Before You Were Mine - Carol Ann Duffy

Question 1

Summary

(6 things)

Answer 1

1. Speaker imagines mother’s life ten years before speaker born
2. Sees her as teenager with few responsibilities
3. In first verse, may be looking at photo laughing with friends
4. Touch of glamour about mother
5. Imagines her ballroom dancing and going to cinema
6. Recalls memories of own childhood - seem more mundane; hints at mother’s former life (holdinng high-heeled shoes, mum teaching her to dance

Question 2

Key Aspects

(5 things)

Answer 2

1. Main theme- daughter’s love for mother
2. Also change, loss, personal history
3. Five quintains
4. Free verse, irregular ryhthm, internal rhyme
5. Alliteration and assonance

Question 3

Key Setting: Moving Away

(4 things [with 4 things in the 4th])

Answer 3

1. Opens with affectionate depiction of mum laughing with friends
2. Image of Marilyn Monroe referenced - mother and pals imitating famous people -
3. Specific visual details - suggests looking at photo
4. Scotland bGeorge Square is public thoroughfare in Glasgow, Portobello is in Edinburgh
   
   1. Cities are youthful, exciting
   2. Vibrant nightlife
   3. “Thousand eyes” in the ballroom - the ceiling lights/glitter ball, the eyes of the dancers (are they also looking at/admiring the mother’s glamour?) - a thousand eyes from which to choose “the right walk home”
   4. “Fizzy, movie tomorrows” - excitement at possibility of romance, invited on a date, finding love

Question 4

Key Quotation: The Elusive Picture

(3 things)

Answer 4

“Even then/I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello”

1. suggests speakers childhood was less exciting, less glamourous.
2. also fascination child has with early life of a parent - understanding the self by understanding where one has come from, contrasting oneself with one’s parents
3. Memory tinged with separation across time - “I’m ten years away”

Question 5

Key Voice: From the Future

Answer 5

1. Addresses mother from state before birth
2. Also shifts to recall own childhood memories
3. Voice is an adult voice but which identifies with teenage innocence by using colloquialism… “The decade ahead… was the best one, eh?”
4. Possessive quality of the speaker - “Before You Were Mine” rather than “Before I was yours” - daughter took possession of mother’s life, perhaps took away the glamour and excitement​

Question 6

Images

(3 things)

Answer 6

1. Mother as ghost that “clatters towards her”

• clatter like high heeled shoes, also like a ghost’s chains
• the ghost of youth - loss and separation of glamour of youth, loss of the mother, loss of speaker’s childhood - emphasised by “relics”​​

2. Ghost in chains
3. in the ballroom with a thousand eyes

Question 7

Techniques

(3 things)

Answer 7

1. Repetition - of “before you were mine” - emphasis
2. Enjambment - “I knew you would dance/like that” - emphasises child knows mums character (as someone who would dance)
3. Alliteration - “High-heeled red shoes, relics” - emphasises bouncy rhythm of carefree teenager dancing, ending on relics - loss of that carefree time

Question 8

Structure

(3 things)

Answer 8

1. 5 quintains
2. Speaker is omniscient, shifting perspective at different points (before born, line 19; childhood, line 12, present; And now, line 13)
3. Ending - “before you were mine” - refers reader back to the title and back to the time before speaker was born, so mother will always be young and glamorour in the photo

Question 9

Context

(3 things)

Answer 9

1. Poet Laureate in 2009
2. Poetry often concerned with women’s experience
3. Uses popular icons and historical figures - in “before you were mine” uses famous image of Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grating, conjuring the period and the mood of the time