Havisham Summary

The speaker of this poem is the famous character Miss Havisham, a character who appeared in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations as a spinster who was once swindled by a suitor and left at the altar. Ever since then, she has suspended herself in time, refusing to remove her wedding dress, stopping her clocks, and becoming a recluse. This poem outlines the extent of her insanity and her obsession with the man who jilted her. Though the character is apparently powerless to move on from the pain this moment caused her, she is not entirely powerless within this poem. Of course, such descriptions may just be the character's delusions, but she gains unearthly, transformative power from her pain; her eyes become pebbles, and her hands grow ropes. She stabs, she curses, and in her dreams she bites down upon the man who left her. Yet these forms of power cannot deny how she has lost control over her own life. The fullness of both her love and hatred preclude any other manner of living.