In both poems there is someone that has gone missing; a male that is absent, either dead or left. Also they are all about a character, either from a book (Great Expectations) or a real person (Shakespeare’s wife).
‘Havisham’ is written in a monologue style which provides the speaker with a realistic voice. It is basically a big oxymoron. It is about love and hate, the biggest contrast.
Through the use of images such as “red balloon bursting” Havisham demonstrates how love continues to hurt her. A balloon is supposed to be a fun object but this one just blows up in her face. “Male corpse” demonstrates just how unfeeling the persona is towards men. She no longer feels the need for a living husband; her life has been consumed by feeling hatred for her fiancé, thus men have slowly become dehumanised in her eyes.
Strong words such as “Bite” suggests the gnawing pain she feels from having lost the one she loved. “Ropes that I could strangle with.” The speaker describes the amount they have aged by referring to the veins on the back of their hands; over time, she has withered to make her veins look as rough as ropes. Whereas “strangle” refers to her anger and mixed feelings about love; she now loves to hate so much that she wishes to strangle the next man she sees. The poems first few words set the scene almost: “Beloved sweetheart bastard”. The fact that Duffy has used an oxymoron so early in the poem suggests that she is trying to put a huge amount of emphasis on the conflicting emotions. The speaker uses both hateful and loving words which suggest that she has been hurt by love. Could she be trying to decide whether she loves to hate or hates to love? “I’ve got dark green pebbles for eyes.” This metaphor can be used to explain the speakers’ attitudes towards men. Dark suggests that she no longer feels anything for men while the green suggests envy; the speaker is jealous of all the love that surrounds her. It reminds her of what she almost had, of what she will never experience.
Duffy uses enjambement throughout the stanzas to emphasise Havisham’s mental insecurity. It demonstrates how confused she is by her conflicting emotions and cannot decide whether she hates men or not. The final part of the third stanza merges into the fourth, demonstrating the distress that Havisham feels.
“Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Noooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length,”
Despite describing the obvious; her wedding dress becoming yellow with age, the speaker is also explaining how her hate of men is everlasting. “Who did this to me?” suggests her insecurity. Who is really to blame for who she has become? Duffy uses enjambement on “to me” to further emphasise this point. Despite looking orderly, the poem is set into neat stanzas; enjambement is used constantly throughout the poem to show the speaker cannot control her emotions properly. Her feelings of love and hate are becoming confused while her constant babbling expresses her emotional insecurity.
I think that the author of this poem, Carol Ann Duffy, has been hurt before by a man, which makes her dislike for men strong, and the poem brings out her true feelings and opinions of men.
This poem makes me feel sorry for Miss Havisham but also makes me dislike her because of such harsh words that she uses. She may have been left by one man, but that doesn’t mean that all men are to blame and to become hated so much, enough for her to want to kill them. “Male corpse”.
On the other hand, ‘Hathaway’ is all about love and romance on the persona’s point of view. There is no mention of any anger, hate or dark emotions, apart from a little bit of sadness near the end when mentioning his death as “I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head”. The introductory quote from Shakespeare's will 'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed' reminds us that Shakespeare's best bed was reserved for guests, and that Anne inherited the one that she and her husband slept in. This bed becomes the focus of the fourteen line poem.
From line five to line ten Duffy uses imagery in a fascinating way that relates directly to the fact that Shakespeare was a writer. Anne sees her body as 'a softer rhyme to his ... now assonance', assonance being a figure of speech in which the same vowel sound is repeated. Then follows the charming personification of his touch, portrayed as 'a verb dancing in the centre of a noun', giving a feeling of grace and delicacy. Anne says that she sometimes dreamed that Shakespeare had 'written' her, wishing that she herself were part of his artistic creation. She metaphorically imagines the bed as 'a page beneath his writer's hands'. She sees their lovemaking as drama enacted through 'touch', 'scent' and 'taste'.
In the opening two lines, Duffy uses a metaphor to express the magic of the bed in which Shakespeare made love to Anne: it was 'a spinning world / of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas’. More metaphors follow in lines three and four as Anne Hathaway recalls their lovemaking; she expresses the notion that Shakespeare would 'dive for pearls', and she describes the sweet words he said to her as 'shooting stars' that landed on her lips when he kissed her.
In lines eleven and twelve a contrast is created to the early magic of the poem in the description of how the guests, in the best bed, 'dozed on, / dribbling their prose'; no poetic lovemaking for them! But line twelve then switches to Anne's alliterative description of Shakespeare as 'My living laughing love'. She tells us in line thirteen how she treasures her memories of him with the metaphor 'I hold him in .the casket of my widow's head'. The final line compares this act to the way in which Shakespeare held Anne so lovingly in that second-best bed. The last two lines are a rhyming couplet, just as the last two lines of a Shakespearian sonnet would be, ending the poem with a sense of unity.
The poet, in my opinion has had a love who she felt this strongly for.
‘Havisham’ is a poem full of rich imagery, the tale of a woman who remembers her husband in a wonderful, loving way with no hint of sorrow. It is beautiful to read and to dwell on the magical pictures that are painted within it.
