Why does Bess kill herself in The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes?
Bess in The Highwayman has been set up as a living booby-trap to ensnare her lover (the Highwayman of the title). She deliberately detonates herself as she hears her boyfriend approach to warn him of the presence of the wicked Redcoats. At a fairly superficial level one could say that Bess kills herself because she is so devoted to her lover that she values his escape and survival more highly than her own life. At a rather deeper level one could point out that Alfred Noyes – like many writers of his generation – had serious difficulties dealing with physical intimacy between the sexes. (It is hinted that Bess and the Highwayman may have had sex, but the poem never dares to say so openly). Since Noyes’ poetry cannot accept sex as an expression of intimacy between a man and a woman, the only way Noyes has of showing love is to have Bess die for her boyfriend. This is a pretty perverted way of looking at love; but it makes it a much easier poem to teach in a mixed class of fourteen year o
