Carol Ann Duffy - Havisham Flashcards
“Beloved sweetheart bastard”
-Oxymoron = confused mental and emotional state
“Not a day since then I haven’t wished him dead”
- Scale of Obsession
- Vague = painful to mention wedding day
- She has very dark thoughts
“Prayed for it so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes”
- Consumed, tragic as she actually wants love
- Metaphor = hardened eyes is the window to her soul which highlights that she is dead inside.
“ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with”
- Poor physical state = aging
- Violent image shows her hatred of men damaged
“Spinster”
-Hurtful title, short sentence used to create impact
“I stink and remember”
-She’s in a tragic state
“Whole days in bed cawing nooooo at the wall”
- Her whole life is consumed
- She’s losing humanity, ANIMAL
- Elongated = tragic and desperate
“the dress yellowing”
-Symbolic, length of time stuck in the past unable to move on
“trembling if I open the wardrobe”
- Word choice = she is afraid to look at the clothes of her past
- Physically trembles when faced with the task
“the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself”
-She does not recognise what she has become
“who did this to me”
-Tragic question was it a man or herself, she does not know
“sounds not words”
-She is struggling to communicate, length of time isolated from the world
“some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear”
-She still dreams of finding love
“I suddenly bite awake”
- Sexual image becomes violent
- Act of violence against men to emasculate
“Love’s hate”
-Split opposites highlights her confusion between loving or hating him
“hate behind a white veil”
-Romantic wedding image now tainted with hate”
“Bang”
-Onomatopoeia = violence exploding
“I stabbed at a wedding cake”
- Violent image
- Word choice of stabbed = violent vengeful connotations
- She hates the idea of marriage now which is tragically ironic
“Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon”
- Physical love is now dead to her
- Emotionally she is dead
- Romantic image of honeymoon now tainted with hate
“Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks”
- Her heart is broken but she is broken as a person and she cannot function anymore
- Onomatopoeia and elongated alliterative B sound = her upset and sadness but also that it is a long process
