Havisham Love Quotes

Miss Havisham begins her monologue with an oxymoron – a set of contradictory terms. Her ex-fiancé is both a beloved sweetheart and a bastard. Right from the beginning, then, we see that love and hate are closely intertwined in this poem.

For a moment, it seems that love isn't all bad. Miss Havisham has some erotic fantasies about her ex – until she's awoken with a violent start. So much for the beauty and pleasures of love. Oh, and why do you think she refers to her fiancé as an "it" here? That's a little strange, right?

Here Miss Havisham once again ties love to hate. Behind all love is hate, she says. She imagines a red (a color we associate with love, lust, blood) balloon bursting, She stabs at a wedding cake. The source of all this hate and violence comes from love, which seems pretty twisted if we may say so.

Honeymoons are supposed to be joyous times for couples. This imagined honeymoon, in contrast, makes us cringe.

Miss Havisham breaks down at the end of the poem. She admits that it's not only her heart that's been broken by her fiancé. Her body is also worn down, and her life is destroyed by her lost love.