Before you were mine 📸

Question 1

Fills in the gaps and give analysis: Your Polk _________ blows round your legs. Marilyn

Hint: L ,D, I, iconic, unhappiness associated with Duffy’s birth.

Answer 1

‘Your Polk dot-dress blows round your legs. Marilyn’

L= caesura

D= use of caesura show how it is like a image that pops into her mind and thinks of her mum as glamorous.

I= metaphorically compares her mum to Marilyn Monroe because her mother’s skirt is blowing up like Marilyn Monroe.

• Thinks her mum is iconic
• Though this empahizes a seperation bewteen her mother in the past, and her mother in the speaker’s childhood.

-Can potentialy reference the unhappiness which was associated with Duffy’s birth ten years later because Marilyn Monroe took her life.

C= This is contextually important because the speaker is fascinated in the way which becoming a parent changes a person.

Because they have to be responsible for another life.

Question 2

Fill in the gaps and give analysis: ‘the _____ walk’

Hint: C

Answer 2

‘the right walk’

The right walk home could bring a husband.

C= Contextually important because in the 40s and 50s, women were expected to marry.

Question 3

Fill in the gaps and give analysis: ‘I see you, _____ __ _____’

Hint: L

Answer 3

‘I see you, clear as scent’

L= sensory imagery is synathestic.

• the speaker can vividly immerse herself in the imagined scene. And this evokes the image of her mother.
• Could be Duffy reflecting on her first memories of her mother, though it is unclear + vague whether it is fictional or a concrete memory.

L= simile

Question 4

Fill in the gaps and give analysis: ‘____-______ red shoes’

Hint: L, C, L

Answer 4

‘high-heeled red shoes’.

L= alliteration to show the shoes are metaphorical relics

C= Catholics worship religious relics, and it suggests she worships her mum and idolises her.

L= Duffy’s hands in her mother’s red high-heeled shoes, juxtaposes the innocence of a child’s play, dressing up and the shoes as a sexual icon.

-But now they are ‘relics’ because they are useless.

Question 5

‘Fill in the gaps and give analysis: ______________ stars’

Hint: L, repeated imagery.

Answer 5

‘stamping stars’

L= sibilance/alteration

• This is a reference to the Hollywood world of fame, the speaker feels her mother should have been a movie star. Further reinforces how the speaker idolises her mother.
• repetition of pavement imagery/repeated pavement imagery because the mother + daughter are ‘stamping stars’, which suggets Hollywood fame (and glamour) but this time, its the wrong pavement.

Question 6

What poem should you compare Before you were mine to?

Answer 6

• eden rock.
• mother any distance

Question 7

What themes are in Before you were mine?

Answer 7

• the past
• memories
• regret
• family relationships

Question 8

Fill in the gaps about the structure of Before you were mine: The poem is structured in ____ _ line stanzas. And each stanza describes her mother in a different _______.

Answer 8

Fill in the gaps about the structure of Before you were mine: The poem is structured in four 5 line stanzas.

And each stanza describes her mother in a different setting.

Question 9

Fill in the gaps about the rhyme scheme of Before you were mine: The poem is written in ____ _____, without a regular rhyme scheme which ________ the ____________ style of the poem as Duffy directly _________ her mother.

Answer 9

The poem is written in free verse, without a regular rhyme scheme which reflects the conservational style of the poem as Duffy directly addresses her mother.

Question 10

What can you tell me about the title of ‘Before you were mine’ ?

Answer 10

• L= possessive pronoun in the title- ‘mine’- highlights how the speaker feels her mother belongs to her, as she feels possessive of her which is shown as the speaker talks about my loud, possessive yell’

I= Alternatively, the possessive pronoun could perhaps make the poem have a sense of it being a romantic one, as in ‘me’ in the form of ‘mine’- this has connotations of the speaker owning/possessing the person/her mother.

• ; as Before you were mine furthers, it becomes clear that this poem is about a daughter, addressing her mother [who is an illusion, since she is dead]

Question 11

What is the tone of Before you were mine?

Answer 11

• before you were mine has a ironic/sarcastic tone, as it seems the speaker appears to be like her mother.
• for example, the personal pronoun ‘you’ is used throughout the poem [in second-person]- this communicates the speaker as someone who is commanding/who has authority over her mother.

Question 12

What is the message of Before you were mine ?

Answer 12

• the message of before you were mine, in mother-daughter relationships, is that parenthood changes a person, since they need to take responsibility for another life and sacrifice their own freedom.
• the notion and idea of how parenthood changes a person, is highlighted at the end of the poem- the speaker wishes to recall her mother as an extroverted and sociable woman, with a sparkly personality.
• before parenthood changed her.

Question 13

‘I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on, with your pals, Maggie McGreenery and Jean Duff’

Answer 13

• the speaker mentions the precise names of her mother’s friend because, the mother has spoken about her friends.

I= ; this could also be because the speaker knows them.

Therefore this precise detail, highlights how meaningful/important the mother’s/her mother’s past is to her.

L= moreover, assonance is used between ‘three’ in the third line of the second stanza and between ‘Jean’ and ‘McGreenery’- this shows how similar and alike the speaker’s mother is, to her friends- they used to be all bubbly and lively