What the exam asks
- Paper 2 (comparative essay, 25 marks): You write a closed-book essay comparing two literary works in response to one of four general questions. When using Duffy’s poetry as one of your works, you should discuss more than one poem (such as pairing ‘Havisham’ with ‘Medusa’ or ‘Mrs Midas’) to demonstrate knowledge of the collection as a whole (Criterion A). Criterion B1 rewards close analysis and evaluation (judging how well a choice works) of Duffy’s language and broader choices like form and persona, while Criterion B2 rewards sustained comparison with your second work.
- Individual oral (40 marks): Because ‘Havisham’ is 16 lines long, the entire poem fits well within the 40-line extract limit, paired with a global issue such as how expectations around marriage shape a woman’s identity.
- HL essay (20 marks): ‘Havisham’ can anchor a 1,200–1,500-word investigation into a broader line of inquiry across Duffy’s work, such as how she uses intertextual revision and fractured syntax to voice marginalized female rage.
Core ideas
Intertextual revision and the title
In Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860–61), Miss Havisham is seen from the outside by the young narrator, Pip, as a grotesque gothic spectacle frozen in her decaying wedding dress. Duffy’s first major authorial choice is the title: by calling the poem simply ‘Havisham’, she strips away the marital prefix “Miss”. This refuses the social label that defines the woman solely by her unmarried status, shifting the focus from how society views her to how she experiences her own mind.
Form, structure and enjambment
The poem is structured into four unrhymed quatrains (four-line stanzas) totalling 16 lines—just two lines longer than a traditional 14-line sonnet. It acts as an anti-sonnet: a love poem curdled into hate. While the four neat quatrains look rigid on the page, like the room she is trapped in, the speaker’s syntax spills violently across lines and stanza breaks. This constant enjambment (running a sentence across a line or stanza boundary without punctuation) enacts a mind that cannot stop or contain its obsession.
Movement from opening to ending
Across the four stanzas, the monologue moves through distinct states of mind:
- Stanza 1: Waking obsession, where vengeful prayer hardens her body into stone and weapons.
- Stanza 2: Physical decay in the present room, where her reflection splits her sense of self in two.
- Stanza 3: Unconscious relief in erotic dreams, which twists back into waking violence.
- Stanza 4: A surreal explosion of wedding symbols and a final warning-filled collapse.