Havisham bite awake. Love's hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake. Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon. Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks. Havisham "Havisham" is a poem written in 1993 by Carol Ann Duffy. It responds to Charles Dickens' character "Miss Havisham" from his novel "Great Expectations", looking at Havisham's mental and physical state many decades after being left standing at the altar, when the bride-to-be is in her old age. It expresses Havisham's anger at her fiancé and her bitter rage over
Sondra Sherman begun to express a sense of human character and emotion. For example, the piece Miss Havisham uses Charles Dickens' archetypal character to explore the stereotype of the old maid and society's discomfort with nontraditional women. As Sherman describes, "Miss Havisham, a chagrined, wealthy old woman, was left standing at the alter. The interior of her magnificent house remains as it was decorated to celebrate her wedding day. An atmosphere of bitter disappointment prevails." Sherman has also worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,