Comparison of the ways women are presented in Salome and Havisham

Comparison of the ways women are presented in ‘Salome’ and ‘Havisham’ The two poems are written by a twentieth century poet called Carol Ann Duffy. In her poems women are presented in various ways. For example, the women in her poems ‘Salome’ and ‘Havisham’ are both quite deranged together with disturbed characteristics as they view love and relationships in two different ways – anger and bitterness. Duffy is known to write about traumatising scenes from childhood, adolescence, and adult life through love, memory and language; as shown in these two poems. Like comparing any two pieces of literature they both equally have their similarities and differences. These two poems were written around the same time, and one peculiar thing about the poems that Duffy wrote is the fact that she produced poems about women who were unimportant and inferior to famous pieces of writings like Salome in the first two books in the New Testament of the Bible as Herodias’ daughter and Herold Antipas’ step-daughter, and Havisham in one of Charles Dickens’ novels as Miss Havisham – ‘Great Expectations’. The women in Duffy’s poems are the same women as in those famous novels, however, they have a voice of their own – the poems show what these women have to say for themselves. Love has played a big role in the two women’s lives; it had scarred them and is one of the main reasons for their actions mentioned throughout the poems. Nevertheless, how they accept the consequences of love are completely unalike, yet one similarity is that they both respond to it as hatred. There are many ways in how Duffy presents Havisham. One of which is her bitterness. Her actions stated in the fourth stanza ‘I stabbed at a wedding cake’ is an inversion to the usual happily married couple, ready to cut the wedding cake with tenderness and excitement. The dramatic contrast between ‘stabbing’ the cake and the traditional way of cutting a cake emphasizes Havisham’s bitterness. It is quite clear how she desires to slaughter her former fiancé through her violent actions echoed throughout the poem. The language used in ‘Havisham’ such as ‘strangle’, ‘slewed’ and ‘dead’ creates violent and bitter imagery and demonstrates a murderous intention. Duffy also uses enjambment in ‘Havisham’ that suggests her bitterness is never-ending and cannot be contained in only just four lines of a stanza – ‘who did this / to me?’.
In contrast, the woman in Duffy’s other poem, Salome, is portrayed as a promiscuous and shameless woman who moves on from past relationships at an alarming speed, as demonstrated in the two rhetorical questions, ‘whose? – / what did it matter?’. Salome is presented as a careless woman as she doesn’t seem to give a second thought to her sexual conquests and is unaware of those who she is using. Furthermore, ‘What was his name?’ the fact that Salome cannot remember his name suggests that she is not emotionally engaged with this man as it is clear that they had a one night stand. The certainty of this information is also indicated at the beginning of the stanza – ‘I’d done it before / (and doubtless I’ll do it again, / sooner or later)’. The brackets used in the opening line gives a conversational and almost a slapdash tone; her casual attitude and promiscuity towards sex is gives the impression of a more stereotypical masculine behaviour. Unlike Havisham who is the victim of male behaviour, it is the men that are the victims in ‘Salome’.
Duffy illustrates women as very confused and undecided people as they have mixed feelings and emotions towards men. In ‘Havisham’, the phrase ‘Beloved sweetheart bastard’ is a short, dramatic and powerful opening as it sums up the violence in the poem in three words. As well as the fact that the words are an oxymoron, as they are words put together that have a noticeably different meaning. Havisham’s views on love and relationships seem to be traditional and lifelong, because nothing has changed since the day of Havisham’s wedding as shown as ‘Not a day since then’. She has remained faithful, but her fidelity has transformed into murderous intentions and depression. The quotations, ‘cawing Nooooo at the wall’ and ‘Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks’ greatly emphasize Havisham’s depressed emotion and self-pity; the expressions suggests jerky speech and resembles her language when she is sobbing.
On the other hand, Salome’s colloquial language and relaxed attitude shows that she views love and relationships in a completely contrasting way. When Havisham thinks of love as something special and to be remembered or kept, Salome thinks of love as something temporal and pointless – ‘what did it matter?’. In addition, the characters’ personalities that Duffy presents are entirely different too. Havisham has low self-esteem and thinks of herself as unworthy to other people, whereas in ‘Salome’, the woman is profoundly confident – ‘Good-looking, of course’ – and doesn’t fall in love with men that are below her high standards. Salome is also suggested as a guiltless and a brazen woman who doesn’t need to have just one man in her life as she uses men and rejects them.
The poems that were from a collection entitled ‘The World’s Wife’ in which Duffy gave previously silenced women a voice of their own, I can now conclude the way in which women are presented. Havisham, who is presented as a depressed, unforgiving and bitter woman, is the victim of men and has a murderous intention towards her former fiancé. This is utterly different to the promiscuous, shameless and brazen woman, Salome, who makes men her victims and actually performs murderous deeds. The contrast between Havisham’s self-pity and Salome’s high self-esteem is quite evident, but their response to heartbreak is the same – hatred. Personally, I have identified that the poem ‘Salome’ seems to be more powerful than ‘Havisham’. This is because of the language used and the way Duffy presented Salome and the poem overall. However ‘Havisham’ is also dominant and the words said are definitely heard.