duffy poems Flashcards
FL: ‘Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words’
suggests a moment of half-consciousness,The voice of the poem: (first person) has had a dream of their first love —> ‘dream’ vs ‘real words’ dreams as way to recapture a memory and bring into reality/present. Dreams —> manipulate time as Past and present coexist and colliding, this love has a lasting impact—it lingers even beyond sleep, affecting waking thoughts. love and memory transcend time.
FL: ‘after a silence of years, into the pillow, and the power’
- Silence of years’ - The metaphor of silence conveys emotional repression, emptiness, the passage of time. ‘into the pillow’ -> muffling perhaps from embarrassment, intimacy of speaking into the pillow, divulging of emotion - a form of release. Suggests that first love still holds an overwhelming influence over the speaker, even after years of silence - enjambment - compelling power
FL: ‘to say it again to a garden shaking with light.’
capturing the visual surrounding her, she’s physically being moved by the emotion - . It implies that the emotion or the memory is so strong that it stirs the world/perception around/of the speaker
FL: ‘Old film’ -
nostalgia, idealise it, lasts and replayed and revisited - the persistent impact of first love, it takes time for the memory to be played yet never quite perfect - effects of time - speaker’s emotions might have changed or been distorted over time
fl: ‘And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely/the size of a tear’
symbolizing how memories and emotions can endure long after the actual experience has passed. The star’s death yet continued light mirrors the lasting influence of first love, although the love is dead/ gone it has the power to stir emotion still. vulnerability, and the pain of first love, which often carries both beauty and heartache.
FL: Unseen/ flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air.
unseen ~ subconscious nature of memory—the way certain emotions/ sensory experiences can unexpectedly trigger recollections of the past. Flowers - often associated with beauty, love, and ephemerality, reinforcing first love as something delicate, intense, and fleeting. Env seems to replicate the past and the senses associated. Past + present co-exist - omnipresent effects of first love. Synaesthesia - making the memory of first love feel almost physically intrusive/ invades the senses in an uncontrollable way ~ mirrors how love can engulf a person,
C: ‘with somebody’s face strewn in her head/like petals which once made a flower.’
scattered memories, disorientation, fragile, preserved memories - memories of a loved one linger in a fragmented or intrusive way. Enjambment: accumulation of memories. Flower - fragile
C: ‘and stare at the view, till the time/where they live reappears. Mostly in words.’
a moment of stillness and contemplation ~imply reflection, nostalgia, or even dissociation - Universal truth of people deliberately recapturing the past through day-dreaming - window a portal to past. ‘Mostly in words’ - auditory memories, soundtrack from the past. ‘Reappears’ - Plays with the fluidity of time and memory, attempting for emotions can be resurrected through deep thought or longing.
C: ‘clever, anointed with sudden light.’ -
The crush of the past is being enhanced. ‘Anointing’ - saintly status of the crush, ‘sudden light’ - holy light capturing key figures, deifying her crush - could imply an epiphany? captures the intoxicating, almost spiritual experience of being enamoured with someone
C: ‘At first a secret, erotic, mute;/today a language she cannot recall.’
Heavy punctuation —> intensity of the feelings, heightened emotions of a youthful crush - re-experienced and enjoyed, a secret kept to oneself - unspoken - initial intensity of desire ~ deeply personal and intimate. The same intensity and worshipping of an individual- cannot be recaptured exactly. Mute - inability to articulate feelings ~ overwhelming nature of emotions. The metaphor of love as a language suggests that the passion and intimacy that once felt so natural have now faded into something unrecognizable.
C: ‘The trick’s to remember whenever/it was, or to see it coming’
- Caveat to universality, love requires attention and vigilance. ‘Tricks’ a secret? a way to approach love, colloquial, the power of young love/infatuation
C: Duffy critic quote about triplet
SA: “Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pause”
pause’ - absence, the childish perspective of time dragging out eternally, emptiness ‘only there’ in Stafford - unique setting, also the childish narrow perception of the world, the Enjambment depicts the flowing of time into nothingness, void. Afternoons often symbolize a liminal state, much like childhood as a stage between infancy and adulthood.
SA: “an ice-cream van chimed and dwindled away.”
this can act as a symbol of childish, carefree innocence that is slowly slipping away, with the passage of time. Auditory image - mirroring the inevitable fading of childhood and innocence.
“I waved at windscreens,/ oddly hurt by the blurred waves back,”
waving at windscreens’ ~ attempt to connect with others, disconnected, impersonal responses ~ not a distinct image. Accelerated existence of the adult world. Attempt to pass time ‘Oddly hurt’ ~ childlike sensitivity - the deeper realization that the world is indifferent, freedom and the journey of the cars in comparison to her isolation.
SA: “at the edge of a small wood, lonely and thrilled/The green silence gulped once and swallowed me whole.”
crossing threshold ~ unknown ~ Excitement of the new discovery of the ‘small wood’ yet still isolated perhaps a fairytale setting connoting journey, adventure with threat lurking. ‘Silence gulped once and swallowed me whole’ - danger is lurking (Volta), threat, oppressive silence
SA: “living, purple root in his hand”
Grotesque use of natural imagery to rationalise this experience ~ childhood innocence and naive perspective,
SA: “his hoarse, frightful endearments”
Frightful endearments - an oxymoron, the complicated combination of exposure of the corrupted aspects of adult life, tainted perspective. sound imagery makes the moment feel visceral ~ real fear and vulnerability.
SA: “where children scattered and shrieked/and time fell from the sky like a red ball.”
The perspective has changed as she has experienced true fear, disruption, disorder and chaos. transition period ~ growing up, losing innocence, Colour imagery: the sun setting on childhood - dawn of another Era. Stagnation -> fall ~ irreversible change
Steam themes:
Constant looking back in time, despite the passage of time - perhaps reflecting the disorienting nature of steam.
Steam form and structure:
14 lines - to trigger an association with the sonnet, despite this poem being about a loss of this reality.
- The Enjambment throughout the poem is reaching for feeling tangible concrete memory and not the hazy recapturing of a memory
S: Not long ago so far, a lover and I/in a room of steam’
paradoxical, blending past and present. The use of “lover” rather than a name or “partner” adds a passionate and transient quality to the relationship. fairytale vibes - first persona, ‘room of steam’ - acting as a barrier presenting the shifting nature of the relationship over time, symbolises both physical warmth suggesting closeness and desire and ephemerality.
S: ‘a sly, thirsty, silvery word - lay down, opposite ends, and vanished.’
Sibilance to depict steam as a deceitful thing, implies something secretive or even seductive, private, intimate nature of the moment. Themes of passion and emotional intensity, perhaps reflecting the memories and their truthfulness. ‘Opposite ends and vanished’ - extmetaphor of steam shows the relationship is over, separation, trying to recapture a memory - exploration of impermanence, the moment is fleeting and dissolves into memory.
S:‘a nude pose in soft pencil/ behind tissue paper’ -
art imagery, trying to recapture a memory - impermanence of love, drawing is an interpretation reflecting the subjective nature of memory, memory is shaping and shifting to accommodate the persona. moment has been captured and preserved like a work of art.
S:’to touch the real thing, shockingly there, not a ghost at all.’
more concrete love not a memory, tangible physical connection - sensory experience of a physical connection, shocking thrill reaching back in memory and in time.
GT: “No bigger than your thumbs, those virtuous women”
- catholic/religious - rigid figures of disciple, sense of mocking/judgement of the values these women hold, autobiographical feel -> convention and socially/religiously appropriate way to behave vs rebellion. ‘No bigger than your thumbs’ ~ insignificant, nullifying their power and authority over these looming figures. Disdain.
GT: “But no miss Sheridan. Comment vous appelez/ But not miss appleby.”
a series/litany of teachers that are the antithesis to pirie, reducing these teachers to subject phraseology/lexical, nothing identifiable become emodiments of their textbooks and content - repetition of not/never- monotony - content memorised/rote learning. caesura - slows it down
GT: “making a ghost of her, say/South Sea Bubble Defenestration of Prague.”
- nullifying, deliberate removal, insubstantial - the abstract and disconnected nature of these example is symbolic of rote learning - south sea - illusion,looks powerful and mighty but is not. Defenstration of prague - Duffy links the teacher’s eventual loss of power to the idea of overthrowing oppressive authority
GT: “The good teachers/swish down the corridor in long, brown skirts,/snobbish and proud and clean and qualified.”
’good’ - viewed as having been successful, their are qualified and align with expectations, alludes to the sounds of the cane - disciplinarian, modesty and decorum. Long - conform to modest expectations, Perhaps envious the education and professionalism - regret, power of education, authority. Perhaps critical of the perceived moral purity and formal/accreditated achievement, focusing on the wider ranges of success, writer feels distance from teachers and the system they represent.
GT: “But there’s the wall you climb/into dancing, lovebites, marriage, the Cheltenham/and Gloucester, today. The day you’ll be sorry one day.”
- wall - constraint, asyndetic- rush into adulthood, teenage rebellion, sexual awakening, excitement. Glouster- Provinciality - constraints of adulthood. Regret - no route out of my restrained local way of life. OR Sense of fighting/ defiance the expectations of regret and negative outlook
what is form and structure of captain ?
Dramatic monologue, free verse, demotic style, the contrast between fact and imagination, the mutability of time
Captain:“I lived in a kind of fizzing hope. Gargling/ with Vimto”
stream of consciousness, short sentences, speed of memories coming, speaker’s youthful energy - vivacity, thrill for the future and anticipation, childish nature, sibilant sound alliteration depicts a smug pride of himself.
Captain: “The hummingbird’s song is made by its wings, which beat/ so fast that they blur in flight.”
More poetic - perhaps his imagination seeps in now and again despite his fascination towards facts and figures. Small - full of vitality, quick thinking, and confidence - youth and brilliance are transient
Captain: “The badge. The tie. The first chord of A Hard Day’s Night”
- nostalgia of insignificant details, teen life was as close to perfect as possible - relive + regret of not utilising. a deep connection to the optimism and dynamism of the era - The short, fragmented structure mirrors the speaker’s recollections
Captain: “I smiled as wide as a child who went missing on the way home”
- jarring, unsettling of his happiness like a missing child. Pain and upset of his lost childhood - the innocence, excitement, security, appreciation and validation ~ he had lost this version of himself, (moors murders). a metaphor for disillusionment,
Captain: “stale wife”/ “My thick kids wince.”
- condescending tone - old, lifeless, inferior - resents himself = loss of potential, brutal dissatisfaction - rekindle past - Qs no longer relevant, stark shift from the speaker’s nostalgic recollections of his confident, youthful self - reveal the disillusionment of adulthood
Pluto structure and form:
- irregular and free verse to represent stream of consciousness and an essence of freedom. Last two stanzas are five lines each to represent the restriction in loneliness.
What is pluto context?
Roman god of the underworld, Pluto - new planet, now demoted, dramatic monologue, snapshot Impressionism - flashes of one image to the next ~ stream of consciousness. On the page: looks like an hourglass
P: ‘When I awoke/a brand new planet/had been given a name’
Discovery of pluto - excitement, seismic change overnight - in way they’ve been left behind, speed of change reflected in enjambment, surprise, within personas memory
P: ‘It has the same soap suddenly’
caesura- pause reflects the power of the scent to evoke a memory, sibilance - speed of slipping back into the past. Power of memory and sensory - emotionally and physically re-experienced, momentarily overwhelmed by a flashback, personal history is never fully lost—it lingers in objects, scents, and everyday moments.
P: ‘I’m thinking Pluto Pluto Pluto’
triplet - holding on to it (savouring), remembering OR childish recollection of a new discovery, resembles a child chanting something they are fascinated by
P: ‘brown coins of age on my face the size of ha pennies./An hourglass weeping the future into the past’
present reality breaks in and the pause allowing time to absorb,notice things. Obsolete coin - reminder of age, obsolete oneself - death, decline, mortality, hourglass- captures the idea as time coexisting but travelling - can be re-experienced. Weeping ~ awareness/upset of time passing, mourning of what’s gone, fleeting nature of life.
P: ‘half-hearing my father’s laugh/without the help and support of the woman I love.’
lost parents dying again within the memory, lost details, pain of the memories/bereavement,cliche comment - more likely to stick in your mind. Synaesthesia is used; he can “half-hear his father’s laugh” and “not quite seeing us all” this creates the impression that the persona is losing his grasp on reality.
P: tangerine soap
simple minor sentence to sign off the stanza - reflective language, awe, in a Proustain way the tangerine is transporting him, It’s a small, tangible detail that evokes nostalgia
P: ‘In the dark/ unreachable’
- depths of memory, and Darkness often symbolise the unknown, where the future is unclear, and expansive, feeling disconnected. extended metaphor for the persona with similarities in their loneliness, isolation and ambiguous identities throughout the poem.
A: ‘Wear dark glasses in the rain’
Self-deception, comic deception of their actions, secrecy, at this stage the disguise is rudimentary, cliche.
A: ‘Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now/you are naked under your clothes all day,’
washing away of guilt, intertextual link to Shakespeare,self baptism, purification, The sexualisation of the everyday.
A: “brings you alone to your knees/miming, more, more, older and sadder,”
Continued journey through time, ongoing infidelity/ Desire for more, sexual urgency, the rhythm of more, more has a powerfully mimetic not always positive
A: “Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness/in the afternoon/ a voice in your ear”
- Trochaic - language doesn’t capture the excitement and liberation, ‘sweet darkness’ - transgressions, luxury, indulgence, decadence. Voice in your ear - romantic, sensual
A: “A telltale clock/wiping the hours from its face, your face/on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.”
Telltale clock’ - Enjambment, Wiping the hours from its face - an escape from her reality, present, purity of white is being tainted by make up. Tension between the tainted and the physical enjoyment
A: “for a stranger who’s dynamite in bed, again/and again; a slow replay in the kitchen” -
Sexual powerhouse, ‘dynamite’, addictive physicality of the adultery, destructive/ Repetition and Enjambment insatiable appetite for sex.
A: “in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body/stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.”
- Enjambment - drifting to sleep, the domestic image of the spoon, guilt from sin/tainted. ‘Heart over-ripe at the core’ - too many feelings, can’t contain, rotten/decaying from all its corruption, overindulgence
A: “darling; your flowers/dumb and explicit on nobody’s birthday.”
Flowers’ - more typically feminine,conventional gift to a lover, flowers betrayal the secret. No Enjambment - conclusion of marriage - fractured
A: “moon can heal, your own words/commuting to bile in your mouth, terror”
Irreparable, moon traditional romantic image - cannot heal the irrevocable breakdown. Wedding vows - promise, poisonous, sustained betrayal, words empty, cynical last effort, void, emptiness opening up ahead. No enjambment- leaves things hanging
A: “Fuck. Fuck. No. That was./the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun.”
- Disingenuous way of admitting to so thing, deception through language, self-deception, how do these series of affairs get acknowledged?, ‘fuck’ ~ acknowledging culpability, graphic, insistent, concrete as an idea. ‘Abstract noun’ - perceives the situation as not so tangible and debatable, the speaker is struggling to articulate.
H: “Beloved sweetheart bastard.”
- abrupt beginning. ‘Beloved sweetheart bastard’ is an oxymoron, expressing the extremes of emotions that are torturing the speaker. The plosive ‘b’ sounds suggest spitting anger, frustration
H: “ I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,/ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.”
- stony absence of connection/vitality, soulless, colour - envy distortion of perception, loss of self to vengeance -> agency, ownership, also age
H: “the dress/ yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe”-
- colour imagery - loss of purity, innocence - a sense of decay. Enjambment - creates uncertainty between unanimated object and Havisham - transfers fear to inanimate
H: “the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this”
dissassociation/ fractured psyche - lost herself to grief
H: “Puce curses that are sounds not words.”
red/brown colour - old words, deep pain, loss, animalistic -> losing shape of human language, intense dark red that conveys her rage, violent change in perspective
H: “Love’s/hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting”
juxt of “love” and “hate” highlights the speaker’s deep emotional turmoil - enjambment mirrors the instability of her emotions. the romantic symbol has been tainted by betrayal and resentment. The plosive “b” sounds reinforce the idea of an explosive, irreversible moment ~ mirroring the shattering of Havisham’s dreams. Symbolises heart, love
H: “I stabbed at a wedding cake.”
a violent expression of her anger., taking back her story
H: “Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.”
honeymoon is typically associated with romance, and intimacy, but here, it is grotesquely distorted. Necrophilia - descent into madness, Havisham dominance over corpse, control
Disgrace form and structure?
House pathetic fallacy, quatrain - uneasy rhythm, some lines quite regular, other parts quite regular, use caesura - surface looks united but fragmented underneath. Home - is shown to be reflective of the lives lived within
D: “coldness of rooms, each nursing/a thickening cyst of dust and gloom.”
‘Thickening cyst’ - disease, grotesque imagery, parasitic/ malignant growth of the accumulated discomfort/ sickness in the relationship; Nursing - maternal imagery, juxtaposes the disease, home reflects, lives inside, metaphorical hardening of hearts.
D: “And how our words changed. Dead flies in a web.”
Notable decline, evidence of decay is tangible, loving words caught in a web of hatred, caesura - fragmentation
D: “Woke to your clothes like a corpse on the floor,/ the small deaths of lightbulbs pining all day”
‘Corpse’ - a stark marker of the truth, suggests absence, loss, and emotional death - another person has left, ‘dead to me’, the dimming of lights mourning the loss of the relationship, gradual loss of hope, happiness, or understanding in the relationship.
D: “their echoes audible tears”
Magnify the issues with the house, internal rhyme, quiet in the house lingers and resonate -> isolation, loneliness, reinforcing the atmosphere of grief and sorrow.
D: “the shadows of hands/huge in the bedroom”
Gothic enhanced - shadow play -> angry gestures, communication, language as theme -> limits, that language of communication is lost - not functioning
D: “hardened its cool heart, selfish as art, hummed./To a bowl of apples rotten to the core”
Hardened - attempt to close up and move on - detachment, indifference, and the loss of warmth and affection. , ‘Selfish as art’ - relies on interpretation, lack of explanation -> presents itself, art has to be interpreted. irreversible corruption—not just surface-level damage, but complete emotional ruin
D: “And our garden bowing its head, vulnerable flowers/unseen in the dusk as we shouted in silhouette.”
Inversion of health Domestic imagery, reverence - bowing?, retreat into the self for protection, dejection, closing off as defence mechanism, Aggression and shadow - lacking warmth, individuality, or connection, dusk suggests the fading of light, metaphorically representing the end of love and hope.
D: “Woke to the meaningless stars, you/and me both, lost. Inconsolable vowels from the next room.”
‘Meaningless stars’ -> positive romantic image, loss of meaning love, navigation - no route - disillusionment? Lost - void, caesura - chasm of emptiness, Inexpressible nature of this situation, chaos -> language is limiting, reduces the adult relationship to infant-like cries of pain and suffering. “the next room” suggests physical and emotional distance.
B: “If you think till it hurts.”
emotional power of memory, takes effort, concentration and focus to find - speaker seems to push themselves to reconstruct the past, even if it causes pain, 2nd person - a character within the poem, implying speaker talking to this person, enjambment- speed at which memories can come back, ease, flowing memories, temporal movement rather than spatial
B: “And not in sepia,/ lives.”
- short sentences: fragmented images of memories, very film like discrete individual images that form the memory. “not in sepia/lives” - not a photograph, distinct and alive - vivid reliving the memory - visual memory
B: “Alone.”
- alone - vulnerable, lonely, lack of sibilance - brave, independent
B: “A dozen alarming crabs.”
cary, sense of danger, alarm, visual imagery with the emotion of memory bleeding in
B: “Don’t move.”
- minor sentence, don’t move - stay within the memories and believe in their childhood self and memory - explore the memory, pulling out the mundane details - perhaps dementia, notions of senility with age - secondary character
B: “Go for the sound of the sea/Don’t describe it.”
- memory as multi-sensory, sibilance - captures the sounds of the sea/ebb and flow, memory as to be experienced and relived and perhaps language can be limiting - experienced beyond words (ironically what Duffy is trying to do)
B: “And then the platinum blaze of the sun as the earth seemed to turn away.”
- poetic capturing of the memories, day passing on a cosmic scale (the rotation of the earth) - movement of celestial beings - ironic, deliberately elevated descriptive language, perhaps ‘blaze’ - intensity of youth, sudden flash of memory
B: “Scooping a hole in the sand./Sea water seeping in.”
- sibilance reflects the scooping, parallels the old lady digging for the memories - sea water seeping in - literal, almost universal childhood experience (memories threatened by the present flooding back in)
B: “There is older, those shaking, hands cannot touch./ the child”
- youthful hands of childhood: dexterity, vs present fragility (inability to defeat time with memory) - present and past cannot coexist - temporal separation
B: “What would you have to say/ of all people,/ to her/ given the chance?/Exactly.”
tapering of final lines to last line of exactly - cannot reconnect with your younger self - memory lacks the power, in memories the barrier between the physical present day world and the expansive world of your memory seems very thin, exactly - quite blunt, harsh ending -> the older self has no qualification or standing to comment.
L: “The soundtrack then was a litany
– candlewick/bedspread three-piece suite display cabinet”/ “stiff-haired wife” - upper-class world that values money, social standing, and possessions, The litany refers to a repetitive, formal prayer contrasts the recital of material possessions -> consumer goods have replaced spiritual values. Lack of punctuation - The goods merge into each other meaninglessly. implication is that social life was conducted in a formal prescribed manner.
L: “Pyrex”
- “Pyrex” is used to describe the new cookware, which was stronger than glass but could still shatter. This is a metaphor for the women’s carefully presented but brittle selves.
L: “A tiny ladder/ran up Mrs Barr’s American Tan leg, sly/like a rumour.”
- The ladder in the tights undermines this society of women who aspired to rise to middle-class respectability and prosperity, depicting their fragility. Perhaps, the ‘tan’ covers something up that hides beneath a new, socially approved exterior. The simile “like a rumour” suggests that flaws were hidden, whispered rather than acknowledged.
L: “The terrible marriages crackled, cellophane/round polyester shirts”
- alludes to unhappy marriages. The metaphor of cellophane protects the appearance, suggests artificiality and superficial gloss, but hides the reality of the marriage. The inference is that their private lives, including sexual lives, were as artificial and synthetic as their public personae. evokes the sound of cellophane, but also hints at the emotional tension of the marriage.
L: “Then The Lounge/would seem to bristle with eyes, hard”
- hard consonant sounds: “Bristle” suggests something defensive and aggressive, “Hard” shows the lack of warmth or compassion, Eyes” represent social surveillance. “The Lounge,” a place of wealth and social climbing.
L: “An embarrassing word, broken/to bits, which tensed the air like an accident.”
- allude to the social rules of conversation and the inability to broach an uncomfortable topic. The alliterative, plosive “b” in “broken to bits”, creating an uncomfortable, tense environment. “Embarrassing word” suggests how taboo language threatens the careful politeness the adults have built. Broken to bits” implies violence and destruction of the carefully controlled atmosphere, fragmenting the adults’ fragile composure. “Accident” - suggests something sudden, shocking, and chaotic.
L: “code I learnt at my mother’s knee, pretending/to read, where no one had cancer, or sex, or debts”
- The transition into first-person comes more as a purposeful transition into the more personal, emotional part of the narrative. uses a traditional phrase - ironically subverted as instead of learning truth or values, the speaker learns how to pretend - captures the key taboos — real-life hardships and messy human realities are all denied and erased in this world of artificial perfection.
L: “The year a mass grave of wasps bobbed in a jam-jar;/a butterfly stammered itself in my curious hands.”
- evokes death and decay -> adults in the poem are trapped in their narrow, repressive world. speaker’s innocent curiosity unintentionally causes harm -> ‘stammered’ -> attempt to speak out, also being constrained, to say openly the shocking words the adults are avoiding. juxtaposing the two species of wasps and butterflies -> metaphors for adults, “wasps” and children, “butterfly”.
L: “told me to fuck off;” “thrilled, malicious pause”/ “Imminent storm” “salted”
- caesura highlights the horrified silence from the middle class ladies sat around this child. Adjectives heighten the tension, whilst allowing us to understand this rebellious act as the child understands it’s ‘wrong’. Storm - tension and disappointment the speaker has unleashed by breaking the unspoken social “code.” -> hints ar punishment. Salted -> either depicts the silence as sharp, punishing - increasing existing shame - ‘salt in the wounds, or perhaps the thrill of rebellion -> life for her has suddenly acquired flavour and vitality - away from restraint. reveals the speaker’s early awareness of the power of language and the stifling limitations of her social world.
L: “My mother’s mute shame. The taste of soap.”
- traditional punishment of washing a girl’s mouth out with soap. It represents a physical and spiritual cleansing. metaphor - depicts the way her mother copes with this transgression, by projecting her “mute shame” onto her daughter, suppression of voice and the enforcement of conformity through shaming techniques.Mute - silence, repression
