Havisham’s rage and dehumanisation by portraying her using “curses that are sounds not words”, linking back to her previous animalistic sounds:

  • Describing her curses as “Puce”, a colour associated with fever and rage, creates synaesthesia, which amplifies her self-estrangement 

Lines 10-12

Translation

• Some nights are better, when Havisham imagines lying with her ex, caressing his body, until she wakes with a jolt

Duffy’s intention

• Duffy sustains the imagery of death and alienation by describing Havisham’s former fiancé as “the lost body”:

  • Rather than being a person, the body is referred to as “it”

• The poet conveys the contrast between Havisham’s inarticulate rage and her previous “fluent tongue”, or language of love

• The “bite” could convey Havisham’s desire to harm her former fiancé, even in dreams:

  • Her movement “down” his body, and what she bites, is left ambiguous, but suggests a wish-fulfilment linked to sexual rejection

Lines 12-14

Translation

• Havisham sees her face behind her white wedding veil, which she still wears, as an image of love turned to hatred

• The red balloon bursting is a metaphor for her violent shock when she was abandoned:

  • She destroys her wedding cake in her grief and anger

Duffy’s intention

• Duffy uses another oxymoron, “Love’s / hate”,  to demonstrate how these two states are flipsides of an intense emotion: 

  • The stanza break between the two words indicates the mental and emotional schism Havisham experienced

• The metaphor of the red balloon signifies Havisham’s joyful expectation on her wedding day with an image evoking children’s parties, followed by the violence of the betrayal, when the metaphorical balloon was burst in her face:

  • The alliteration of the plosive ‘b’ sounds in “balloon”, “burst” and “Bang” emphasises the sudden shock of her experience 

  • However, the lack of an exclamation mark makes the “Bang” almost ironic, as though Havisham has replayed this scene so many times that the memory no longer has the power to shock her

• Duffy illustrates the focus of Havisham’s resulting rage by describing her stabbing her wedding cake, an episode that doesn’t happen in Great Expectations

Lines 15-16

Translation

• Havisham returns to her wish for her ex to die in the aftermath of his betrayal

• She alludes to her broken heart, but implies that her experience has also destroyed her mind and identity

Duffy’s intention

• Duffy demonstrates the circular nature of Havisham’s obsession with her former fiancé’s death by returning to the image of a “male corpse” at the end of the poem:

  • Her reference to a “long slow honeymoon” confirms the connection with his betrayal and conveys the satisfaction she would get from a protracted punishment

• The final word suggests Havisham’s final breakdown, but simultaneously conveys a subtle menace:

  • By drawing attention to the word “breaks”, Duffy could be implying Havisham’s desire to break, or destroy, others, as she indeed attempts to do in Dickens’

Writer’s methods

This section is divided into three parts: form, structure and language. When you write about a poem, aim to expand your interpretation of what the poet is writing about by exploring how they present their ideas and why they have made the technical choices they have. 

Focusing on the poet’s ideas and how they express them will gain you far more marks than examining individual poetic techniques. Look at the analysis in the sections below, which is organised by the main themes of ‘Havisham’ and demonstrates the methods and reasons for Carol Ann Duffy’s choices of:

• Form

• Structure

• Language

Form

Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Havisham’ is a dramatic monologue that explores the fictional speaker’s experience of being jilted on her wedding day and its subsequent effect on her emotional state and sense of identity.

Structure

The structure of the poem illustrates Havisham’s uncontrollable thought processes. She is unable to escape from her unstable identity and her feelings of loss. 

Language

Understanding the poem

Showing a clear understanding of the poem’s main ideas and themes is central to gaining good marks in your SQA National 5 English exam. Aim to demonstrate your thoughtful engagement with the way Duffy uses techniques to get her meaning across. The following main themes of ‘Havisham’ are explored below:

• Identity and violence

• Loss and obsession

Identity and violence

• Duffy’s narrator, Havisham, is based on the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations:

  • This enables Duffy to reinterpret a well-known literary figure:

    • Miss Havisham is lured into a promise of marriage by a man called Compeyson, who is the “Beloved sweetheart bastard” of Duffy’s poem:

      • He defrauds her before abandoning her on the day of their wedding

• Miss Havisham’s violent feelings towards men in general, and Compeyson in particular, are never satisfied in Dickens’ novel:

  • The violence inherent in Miss Havisham’s changed identity culminates, in Dickens, with her death following a fire caused by her decayed wedding dress

  • However, Duffy’s poem gives voice to her rage and her identity as a wronged woman

Loss and obsession

• In Dickens’ novel, Miss Havisham’s identity is completely shaped by Compeyson’s betrayal and her loss: 

  • She wears her wedding dress for the rest of her life, even as it turns yellow and starts to fall apart

  • The wedding feast at her home remains intact and rots away over the decades

• Miss Havisham vows revenge on all men and adopts the beautiful Estella with this sole purpose: 

  • She trains Estella to make men love her, then destroy them emotionally

• Like Duffy’s narrator, Dickens’ Miss Havisham is clearly obsessed to the point of madness with Compeyson’s betrayal, which informs her entire life:

  • However, while Dickens has limited sympathy for Miss Havisham, Duffy’s Havisham gives full expression to her devastating sense of loss

  • In this way, Duffy’s poem reinterprets Dickens’ character, offering her a fuller range of expression for her obsession

Linking the poems

Students often use Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry to answer the Scottish texts section of the SQA National 5 Critical Reading exam. If you choose, though, you can write your critical essay question on Duffy’s poetry instead. 

If you decide to write about Duffy for the Scottish text section, the final question asks you to demonstrate a wider understanding of her poetry. That means linking more than one poem together by focusing on her ideas and how she communicates them (her techniques). 

The six poems Carol Ann Duffy poems on the SQA syllabus are:

• ‘Before You Were Mine’

• ‘Originally’

• ‘Mrs Midas’

• ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class’

• ‘Medusa’

• ‘Havisham’

Here are some parallels between the six poems, organised by shared themes:

Sources:

‘Havisham’ by Carol Ann Duffy (opens in a new tab)