Love’s Hate Behind a White Veil: A Counterplay Between Ageing, Trauma and Revenge

Abstract

The literary ghost of Charles Dickens’ The Great Expectations, Havisham, is appropriately repositioned by Carol Ann Duffy as “the wicked old hag” in a contemporary setting in her poem “Havisham.” The gory and decaying room of Havisham can be interpreted as a metaphor for an old-age home, portraying the struggles of aging, declining mental health, and temporal stagnation. The suspended state of the room covered in dust and taint reflects the fragility and fixation that can be seen in older people. Havisham’s obsessive behavior and emotional extremity mirror the conditions of PTSD that are commonly found in geriatric patients with bitter past experiences who become social recluses. However, there is an exception to this. This research aims to study Havisham’s voluntary isolation from the perspective of the autonomic nervous system, specifically the Dorsal Vagal system, characterized by immobilization in the Polyvagal Theory proposed by Stephen Porges, not as a clinical examination but as endorsed by a critical textual analysis, where her action is screened similarly to that of old people who would have faced traumatic betrayals in life.