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REVISION
 SALOME SOME HELPFUL NOTES:
Salome is a biblical character and is one of five in the collection The World’s
Wife. It is worth considering why Duffy has chosen these particular women
from the Bible, particularly as you might be asked about the biblical versus the
classical characters in the examination.

‘Salome’: from the New Testament, the book of Matthew, chapter 14.
Salome danced for Herod on his birthday and he was so pleased by her
performance that he promised to give her whatever she wished for. She
was prompted by her mother, Herodias, and asked for the head of John
the Baptist, on a plate. John the Baptist had been preaching about the
coming of Jesus and had baptised Jesus (Matthew, chapter 3).

Many writers have re-told the story of ‘Salome’, including Oscar Wilde, in a
play originally written in French.

The poem starts off in what might be termed a rather ‘male’ style, in that the
tone is that of someone boasting about waking up the morning after the night
before with an unknown stranger in the bed beside them. Immediately Duffy
signals that this is not a one-off occurrence (‘I’d done it before’) and this might
be seen as an ironic twist on the idea of the one-night stand scenario – lots of
one night stands for her but for the men it is literally a never to be repeated
experience as they are now dead. The parenthesis reflects how unimportant
the event is to Salome: ‘(and doubtless I’ll do it again, /sooner or later)’.
There is an inevitability about what has happened which has resonances of
the ‘I just can’t help myself’ comments of men who have one-night stands.

Despite its gruesome subject the poem is humorous – ‘woke up with a head
on the pillow beside me’ – although a certain amount of knowledge of the
story of ‘Salome’ is required by the reader to recognise the black humour in
the line, otherwise we might not realise the head is detached from the body!

The poem reveals a woman in control, as with many of the other poems in the
collection. There is no doubt that Salome would go to bed with a handsome
man – ‘Good looking, of course’ – and again the detailed description of his
physical appearance mirrors the way in which some men might discuss a one-
night stand. There is no emotion here, only the confirmation that she can
‘have’ whoever she wants.

It is only at the end of the poem that Salome makes reference to the severed
head and we might get the impression that she has forgotten what happened,
as if she is awakening from a drunken sleep; in the first stanza she certainly
does not seem to realise why the man is so cold:
‘Colder than pewter.
Strange.’
In the second stanza the rather frugal meal Salome wishes for – ‘I knew I’d
feel better / for tea, dry toast, no butter’ – contrasts vividly with the gory over-
indulgence of her fantasies, which she has carried out for real.

The structure of the poem mimics a person gradually coming to full

consciousness from a deep sleep: the first stanza is free verse, with long
lines, questions and use of ellipsis, suggesting almost a stream of
consciousness.

In the second stanza, there are much shorter lines and an up-tempo rhythm,
which reflect her coming awake and recognising what will make her feel
better. The half rhymes of butter/better and clatter/clutter, gradually change to
full rhymes of clatter/patter/batter mirroring her growing wakefulness and then
the final line of the stanza is like the recollection of a person who realises they
are badly hungover and lead in to the resolution of the third stanza:
‘hungover and wrecked as I was from a night on the batter.
/ Never again!’

Salome’s attitude to the man is clearly shown in the three words she uses to
describe him in the third stanza, ‘the blighter, / the beater or biter,’ and it is
worth considering why Duffy has chosen these – to blight, to beat, to bite:
what do they imply? Salome also says it was time to ‘turf him out’, so there
will be no gentle wakening or swapping of phone numbers to meet up again.
Duffy clearly shows that Salome has no emotional attachment to him.

It is only in the last stanza that there is any hint that Salome might have done
something wrong: ‘I saw my eyes glitter.’ But does this imply wickedness or
merely mischievousness?

Think about the irony of the phrase ‘and ain’t life a bitch’: the man is not alive
and bitch always refers to the female, thus Salome is confirming that yes, life
is female and women are central; men are peripheral and dead.

The end of the poem sounds like gossip, the punch line of a joke or boasting
to friends:
‘and there, like I said – and ain’t life a bitch –
was his head on a platter.’
There is no emotion in these lines, except perhaps a triumphant note? There
is no mention of the man being decapitated and the poem finishes just as the
truth is revealed; does this impact on our opinions of Salome, as Duffy has
portrayed her?
 Helpful hints for the study of ‘from Mrs Tiresias’

The title of this poem suggests it is an extract from a much longer piece of
work. According to some sources Duffy added the ‘from’ as a tongue-in-
cheek gesture after she was patronisingly told by an academic that there
is a lot more to the myth than she has mentioned in the poem.

Story of Tiresias:

Tiresias was out on a walk, when he saw two snakes mating. He watched for a
while until the snakes sensed his presence. They did not want to be disturbed
so they attacked him. Tiresias managed to kill the female but simultaneously as
he killed her he turned into a woman.

As a woman Tiresias apparently became a prostitute. Then one day the episode
with the snake was repeated, but this time Tiresias killed the male, and turned
back into a man.

When Zeus and Hera had a disagreement about which sex enjoys the most
pleasure during intercourse they asked Tiresias, since he had experienced both.
Hera insisted men enjoy sex more, while Zeus claimed the opposite. Tiresias
claimed that if sexual pleasure could be put on a scale from one to ten, men
were at one, and women at three times three. Hera was so enraged to hear
this that she blinded Tiresias, but Zeus gave him inner sight: wisdom and the
ability to see the future.

This is one of the poems in the collection that tells part of a story and
therefore we might refer to it as a narrative poem (other classic examples
include ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’, ‘The Highwayman’ and ‘The Lady of
Shalott’) although unusually, here the narrator is one of the characters.

In the first stanza the ‘maleness’ (rather than masculinity) of Tiresias is

undoubted, which Duffy emphasises with ‘he went out for his walk a man’
and the lack of any personal pronouns in ‘and came back female’ shows
the reader how shocking the transformation is and how uncomfortable
Tiresias feels.

In a similar way to ‘Mrs Midas’ the speaker gives the impression of

contented domesticity in the second stanza: a couple at ease and doing
everyday, ordinary activities. Tiresias goes ‘Out the back gate’ with ‘the
dog’. He is ‘wearing his gardening kecks, / an open-necked shirt, / and a
jacket in Harris tweed I’d patched at the elbows myself’.

The first hint of discord is reflected in the one word stanza, ‘Whistling’.
Although it might reveal someone of a cheery demeanour it is often an
unpleasant noise for the hearer and can hint at smugness or self-
satisfaction. This lack of harmony between the couple is further illustrated
in stanza four when Mrs Tiresias tells the reader about Tiresias writing to
The Times after hearing the first cuckoo. In itself, the action might imply
somebody who is arrogant, pompous and has too much time on their
hands and it seems even more absurd when Mrs Tiresias confides to the
reader that she had usually heard it ‘days before him’.
Duffy personifies the thunder when it gives a ‘faint sneer’ and this foretells
the ‘curse’ that has afflicted Tiresias, in more than one way: it is literally a
curse that has been placed on him and later he wails about ‘the curse’,
which is another word for menstruation.

Again, the poem has echoes of ‘Mrs Midas’ as Mrs Tiresias gradually
becomes aware of what has happened, ‘when a face / swam into view’.

Mrs Tiresias gives the impression that, despite her shock, she recovers
herself quickly which Duffy shows through one stanza finishing with Mrs
Tiresias ‘passed out’ and the next beginning with ‘Life has to go on.’

We must remember that the character of ‘Mrs Tiresias’ is recalling all

these events at a later date so, in a sense, she is an unreliable narrator:
she is conveying her opinions of Tiresias and the situation after she has
been cast aside.

There is a sense, in the next few stanzas that, despite her shame, Mrs
Tiresias makes an effort to be supportive to her husband. The reason for
his change of gender is not reported to the reader and we might infer
many things from this: Mrs Tiresias has not been told? She is too
ashamed? It is insignificant to the story?

The contrast of the stanza that ends, ‘sisterly, holding his soft new shape
in my arms all night’ and the next one-line stanza, ‘Then he started his
period’, signals to the reader the change in feeling that Mrs Tiresias has
for her husband: an overtly hostile note creeps in to the poem emphasised
by the ascending numbers in the next stanza which reflect Tiresias’s ever
increasing needs.

The words used to describe Tiresias and his actions in the following
stanzas reveal Mrs Tiresias’s rising anger and bitterness: ‘demanding’,
‘selfish pale face’, ‘snapped’ and ‘It got worse’.

There are hints of Tiresias’s prostitution in lines such as ‘out and about’,
‘glitzy restaurants’ and ‘on the arms of powerful men’. Duffy might not be
imagining that Tiresias literally became a call-girl but that he
metaphorically prostituted himself: in other words he played up to the
stereotype of how women behave and look.

As with many of the other poems in the collection Duffy has grafted
modern ideas, theories, behaviour, language and goods on to legendary
characters. Here, Tiresias appears to frequent chat shows, sharing his/her
feelings: of course the irony is that when Tiresias is ‘telling the women out
there / how, as a woman himself, / he knew how we felt’ he actually has no
idea. The statement also has echoes of patronising celebrities and
wealthy stars who claim to have an understanding of how ordinary women
feel about and cope with domestic life.

Again, there are hints of Mrs Tiresias’s bitterness in such lines as, ‘His
flirt’s smile’ and ‘A cling peach slithering out from its tin. / I gritted my
teeth.’ The two harsh ‘i’ sounds reflect the harshness and slightly grating
sound that Tiresias’s voice has. The ‘tinned peach’ image hints at
something unbearably sweet, manufactured and quite unlike the real
thing.

In the last stanza the confusion felt by the reader over who the ‘he’ and
the ‘her’ are possibly reflects the bewilderment and awkwardness that Mrs
Tiresias and Tiresias feel at this meeting. Again, the artificial nature of
items ‘glittering’ and ‘tinkling’ suggest the unease and discord between
them. The repetition of ‘her bite’ in the stanza seems intended to taunt
Tiresias: Mrs Tiresias is, and always has been, a lesbian (?) unfulfilled by
her husband and now extremely aware of and eloquent about the
sensuous nature of a loving relationship.

The word ‘clash’ in the final line seems to have a double meaning: the
literal jarring and noise of Tiresias’s and the lover’s bejewelled hands
meeting but also the animosity that they feel towards one another.
Some study notes on ‘Mrs Faust’

This is a poem all about the desire for material wealth, ambition and
pursuit of power. Once again Duffy has updated a very old story
and given the characters modern language and imagery to convey
her ideas about them and she is illustrating that although most
people don’t sell their soul to the devil, many men are corrupted by
power. You can probably think of characters who fit this picture: Bill
Clinton, Nick Leeson and Jeffrey Archer are just a few who might
perhaps make it into this category.

Summary of character:

Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, finished by 1616, tells the

story of a man who, in order to enjoy wealth and power, makes a
pact with the devil that he can enjoy all of these things for
twenty-four years but must surrender his soul to the devil at the
end of this time.

There is also a version by Goethe, written in 1832, and both of

these stories are based on much earlier tellings of the story,
which vary what happens to Faust at the end. In Marlowe’s
version, a group of scholars discover Faustus’ limbs the morning
after a host of devils carry him away to hell.

The pace of the poem reflects the pace of the couple’s lifestyle. It
reads like a list of mostly material goods and achievements, slightly
abbreviated, like a brief business telephone call. The list is very
similar to lots of items that people desire in life and that give them
status: many of them are status symbols, such as ‘fast cars’, ‘a boat
with sails’ and ‘a second home in Wales’.

As with many of the other poems in the collection Duffy has

presented us with a character who appears to tell us everything
about their relationship and through this we recognise what is
missing: there is no mention of love between the couple.

The morality of Faust gradually degenerates as he is able to achieve

whatever he decides on and he moves into coveting things that
affect other people, such as ‘MP’, ‘Cardinal’ and even ‘Pope’. It is
ironic that Faust takes on the role of the head of the Catholic
church, a position very close to God and one that invites the
confidences of others, when he is simultaneously in a relationship
with the Devil. He then buys into objects that directly and
negatively affect the lives of others: ‘invested in smart bombs’,
‘cloned sheep’ and even ‘surfed the Internet / for like-minded Bo-
Peep.’ This last in particular shows a shift downwards to things that
are unacceptable and taboo to society: the bombs and sheep are
possibly alright to discuss with others but surfing the internet for
innocent young girls, implied by the Bo-Peep image, is not.
Duffy is not condoning the behaviour or actions of Mrs Faust, who
admits, ‘I grew to love the lifestyle’ and does not feel ‘jealousy’ and
‘went my own sweet way’. Mrs Faust’s activities are all to do with
appearance and her body, such as ‘colonic irrigation’, ‘had a facelift,
/ had my breasts enlarged, / my buttocks tightened’. In one stanza
Duffy appears to mock the actions of women who talk about ‘finding
themselves’ and seem to adopt a frugal lifestyle but actually
achieve nothing and are still in a privileged position. Mrs Faust
becomes ‘teetotal, vegan, / Buddhist, 41’ but at the end of the
stanza after changing her hair colour and running away, merely
‘went home’.

There are hints in the poem of Mrs Faust’s loneliness, expressed

through phrases such as, ‘I grew to love the lifestyle, / not the life.’
and the fact that Mrs Faust goes ‘her own sweet way’ and
apparently alone.

Look at the lack of regret Faust has for what he has done. Duffy’s
diction shows he is unconcerned and unrepentant. The persona of
Faust talks about ‘gagging for it’ and ‘going for it’. There is no
apology and no remorse in the language.

The humour of the poem is in the attention to detail Duffy provides.

For example when Faust is dragged down to hell the devil pokes his
hands up ‘through the terracotta Tuscan tiles.’ Even at this moment
of judgement Mrs Faust is keen for the reader to know that the
kitchen tiles are the ‘right’ colour and style.

The last stanza exposes Mrs Faust’s own shockingly immoral

behaviour. Her response to Faust’s doom is ‘C’est la vie’, a phrase
similar to a shrugging of the shoulders in response to a minor
problem. She buys a kidney ‘with my credit card’, hinting to the
reader the shockingly gruesome origins of her donated organ.

At the end of the poem the irony of the situation is explicitly

revealed. Faust has even tricked the devil because he ‘didn’t have
a soul to sell’. He is the ultimate salesman who has clinched the
ultimate deal. Mrs Faust’s opinion of her husband is also made
overtly obvious as her final words about him are that he is a ‘clever,
cunning, callous bastard’: hardly words of love.

Some notes on ‘Queen Herod’

This is a poem about love, relationships and children. It is about

maternal love, marital love and even lesbian love. It is one of the
most difficult poems within the collection The World’s Wife and
therefore you need to study and revise it carefully.
 Who was Herod?
Of course, he is the king who, according to the Bible (Matthew,
Chapter 2), was so concerned at the news the three wise men
brought him about the birth of Jesus Christ, that he demanded the
execution of every male child under two. In the Bible, when the
three wise men visit Herod and tell him the news about the birth,
the only hint we have about Herod’s disquiet is the statement that
Herod was ‘troubled’ by the news.

Just because the poem uses the wife of Herod as narrator and
appears to have references to Jesus being a ‘hunk’ and a
‘paramour’, it does not mean that the poem is blasphemous: if you
are reading it in this way then you are probably only reading it on a
very superficial level. Try to avoid criticising Duffy for her choice of
material as you won’t get many marks for an answer like that;
instead aim to explore some of the incredible issues Duffy raises
through ‘Queen Herod’. Why for example has Duffy made the
‘villain’ female? In many of the other poems in the collection the
female partner of the famous male looks on with disgust,
condescension, fear or even amusement at what the man is doing –
why has Duffy made Queen Herod the one who demands the
murder of all baby boys?

The way Duffy uses language is incredibly clever and complex and
she has woven many stories into this one poem – in a way that is
similar to the Bible and the many different ways it has been
interpreted.

One of her many sources might well be T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Journey of
the Magi’, which you really need to look at in order to appreciate
Duffy’s poem fully. Eliot’s poem tells the story of the journey of the
three wise men and the opening of Duffy’s poem, in particular, has
echoes of Eliot’s earlier work:

Eliot: ‘“A cold coming we had of it”’

Duffy: ‘Ice in the trees’

Eliot: ‘And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory’

Duffy: ‘their several sweating, panting beasts’

Both poems end with dual messages: Duffy’s might be expected to

end this way with Queen Herod recognising the horror of what she
has demanded. The juxtaposition of the peaceful images of the
female baby/babies – ‘sleeping girls’ and ‘lullabies’ – with that of the
forthcoming violence – ‘We wade through blood’, ‘daggers for eyes’
and ‘the hooves of terrible horses / thunder and drum’.
The Eliot poem is similarly, and perhaps surprisingly, ominous in its
tone:

‘We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at

ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people
clutching their gods. / I should be glad of another death.’

There is no need for us to do an in-depth analysis of Eliot’s poem

but it is worth considering what or which death the voice refers to
and in what tone. Is it the death of his religion (because the Saviour
is born?) or his own death (because of his betrayal) or the deaths of
all the baby boys? And how should we interpret ‘should’? Is it ‘I
should be glad but I’m not’ or ‘I will be glad of another death’?

There are a few end-rhymes in Duffy’s poem (be/me/three) and you

need to think about why she has chosen to do this at the point in
the poem where Queen Herod is alone with the three queens.

Look at the way Herod is described (‘drunken’ and ‘fusty bulk’) and
Queen Herod’s opinion of marriage (her own): she is ‘splayed’
beneath Herod – it doesn’t exactly sound like she is enjoying sex or
even has any choice in it – and the possible marriage of her
daughter: ‘some wincing Prince to take her name away / and give a
ring, a nothing, nowt in gold.’

What about other meanings of the word ‘Queen’? Are the three
people who arrive royalty or is Duffy hinting at lesbian love? The
voice in the poem does tell us that one of them looks at her ‘Queen
to Queen, with insolent lust’. It might just be female friendship that
Duffy is referring to, which can be incredibly close, particularly just
after women have had children.

How many voices are there in the poem and where does each
speaker begin and end?

Is it really Jesus that is being referred to when the narrator recalls

the conversation about ‘The Husband. Hero. Hunk.’? Or is it any
boy and is Duffy just using the story of the birth of Jesus to draw
parallels between what society considers the ultimate achievement
for boys (e.g. you can be anybody you want to be, literally, you can
be amazingly powerful – look at Jesus) and what it considers the
ultimate achievement for girls (e.g. you can find a boyfriend, fall in
love, get married)?

There are lots of ideas not included in these notes but these are a
starting point for you to further explore the poem.
 ‘Pilate’s Wife’

This is one of the five poems in The World’s Wife about biblical
characters. The others are ‘Queen Herod’, ‘Salome’, ‘Delilah’ and
‘Mrs Lazarus’. As with the other poems, you need to consider why
Duffy has chosen to tell this woman’s story and why she tells it in
the way she does.

Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea from AD 26 to 36.

The Jews who wanted Jesus killed took him to Pilate and although
Pilate did not find Jesus guilty of any crime he allowed him to be
crucified. It is said that he asked the people if they wanted him to
free Jesus but they cried out for Barabbas instead, a murderer.
Thus, because he was afraid of the people, Pilate let them decide
Jesus’ fate, and effectively ‘washed his hands’ of the problem.

A lot of the imagery in this poem is to do with hands, emphasising

the metaphor of ‘washing your hands’ of a problem. Duffy uses the
softness of a woman’s hands as an insult: it gives the impression
that Pilate does not do any work. She uses long vowel sounds in the
description of Pilate’s hands, to emphasise his languid and lethargic
nature: ‘pearly nails’, ‘shells from Galilee’, ‘Indolent’, ‘Camp’,
‘clapped’, ‘pale, mouthy touch’. The reference to moths reflects
Pilate’s indecision: moths hover and flit about but they never
actually land on the object of their attentions. The one word
sentence at the end of the first stanza highlights the speaker’s
contempt for Pilate, ‘Pontius.’ It is a short, abrupt sound after the
long vowels of the previous words and might even be mistaken for
the word ‘ponce’.

The subterfuge and excitement of going to visit Jesus is shown

through Duffy’s verb choices. The speaker ‘crept out’, was
‘disguised’. In her haste and anxiety she ‘tripped’ and ‘clutched’.
The use of enjambement at the end of the second stanza, leading in
to the third reveals how quickly and in what a confused way Pilate’s
wife meets Jesus: she merely ‘looked up / and there he was.’ There
is no pre-meditation about the event; it just happens.
Pilate’s wife’s adoration and lust are illustrated through her reaction
to Jesus’ eyes: ‘He looked at me. I mean he looked at me. My God.’
Of course the last sentence has a double meaning: the shock of
seeing him makes her blaspheme but it can also be interpreted as
her acknowledgement that Jesus is her god. Duffy has quite
possibly emphasised the beauty of Jesus’ eyes because in pictures
he is often portrayed as having extremely piercing blue eyes, with
an arresting stare.
When Pilate’s wife dreams of Jesus Duffy conveys the contrast
between his hands and Pilate’s; Jesus’ hands are ‘brown’ and he has
‘tough’ palms. She describes him as having worker’s hands:
suntanned and hardened through labour. Remember as well that
Jesus is often described as performing miracles on people by laying
his hands upon them: he does something useful with his hands,
unlike Pilate.

In the penultimate stanza the people are again referred to as the

crowd. In the second stanza they were ‘frenzied’ because of Jesus’
presence, now they are ‘baying’ for Barabbas. They are portrayed
as the same set of people, swayed by popular feeling and merely
there because everyone else is. The hysteria of the crowd is
juxtaposed with the methodical movements of Pilate, who ‘carefully
turned up his sleeves / and slowly washed his useless, perfumed
hands.’

In the last stanza, ‘My maid knows all the rest’ suggests that Pilate’s
wife could not bear to witness what the crowd did to Jesus. The
violence that prefixes the line hints at what is to follow: they ‘seized’
him and ‘dragged him out’. The last line also has an ironic double
meaning. Pilate’s wife is adamant that Jesus is not God and when
she says ‘Pilate believed he was’ it can be interpreted either that
Pilate thought Jesus was God or that Pilate thought he himself was
God: either way Pilate is condemned by the line.

As with many of the other poems in the collection the horror of this
one comes from the controlled line and stanza length and cadence
of the poem which suggests someone reflecting on events with
emotional detachment. Pilate is portrayed as amoral and
unresponsive but at the end of the poem, despite her bouts of
passion, we are left feeling that Pilate’s wife is perhaps very similar.
The Eliot poem is similarly, and perhaps surprisingly, ominous in its
tone:

‘We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at

ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people
clutching their gods. / I should be glad of another death.’

There is no need for us to do an in-depth analysis of Eliot’s poem

but it is worth considering what or which death the voice refers to
and in what tone. Is it the death of his religion (because the Saviour
is born?) or his own death (because of his betrayal) or the deaths of
all the baby boys? And how should we interpret ‘should’? Is it ‘I
should be glad but I’m not’ or ‘I will be glad of another death’?

There are a few end-rhymes in Duffy’s poem (be/me/three) and you

need to think about why she has chosen to do this at the point in
the poem where Queen Herod is alone with the three queens.
Look at the way Herod is described (‘drunken’ and ‘fusty bulk’) and
Queen Herod’s opinion of marriage (her own): she is ‘splayed’
beneath Herod – it doesn’t exactly sound like she is enjoying sex or
even has any choice in it – and the possible marriage of her
daughter: ‘some wincing Prince to take her name away / and give a
ring, a nothing, nowt in gold.’

What about other meanings of the word ‘Queen’? Are the three
people who arrive royalty or is Duffy hinting at lesbian love? The
voice in the poem does tell us that one of them looks at her ‘Queen
to Queen, with insolent lust’. It might just be female friendship that
Duffy is referring to, which can be incredibly close, particularly just
after women have had children.

How many voices are there in the poem and where does each
speaker begin and end?

Is it really Jesus that is being referred to when the narrator recalls

the conversation about ‘The Husband. Hero. Hunk.’? Or is it any
boy and is Duffy just using the story of the birth of Jesus to draw
parallels between what society considers the ultimate achievement
for boys (e.g. you can be anybody you want to be, literally, you can
be amazingly powerful – look at Jesus) and what it considers the
ultimate achievement for girls (e.g. you can find a boyfriend, fall in
love, get married)?

There are lots of ideas not included in these notes but these are a
starting point for you to further explore the poem.

‘The Kray Sisters’

This is the only poem in the collection The World’s Wife that is not a
dramatic monologue. It is also one of only three poems based on real
characters from the twentieth century; the other two being ‘Elvis’s Twin
Sister’ and ‘The Devil’s Wife’.

The real Kray twins were brothers (Ronnie and Reggie):

famous villains around the East End of London in the
1950s and 60s. They ran protection rackets and had
money in various clubs. They were eventually
imprisoned for the murder of Jack the Hat in 1969 after
evading police for years, and it was recommended that
they serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. Ronnie died
in prison in 1996 and Reggie died a few weeks after his
release in 2000.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/thekrays.shtml
Firstly, make sure you know the translations of the Cockney rhyming slang
used in the poem:

Frog and toad

Savile Row whistle and flutes

Thr’penny bits

mince pies

God forbids

Orchestra stalls

Butcher’s

Remember, this poem is supposed to be funny and it is one of two from

the collection (the other being ‘Elvis’s Twin Sister’) that largely rely on the
aural impact to derive the humour: in other words, you need to attempt to
read it out loud in a Cockney accent (although obviously not in the exam
hall).

The characters in the poem are very boastful and the twins exude an air of
confidence, which comes from their bullying and violent behaviour.

The poem opens with a declarative statement: ‘There go the twins!’ There
is a cheerfulness implied here but the ‘geezers’ are probably actually
fearful of the twins, not pleased to see them as they imagine and the line
can be interpreted either way.

The repetition of ‘London’ in ‘Oh, London, London,/London Town’ is

reminiscent of patriotic, loyal and rousing songs often associated with the
Second World War and its aftermath, such as ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’,
‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’ and ‘My Old Man’. They hint at a
feeling of community spirit and unity which probably did not really exist
but people like to imagine.

There are lots of internal rhymes in the poem, very much mimicking the
rhythm, lilt and cadence of the East London dialect.
The poem includes boastful reminiscences which verge on hyperbole: the
grandmother, for example, knocking out the horse’ ‘with one punch’. The
mention of the grandmother and family life is supposed to show us that
the family is strong and united: in other words, a ‘proper’ family:
respectful and respected. Of course it is ironic that the twins convey this
image and yet they are extremely violent, unreliable and bullying to
others.

The twins are very masculine in their language and style: ‘We wanted
respect for the way / we entered a bar, or handled a car, or shrivelled/ a
hard-on with simply a menacing look’

The twins romanticise the past, ‘holding the hand of the past’ and ‘there
we for ever are in glamorous black and white’; similar to the way people
now (and tabloid newspapers in particular) do – people apparently yearn
for the ‘good old days’ of the Krays and the Blitz as the twins in this poem
do.

It is an ironic contradiction that the twins behave in quite a chauvinistic

way, ‘enrolled a few girls/in the firm who were well out of order’ and
criticise them for fulfilling such roles as being, ‘some plonker’s wife’ and
yet they are perceived as being protective of women, ‘The word got
around and about/that any woman in trouble could come to the Krays, / no
questions asked, for Protection.’ Again the line can be interpreted in two
ways, in that ‘protection’ might be capitalised because of its importance or
alternatively it is capitalised because it is a proper noun: protection is
another name for running an extortion racket.

These are very powerful women and yet, simultaneously, they belittle
other females and are condescending to them, referring to them as ‘girls’
and lecturing to them, ‘A boyfriend’s for Christmas, not just for life.’ The
line also patronises men: Duffy takes the phrase, ‘A dog is for life, not just
for Christmas’ and puts the male in the place of the soppy-eyed puppy
dog.

There is use of alliteration to show the twins’ success: ‘the fruits / of

feminisim – fact – made us rich, feared, famous, / friends of the stars.’ The
lines mirror a public speech, such as an acceptance speech at an awards
ceremony, in that it builds to a climax, each word or phrase that follows
the last reveals increasing power: note that ‘feminism’ is the first and
therefore the least important to the twins.

The voices reveal that celebrity is more important to them than the
supposed effect they have on the security of London. Look at the way the
list of female celebrities comes first and then the line about the Capital,
almost as an aside or a throwaway remark: ‘And London was safer then /
on account of us.’

The extract from the letter that appears is supposed to reflect popular
feeling and certainly the real Kray twins are often remembered in this
way, with the memory that London had been safer ‘in the old days’. The
statements are still said a lot today: just look at some of the election
slogans and declarations that have been used and the way in which
politicians keep telling us they will return Britain to the state it used to be
in. What Duffy is doing here is reminding us that ‘the old days’ were not
better and were often much worse: her references to the twins in
photographs reflect the fact that before the mass audience for television,
people were sometimes unaware of current affairs and events beyond
their own streets or towns so it was not that there was less crime, it was
just that not so many people knew about it.

In the last stanza the poem has built to an almost frenzied crescendo of
power, which mirrors the behaviour of the real twins, in that they felt
themselves almost invincible. The phrase ‘dressed to kill’ has an ominous
double meaning in that the twins are literally well dressed and yet they
really are dressed ready to kill anyone who offends them.

The extract from the song at the end of the poem is indeed by Sinatra, but
it is Frank Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy. The song itself hints at a power
within women that might remain dormant for many years, but once roused
can not be ignored. The full song lyrics become darker as the song
progresses which is possibly why Duffy has left the ellipsis at the end of
the poem, hinting at the sinister events which were to end the Kray twins’
rule over East London.
‘Thetis’
As with many of the classical Greek myths, this one has a number of variations but
the summary included here should be enough for our purposes. ‘Thetis’ is one of ten
in The World’s Wife from Greek mythology, and is one of six from this group in which
a female features strongly in the original story.

Thetis was originally wooed by two Gods (Zeus and Poseidon) but was rejected by
both when they learnt that Themis had prophesised that she was to father a child
who would become mightier than the father.

It was a mortal, Peleus, who eventually married Thetis and he had done so by
capturing her as she changed shape and form (just as she does in the poem).

Thetis’s baby was Achilles and she made him immortal by dipping him into the
River Styx (although again some versions say she dipped him in fire) but because
she held on to his foot to do so, his heel remained unprotected: thus the saying
that a person’s vulnerability is their ‘Achille’s heel’.

The poem is about a woman growing more powerful with every stanza but thwarted
by a man’s intentions (and attentions) until the moment she has a baby, at the end of
the poem. There are similarities in the poem to ‘Pope Joan’ in which the woman
becomes all-powerful through the experience of giving birth (and many women do
say birth is empowering and liberating). Think about other poems in the collection,
such as ‘Demeter’ and ‘Queen Herod’ in which children feature and decide whether
you could use them as comparative poems.

Each animal Thetis becomes is more powerful than the last: a small bird; an
albatross; snake; lion; mermaid and other sea creatures, including a whale; and then
finally to animals that are well-known for their cunning and ability to survive despite
being hunted.

In the first five stanzas the rhythm of the first two lines is similar if not exactly
identical, but this breaks down when Thetis declares, ‘I changed my tune / to racoon,
skunk, stoat’ and this mirrors her change to what are usually considered unpleasant
animals, as if she is no longer trying to please anyone but herself.

There is use of assonance throughout the poem and you need to think about why
Duffy has included this. There are half rhymes and near rhymes and a few full
rhymes, which all serve a purpose and which you must consider.

In the penultimate stanza Thetis becomes, ‘wind, I was gas, / I was all hot air,’ She
has become intangible, ethereal: she can not be grasped or held.

Duffy has followed a fairly traditional view here, in which the female is seen as
nature, part of the natural order, with an innate desire to replenish and restore; to
continue life through giving birth, whereas the male is seen as a destructive force,
Some of the items the man uses to capture Thetis are personified, such as the
‘squint of the crossbow’s eye’. Why has Duffy done this? Perhaps to show the
increasing power and violence of the man and his weapons: they become part of his
army, prepared to stand with him to defeat Thetis.

Duffy explores the ability and often the necessity that women feel to alter themselves
for a man, ‘So I shopped for a suitable shape’ whilst also mocking men’s perception
that women enjoy the experience of shopping. You might disagree with this view and
feel that she is mocking some women because of their desire to always look ‘right’
and that she is also criticising women’s materialism.

Thetis is initially subservient to the man, ‘I shrank myself’ and then ‘shouldered the
cross of an albatross’. It is only later in the poem after, ‘I sank through the floor of the
earth’ that she appears to become powerful and this moment can almost be seen as
a moment of re-birth, particularly with its connotations of baptism.

In the fifth stanza, the voice of Thetis refers to, ‘his hook and his line and his sinker’
which has the double meaning of the man’s attempts to catch her (and it is a violent
capture) and also a reference to love, in that people refer to being caught ‘hook, line
and sinker’. Duffy has perhaps meant this to have an ironic double meaning in that,
for women, relationships are sometimes destructive.

In the sixth stanza the animals Thetis metamorphoses into have negative
connotations, ‘racoon, skunk, stoat, / to weasel, ferret, bat, mink, rat.’ They are often
considered disease-ridden, smelly, sly and even evil.

In the last stanza Thetis has obviously been married as she refers to a ‘groom’ but he
is insignificant in the moment of giving birth. Although the rest of the poem has not
had the rhythm of labour, like ‘Pope Joan’ the poem could be interpreted as another
birth poem in that women often describe a feeling of increasing power during labour,
from feeling out of control and afraid to taking control of the situation and their
bodies. Certainly the last stanza of this poem gives the impression of a woman in the
last moments of labour before giving birth, when the whole body can feel as if it is on
fire with the effort and energy of labour, particularly with the reference to her being,
‘turned inside out’.

At the close of the poem the focus has shifted away from Thetis and her attempts to
evade the man, to the baby because the poem finishes with, ‘when the child burst
out’. It seems like a new beginning, which having children is, in that your old life and
your needs and desires become secondary to that of the infant. Throughout the rest
of the poem Duffy has used ‘I’ seventeen times but in the last stanza Thetis
announces, ‘So I changed, I learned’ and immediately the ‘I’, or sense of Thetis
disappears as the child is born.

What do you think about this poem? Is it happy, sad, bitter, triumphant, celebratory?
What is your reaction to it? What other poems from the collection might you compare
it to? What is the poem about: love; relationships; childbirth; power?
 Essay titles

Have a go at doing a few of these, remembering to spend no more

than one hour on each one. Do a plan before your essay and hand
that in as well.

Helpful hints: refer to Duffy in your answer as she controls the

characters. Use your choice of poems throughout your answer: do
not write about one poem and then another. Remember to answer
the question: do not just write down everything you know about
the poems. Use poetic terms to enhance your answer, not as the
main focus.

1. “The World’s Wife is a celebration of women and their

achievements.” To what extent do you agree with this
assessment? In your answer you should either refer to two or
three poems in or range more widely through the collection.

2. “‘Mrs Sisyphus’ is a typical representation of the poems in The

World’s Wife.” Discuss this statement and consider whether or
not you agree with it.

3. “‘Pope Joan’ is the odd one out in Duffy’s The World’s Wife.”
Explore this idea, considering whether or not you agree with the
assessment.

4. “‘Queen Kong’ is, like all the poems in the collection, a

humorous take on a well-known story.” Discuss this statement,
using two or three poems to draw your conclusions.

5. How has Duffy used children’s fairytales and/or modern

‘myths’ in order to comment on the nature of relationships
between men and women?

6. “In using biblical stories in her collection Duffy merely offers

the reader a different perspective on a patriarchal world.”
Explore this statement, using either two or three poems in detail
in your answer or ranging more widely through the collection.

7. “The poems in The World’s Wife reflect Duffy’s own, very

feminist, view of the world.” Explore this statement, using either
two or three poems in detail or ranging more widely through the
collection.

8. “Duffy’s poems are more successful when she uses characters

that are more familiar to a 21st century audience, such as ‘The
Devil’s Wife’ and ‘The Kray Twins’.” Explore this opinion, using
at least two other poems to draw your conclusions.
9. “Although many of the poems in The World’s Wife are
humorous, they all have a serious underlying message to
convey.” Explore this statement, using either two or three
poems in detail or ranging more widely through the collection.

10. “The World’s Wife only appeals to a female audience because

of the negative portrayal of men.” Explore this statement, using
either two or three poems in detail or ranging more widely
through the collection.

11. “As with many of the poems in The World’s Wife, ‘Mrs Rip Van
Winkle’ has extremely dark undertones and is not meant to be
only funny.” Explore this statement, using two or three other
poems to compare with this one.

12. “The poems about fairytale characters are all funny, but
the religious ones are not.” Discuss this statement and give your
own opinion, using at least four of the poems in your answer.

13. “The World’s Wife is all about relationships.” Explore this

statement, using either two or three poems in detail or ranging
more widely through the collection.

14. “There is not a single positive portrayal of a man in all

the poems in the collection.” Explore this statement, using either
two or three poems in detail or ranging more widely through the
collection.

15. “The classical characters are either bitter or smug.”

Explore this statement, using either two or three poems in detail
or ranging more widely through the collection.

16. “There is nothing funny about middle-aged women moaning

about their lot in life.” Explore this opinion of The World’s Wife,
using either two or three poems in detail or ranging more widely
through the collection.

17. “‘Demeter’ is a haunting tale of grief which is unique in

its topic and style in the collection.” Explore this statement,
using at least two or three other poems to compare with this one.

18. “A reader needs to know the stories behind poems such

as ‘Mrs Faust’ otherwise they do not have much meaning.”
Explore this opinion, using either two or three other poems in
detail or ranging more widely through the collection.
 Top ten features
1. Read the list of features below and add an extra point of your own choice if
you like.
2. Rank order the features from one to ten, starting with the one that best
characterises the collection for you as a reader.
3. For your top feature, find evidence from two poems to support and explain
your choice and evidence from a poem that challenges it.
4. Justify your choice to the rest of the group, making use of the evidence you
have found.

Duffy’s poems in The World’s Wife:

• are about power relationships

• lament the inadequacies of men
• focus on the presentation of sexual attraction
• explore the satisfactions and burdens of motherhood
• are about disappointment
• present women creating their own lives
• are at heart optimistic
• present women’s search for independence
• show that the treatment of women has not changed over time
• document women’s lives today
• ……………………………….

Feature Evidence from three poems

1.

2.

3.
Essay writing: Now turn your first choice feature into an essay title by adding the
following: ‘How far do you agree with this view?’ In your answer you should refer to
three poems in detail or range more widely through the whole collection.

Use the evidence you have noted in the table above as the basis for a more detailed
essay plan before you start writing. Remember to include a poem which helps you
offer an alternative point of view so that you address the ‘how far…’ part of the
question in your answer.