Exploring the Theme of Love in Duffy’s Havisham Essay

Duffy, writing from the twentieth atomic number 6 perspective, revisits the well known character from Great Expectations in a dramatic monologue, where she assumes the persona of Havisham to explore the innermost thoughts and feelings of a bitter woman destruct by unrequited love and humiliation. Havisham appears to be written in the modality of a Shakespearean sonnet, but does not end in a rhyming couplet, only continues in this style. This symbolises that there is no happy shutting for Havisham and thoughts of her lovers betrayal will haunt her throughout the tolerate of her life, her pain in ongoing and never ending.Duffy takes away Miss Havishams title by doing this she strips her of her identity in society. Duffys use of an oxymoron and pejorative, loved sweetheart bastard, has an undercurrent of violence, and emphasises Havishams conflicting emotions about her ex lover. The use of dark, monosyllabic language like dead, coupled with the unpleasant d sound shows how detac hed Havisham has become from her emotions. The metaphor dark thousand pebbles for eyes, reflects how her soul has been hardened to all feelings and emotions.The isolated noun spinster reflects Havishams own isolation from society, through her embarrassment at being leave at the altar. Havisham stinks and remembers, the olfactic go for shows that Havisham is consumed by her past and that every part of her is sully by it. Duffy employs an aural animalistic image, cawing that strips Havisham of her femininity and in her wardrobe Havishams dress is yellowing, reflecting her own decay.Havisham is afraid to look in the slewed mirror because she fears herself and wherefore she questions who did this to her, whether she is responsible for what she has become. Duffy uses darkly erotic and sensual images as Havisham imagines emasculating her lover, and a cherry-red plosive, bite, to emphasise her desire to emasculate him, just as her femininity was taken from her. The oxymoron loves ha te reflects Havishams conflicted emotions, that her past has sick of(p) her present and future.Duffy employs a violent plosive, red balloon bursting in my casing, with a denotation that emphasises her desire for revenge. There is a violent, isolated, onomatopoeic, aural image that represents her pain, her past and her suffering. Havisham longs for a male corpse which implies her desire to torture and put one across revenge on her ex lover. Duffy shows us that it is not only Havishams heart that has broken, but her mind is broken too, she has been destroyed by her ex lover and this has distorted her view on her life and herself.