Overall Messages/Conclusion - Feminine Gospels Flashcards
Summary of the Collection
Duffy seeks to give women back the voice which they have been denied through retelling aspects of female experience through the female, rather than male, lens. The collection shifts from the political to the personal as Duffy draws upon historical figures and then allegorical characters and then her own memories to explore what it means to be a woman.
The Long Queen
Duffy explores an idealised woman to write a symbolic poem for the Everywoman. The poem was inspired by Elizabeth I, a revered feminist icon who refused to submit to male dominance as she decided to take ‘Time for a husband’. Duffy lists men by their titles in the first stanza, and so can be seen to be dismissive of males. She rewrites a patriarchal legal system by portraying laws of nature rather than the state which are unique to women. There is a semantic field of suffering in her description of these laws and she organises the stanzas in chronological order, and so she explores female experience with a lens of realism- the sense of collective experience of the EveryWoman is strengthened by her use of the cliche ‘no cause for complaint’. Duffy uses a mix of high and low register in this poem and a wide depiction of those present at the wedding to suggest the message of this poem is universally applicable
The Map Women
Duffy uses this poem to explore female identity, and how it is affected by both personal past and societal pressures. She depicts a woman whose skin is imprinted with a map of her hometown which she is ashamed of and so covers and is ardent to remove- in this way, Duffy can be seen to be exploring how one can feel uncomfortable with their past and the way in which childhood forms a part of female identity. Duffy uses internal rhyme to create a sense of pace and to suggest the woman’s appearance out of her control- this echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s assertion that ‘One is not born, but made a woman’. There are phrases such as ‘wonder/ who you would marry and how and where and when’ which , with enjambment, suggest a sense of shared experience, that a life is laid out. There is a sense of dullness and boredom to the poem as the trains are personified as having ‘sighed’- Duffy creates a sense of unfulfillment which contrasts with her exciting description of a road to somewhere else as a ‘roaring river’ and exotic use of foreign lexis. Duffy creates a woman ‘unsure’ of her own identity, suggesting female identity is shaped by other people- female skin is compared to paper throughout, which symbolises this as paper can be written on. There is death imagery at the circuitous end to the poem- Duffy portrays that to become a new person you have to sacrifice who you used to be. Death is an integral part of the female story.
Beautiful
