Beautiful

Question 1

What is the main conceit of the poem?

Answer 1

Duffy explores archetypes of female beauty throughout history by connecting famous icons in a single narrative because of the way they were desired by men.

Question 2

What key methods do we see in Beautiful?

Answer 2

• Images of male devotion
• Sexual objectification
• Contrast with 20th century women with women of antiquity
• Economic imagery
• Images of female power
• anaphora of ‘Beauty is’
• inevitability of patriarchal destruction

Question 3

What quotes support the method of: images of male devotion?

Answer 3

“a thousand ships… a thousand men”
“her skin’s celebrity’

Question 4

What are the key structural methods in Beautiful?

Answer 4

-Mock epic
-Helen’s predominantly trimeter stanzas align her with Diana, Cleopatra’s pentameter with Marilyn

Question 5

What quotes show the method of: economic imagery?

Answer 5

‘platinum, her teeth gems, her eyes pressed by a banker’s thumb’

Question 6

What quotes show the method of: anaphora?

Answer 6

‘Beaty is fame, tough, dumb, fate’

Question 7

What quotes show the method of: sexual objectification?

Answer 7

‘they filmed her harder, harder’
‘history’s breath stinking in her face’

Question 8

What quotes show the method of: feminine power?

Answer 8

‘matched him glass for glass’
‘until the big man slid beneath the table’

Question 9

What quotes support the method of: anaphora of beauty?

Answer 9

‘fame’, ‘tough’, ‘dumb’, ‘fate’

Question 10

What quotes support the method of: inevitability of patriarchal destruction?

Answer 10

lost forever in the sea, of snakes.’