When Standing Female Nude (1985) was published, Duffy was immediately acclaimed for her outstanding skill in characterisation, timing and dialogue, particularly in her use of the dramatic monologue. She is acutely sensitive and empathetic as she places herself into the mindset of each character and articulates the respective points of view in the idiom of the characters’ own speech. Duffy often incorporates humour with serious insights and social commentary.
In poems such as a “A Clear Note”( Duffy, SFN, 27), Duffy creates a space where the unrepresented can voice their experiences, expressing ways of understanding their reality through historical connections and negotiating dialogically with the reader for validation. The poem “A Clear Note” is a trilogy spoken by three women: Agatha, Moll, and Bernadette. According to Margery Palmer McCulloch in her essay ''Women and Scottish Poetry, 1972-1999'', the major theme in Duffy's poem, "A Clear Note" is "woman writing woman". The poem tells the story of three generations of women- mother, daughter, and granddaughter (McCulloch,65). The three women are bound together by mother daughter relationships. The poem explores the
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They do not nag, bully or domineer over their husbands; nor do they seek to absorb men in a way that robs them of money, life, selfhood, or achievement. Instead, the men are the absorbers, naggers and dominators over women. The use of wry humour shows that Duffy is aware of the irony of describing men in a way that suggests they oppress women by the use of the same tactics they purport to despise in women. Like the man in "Terza Rima SW 19", these men see not the women under their gaze, but their own reflection which they mistake for the female. This process allows the men to avoid knowing their partners, or themselves. Duffy shows how these tactics limit and destroy human relationships; how, when used from a position of power, they destroy