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
Miss Havisham her. Miss Havisham's father was a wealthy brewer and her mother died shortly after she was born. Her father later remarried and had a son, named Arthur; with the family cook. Although they grew up together, Miss Havisham's relationship with her half brother was far from harmonious. She inherited most of her father's fortune and fell in love with a man named Compeyson, who conspired with the jealous Arthur to swindle her of her riches. Her cousin, Matthew Pocket, warned her to be careful, but she was too much in love to listen. On the wedding day, while she was