Havisham - Carol Ann Duffy Flashcards
Literary devices
- Imagery
- Symbolism
- Metaphor
Imagery
Violence etc
Symbolism
?
Loss of humanity
“cawing Nooooo at the wall” - crows caw, suggests she is almost no longer human. The animal ‘nooooo’, like a wolf, reinforces this.
“Puce curses that are sounds not words” - She is so inarticulate that she screams vicious random sounds instead of full words.
Use of colours
“Red balloon bursting” - violent imagery, red is the colour of anger. Also colour of love: she feels anger as her potential for feeling love with someone had bursted away - disappeared
“Dark green pebbles for eyes” - jealousy
“Dress / yellowing” broken: she has worn the same dress since her wedding and it has yellowed with age. Furthermore, yellow is the colour of cowardice and may signify Havisham’s fear and inability to face a disappointed, unmarried life.
Confliction
“Beloved sweetheart bastard” - conflicted: calling him a bastard but also calling him beloved and sweetheart.
“Dress / yellowing” - She has worn the same dress since her wedding and it has yellowed with age. She is conflicted: there is simultaneous hatred and at the same time longing for him to return.
“Love’s / hate behind a white veil” she loves him but also hates him for jilting her. Veils are thin and you can see through them. Shows that there is a thin line between love and hate and she experiences both sides. Presence of the veil may also be related to her marriage and may suggest that being jilted causes love to quickly change to hate.
Anger
Presents anger through violent imagery. There is a semantic field of violence.
“Stabbed at a wedding cake”
“puce curses”
“red balloon bursting”
“ropes on the back of my hand I could strangle with”
Jealousy
“dark green pebbles for eyes” - green is the colour for jealousy. The premodifier ‘dark’ shows the darkness that her jealousy has taken her to. In addition, eyes are soft, sensitive, and express kindness so the idea of eyes turning hard may show that the weeping has caused her eyes pain and caused them to be hard, and also emotions turning hard and hatred forming from kindness
Beginning line
“Beloved sweetheart bastard”
The beginning is abrupt, with the voice of Havisham cursing the fiance who has betrayed her. It’s an oxymoron, expressing the extremes of emotions that are torturing the speaker. The plosive ‘b’ sounds suggest spitting anger and the three words, if spoken aloud, are halting, with percussive hard consonants.
Final line
“Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.”
The final line is not a resolution to the poem unlike most poems - shows there is no solution to Havisham’s situation, locked as she is in her grief.
‘b-b-b-breaks’ is onomatopoeic. The plosive ‘b’ could represent her rapid heartbeat or a stutter. Both suggest she is overwhelmed with emotion. Note that the poem began with plosive ‘b’s and ends with ‘b’s, creating a cyclical structure.
Structure
“Love’s / hate” - broken structure (enjambment through stanzas) represents how broken she is
“Who did this / to me” - ^^
Enjambment and caesura throughout the whole poem as well - lack of structure: represents the lack of structure in her life - how broken she is.
The only structure present in the poem is that it starts and ends with plosive ‘b’ sounds (which represent anger) and demonstrates that Miss Havisham is locked in an endless cycle of anger.
Form
Dramatic monologue - free verse - stream of consciousness to represent her thoughts.
Context
Miss Havisham was jilted at the altar - the poem is called Havisham as she is so distraught at being jilted that she removes the “miss” as an attempt to remove the reminder of her failed marriage.
