Havisham Flashcards
“Beloved sweetheart bastard”
Oxymoron signifying a love/hate relationship. Sense of betrayal.
“Bastard” - denotation- someone without a father. Connotations - nasty, someone who has no regard for other people’s feelings, an insult. Alliteration of B, a plosive sound. Forces the person speaking to spit out these words, adds to the insult and idea of hatred and bitterness.
“Not a day since then”
Inversion of normal word order emphasises the oddness of the situation, everyday she thinks of him but only to wish he was dead. Enjambment emphasises that she is rambling on, highlights her bitterness.
“I haven’t wished him dead”
Double negative, emphasising a tone of negativity whilst highlighting her state of mind.
“Prayed for it”
Religious like a wedding ceremony, shows her desperation. Strange idea of praying for something bad to happen to someone, not very religious
“So hard”
Sense of desperation and embarrassment
“Spinster”
The word in a sentence on its own makes it a label. Denotation- unmarried woman, usually older. Connotations - hint of insanity, isolation, lonely, sad, outcast, “left on the shelf”, undesirable.
“I stink and remember”
Unwashed, not looking after herself, present tense verbs give an insight into what she actually ‘does’. Creates the idea of the memory making her life unclean.
“Whole days cawing Nooooo at the wall”
She is wailing and crying all day, barely getting out of bed. Almost like she is waiting for her beloved to return, frozen in time.
“Cawing” - dehumanises her by using an animalistic sound implying she is no longer human but an animal.
“The dress yellowing”
“Yellowing” - suggests the decay caused by the passing of time and her unhygienic state. Symbolises her own decay both in body and in mind as she is ageing but is going mad from her grief and lack of ability to move on
“Trembling if I open the wardrobe”
Ambiguous as to wether the dress in is the wardrobe or on her.
“Trembling” - she is shaking, with anxiety or weakness or the dress may be trembling on the rail of the wardrobe
“The slewed mirror”
“Slewed” - something that is not quite right or straight, things are turned and not at the right angle
“Her, myself, who did this”
Confused as to who she is looking at, suggests she doesn’t recognise herself
“Who did this (/) to me?”
Gap between stanzas break up this question suggesting that Havisham has spent a long time pondering this question. The answer- her? The beloved that jilted her? Time?
“Puce curses”
A purple/red colour like a bruise, odd to describe insults (curses) as having a colour. This may imply the impact her words have. Idea of pain and violence, her only course of revenge is to curse his name as she is physically unable to kill him. Double meaning of “curses”, trying to doom someone almost like with a spell that a witch might cast, going against the theme of religion previously present (prayed).
“Sounds not words”
Another hint that she is more animal like as she is making noises that are incomprehensible and indecipherable. Babbling and rambling indicates her mental decline
