The World's Wife Poem Analysis

The World’s Wife

The World’s Wife is a combination of poems derived from myths, history, biblical stories, and fairy tales by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, and it was published in 1999. Most of her poems in the collection are in the form of dramatic monologues, in which she gives voice to women who did not have a voice in the myths and stories from which they originate. Most of her poems usually deal with gender and patriarchal issues. This essay will explain gender relationships in the World’s Wife: how women’s creativity has been dominated or limited by their male coevals, the love relationships and their failure, as well as Duffy’s reversal of gender roles in some of her poems.

Women usually have a passive voice due to established gender

However, the poems are about flawed love and the failure of heterosexual relationships. The reasons for their failures can be narrowed to three reasons: objectification, domination, and jealousy. Although physical attraction is important in relationships, love is much more important. In Pygmalion’s Bride, Pygmalion does not care about having a mutual love between him and his ‘statue’ but only about her appearance. He would rather have a statue over a living woman, so in effect he is objectifying women into a source of pleasure only and wants her to be obedient to all his demands. Thus, when the statue Galatea started to move, he immediately ran away because of his immaturity. In addition, domination is another factor that results in the failure of relationships. This is apparent in Thetis since she keeps changing herself for him to like her and to “find the right shape for love” (Duffy), yet he changes in respond and keeps dominating her. She is reduced by the more empowered male. She keeps reshaping herself only to find him ready to dominate her again and again. Furthermore, in Medusa, her love for her man turns into hatred because she sees her husband with other younger women, so this jealousy grows inside her and turns her into a gorgon. Unfortunately, cheating on one’s wife or husband has become very widespread nowadays. It is really sad how we have come to a point where not

In doing so, she focuses on “the redemptive power of what Alison M. Jaggar has defined as ‘outlaw’ emotions – emotions that are politically (because epistemologically) subversive” (Horner 107). In other words, outlaw emotions are emotions that contradict social emotions and values and what society expects. In Little Red Cap, for instance, the narrator initially describes herself as “sweet-sixteen” and “waif” showing the girl as a weak and pure party. Nonetheless, she was actually a sexually enabled nymphet tricked intentionally into the love nest of a greedy, poet wolf. This is how Duffy attracts many people and critics to her work; she challenges expectations. It is in fact the young girl who “made quite sure he spotted [her]” (Duffy 3). This demonstration is truly surprising in appreciation of ordinarily settled gender roles, where young ladies ought to be latent or passive, obedient, and innocent. Mrs. Beast is another example in which Duffy reverses the roles of females and male. The name “Mrs. Beast” suggests some masculine qualities by itself. In Duffy’s poem, Mrs. Beast is a dominant, inconsiderate, and selfish woman. The masculine qualities of her can be observed even in her language: “The sex is better” (Duffy 72). This is supposed to be an