Havisham Analysis

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Frank Sun May 2015 “How does Havisham feel about her life, and how does the poet present her feelings?” “Havisham” is a poem based on “Miss.Havisham” on the novel “The Great Expectations”. But when you consider the fact this character is referred to as Miss Havisham in the novel Great Expectations, the titles takes on an interesting new twist. The missing “Miss” has an intriguing effects. First, it takes Miss Havisham’s gender out of the picture. When we read the title, we can’t be sure this is the Havisham we’re familiar with. Second, by leaving out “Miss”, Duffy is drawing attention to the fact that Havisham is her maiden name. She hasn’t taken on her husband's name because she never actually married a man. Throughout out a poem,…show more content…
The structure of the poem is divided into four stanzas, each one cursing Compeyson herself, describing Havisham’s anger and feelings. Each four lines that are similar length, so it looks quite regular and there is no rhyme and rhythm, showing the dull image of Havisham’s life. The four solid structures are able to convey message effectively, and lines with no punctuation shows the flow of a negative conversation, which links the idea of talking. Also, “Havisham” is a dramatic monologue where it is spoken by fictional character, Miss.Havisham, not the poet Carol Ann Duffy. Dramatic monologues like this enhances the feeling of a natural conversation, as the reader is able to feel like they are talking to Havisham, while we are also able to feel empathy knowing more deep and detail thoughts of her. Throughout a poem, there are many lines that breaks off suddenly in the middle of the sentence, that is continued in the next line or stanza while many poets and their lines with a natural pause. This seems unnatural and implies that Havisham keeps stopping and starting her speech again, making her sound as if she’s not in a control of her words. The phrase “to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.” suggests repeated “u” sounds: “to” and “puce” are closely related to the sounds in “curses” and “words”. Duffy used internal thyme where we refers to repeating the same sounds within a single line of poem within a line and she’s cramming a lot of stuff in this compact little poem. This makes the
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