How are love and death presented in "Havisham" by Carol Ann Duffy?Need this for essay help. Thanks in advance!

This is an excellent example of a dramatic monologue in
which Carol Ann Duffy breathes life into one of the most fascinating and mysterious
characters in Dickensian literature: Miss Havisham from Great
Expectations by Charles Dickens. She is famous for responding to being jilted
on her wedding day by trying to freeze time, wearing her wedding dress and letting the
wedding feast rot in front of her for the rest of her
days.

In this poem, therefore, there is a curious mix of
love and hatred, signified by the opening sentence: "Beloved sweetheart bastard." This
paradox identifies her confused emotions as her hatred against her former lover is
welded to her love for him in a confusing mix of emotions. She goes on to personify
herself as "Love's / hate behind a white veil" which again picks up on this
contradictory emotion.

In a sense, we could argue that Miss
Havisham, though still alive, begins a living death from the moment she is jilted. Note
how the second stanza describes the pitiful life she
leads:

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Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole
days

in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the
dress

yellowing, trembling if I open the
wardrobe...

Such descriptions
focus on the insane-like state that Miss Havisham enters because of her pain at being
jilted and presents us with a woman who is tortured by what has happened to her and is
only able to find temporary relief in the dreams she has of being united (sexually?)
with the man who jilted her.

The last two lines bring the
themes of love and death together in a stunning
ending:

Give
me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.

Don't think
it's only the heart that
b-b-b-breaks.

On the one
hand, her love is shown by the way that the last line clearly indicates Miss Havisham is
heartbroken. On the other hand, she desires the death of her former lover for her "long
slow honeymoon," grimly subverting the normal expectations of honeymoon so that in death
she can get her revenge. The stutter on the word "b-b-b-breaks" also clearly suggests
that it is more than Miss Havisham's heart that is just broken, as she perhaps slips
into obsessional madness.