Havisham and To his coy mistress

The poem, ‘Havisham’ by Britain’s contemporary poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, focuses on the bitter and resentful Miss Havisham from the book, ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens. It tells the story of love coming to an acrimonious end, where Miss Havisham is deserted by her fiancé at the altar, on the day of her wedding. In addition, the poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ written in the metaphysical genre by political satire Andrew Marvell, who is from the 1600’s. He writes in the point of view of an individual expressing his desire, love and yearning for a women, who he finds to be coy, and feeling that they will run out of time if they do not get together soon. Both of these poems explore various areas of love and relationships, using numerous literary techniques and structural devices, giving off very divergent impressions of these motifs.

Duffy conveys the poem as a monologue, and her first three words set the mood for the entire poem. She begins with the words ‘Beloved sweetheart bastard’ which is an oxymoron, meaning that a set of terms that contradict each other. The juxtaposition here allows the reader to see how close love and hate are intertwined in this poem. Miss Havisham is incapable of progressing with her life and spends a lot of time obsessing over this heartbreak, showing the reader that she has become confused, and blinded with rage over time causing her to experience love and hate as similar things, showing that her impression of love has become distorted.

This is further explored when she says ‘I've dark green pebbles for eyes’ this imagery, which is also a metaphor, is fairly powerful and conjures up a fearsome image in the mind. The words ‘dark green’ can also be, according to colour psychology, a connota...

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...hite veil; a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang.’ Once again, love ties to hate; she is attempting to claim that behind all love is hate. She imagines a red (a colour associated with love, lust, blood) balloon bursting, showing that the source of all this hate and violence comes from love, and her previous relationship with her ex. The poem ends with the word ‘b-b-breaks’ portraying that her mentality has also broken alongside her heart. If we were to link this to ‘coy mistress’, the final stanza is about encouraging the women to resign herself to his efforts, claiming that they should be together for the brief time they have left in the world. This brings forth another contrast, as in ‘Havisham’ the repetition of the ‘b’ makes it seem as though she had finally given up, however in ‘coy mistress’ the speaker gets more persuasive in his attempts to woo his lady.