The World Wife by Carol Ann Duffy - Book Report/Review Example

"Duffy's collection is a fine example of feminist deconstruction and it contains an uneasy balance between anger and humour." Discuss this assertion.The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy is a collection that finds its strength in feminist revisioning of texts that are immersed in patriarchal overtones. The poems gain authenticity with their ability to present images and ideas with an almost tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, which uses poetry as a medium to present a deconstructed view of many 'accepted' notions and concepts. Feminist revisions of tales or figures from mythology may be interpreted as an attempt to reclaim the feminine from the conventional definitions that patriarchal outlooks have imposed upon it. Duffy represents this attempt at deconstructing patriarchal texts in The World's Wife. For example, the myth of Pygmalion is examined in the poem "Pygmalion's Wife," in a manner that makes use of a rich comic sensibility as well as the deconstructionist attempt to revision a myth that undermines the autonomy of the woman. In its many avatars, the Pygmalion myth is the classic example of how the masculine need to construct and mould the feminine is played out in Pygmalion's 'construction' of what, according to him, is the perfect woman. This 'construction' or domination of the female by patriarchal discourse is deconstructed by Duffy during the course of the poem. This is conveyed primarily through the sense of "play-acting" by the poem's female protagonist. She expresses the idea that she is merely going along with the man's intentions, pretending to allow him to mould her according to his wishes, when she possesses an autonomy that it is beyond his understanding to grasp: The poem also constructs a sense of contrast between imagery of cold and that of warmth. Pygmalion's 'clammy hands' appear to be cold and lifeless, lacking the warmth and affection on which a mutually beneficial relationship should be based. In contrast, the woman is associated with the warmth of wax, as she says that she "grew warm, like candle wax,/ kissed back,/ was soft, was pliable" (lines 40-42). The wax also has connotations in terms of the fact that she deliberately makes herself "pliable" and allows herself to be "soft" and responsive to a touch that is "clammy" and unwelcome. She "change[s] tack" (line 39) to allow herself to participate in the dynamics of a man-woman relationship. The idea of changing tack, of adopting responses to given situations rather than behaving as one's instincts dictate, suggests a level of falsehood and artificiality. This sense of pretence is reinforced as she describes how she fakes an orgasm: began to moan, got hot, got wild, arched, coiled, writhed, begged for his child, and at the climax screamed my head off - All an act. (43-49) The fact that being "hot" and "wild" does not come naturally to her, but is part of a ritualized lovemaking, suggests that the deliberate, reasoned approach to directing her responses is in direct contradiction of the true desires that lie within her. The fact that it is "All an act" indicates that while she is with him, she learns to says the right lines and act on cues, much like a stage actor reciting lines from a script. Everything about the relationship between Pygmalion and his wife goes according to prescribed rules and patterns of behaviour. In this, Duffy presents us with the perspective of the woman who is constructed by Pygmalion. She implies that women often have to live by rules that are not of their own making, in order to carry out successful relationships with men. It is not that they are passive and unable to resist the patriarchal ideology that seeks to define and regulate their behaviour; rather, they assert their autonomy by playing along with prescribed norms within the spaces that they are forced to inhabit. The idea of what can and cannot be considered "representable" is therefore seen to be a valid concern in Duffy's poem. She also draws attention in the poem to the manner in which a narrative in verse can address the issue of representation: the author seeks to "re-present" the female perspective in a manner that subverts the myth's ideological basis, and with an objectivity that is possible through the distancing medium of a narrativized reality. In this, she calls for an intertextuality that may link her poem to the literary representation of Pygmalion by Ovid and Shaw. She discards the 'construction' of femininity within the works of these authors, and presents a renewed, reconstructed look at the woman in the myth. Duffy also implies in The World's Wife that the reworking of myth from the point of view of marginalized classes of society like women is something that she actively seeks to undertake in her poetry, which sets up its own narratives autonomous of the tyrannical power of patriarchal discourses. In this, myth is seen to be a representation of patriarchal ideology that represents and constructs women in constricting roles. An underlying anger against such circumscription informs and directs much of Duffy's writing. For example, the poem "Eurydice" expresses a sense of this anger in its imagery of darkness and associations with the colour black. Eurydice is literally in a dark place, but Duffy's deconstructionist point of view creates a parallel between the mythological story and the figuratively 'dark' situation in which women find themselves, both because there seems no hope of liberation, and also because they are also forced to bottle up their anger, being allowed access to no channels through which such emotion can be channeled into something positive. The opening lines of the poem present an exposition that clearly outlines the cavernous dimensions of this angry darkness, created by both helplessness and frustration: Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole where words had to come to an end. (lines 1-6) The term "nowhen" indicates that the female speaker is nowhere in space as well as time, the traditional Hegelian categories through which existence is defined. Also critical to an understanding of the poem is that it begins with the word "Girls," directly addressing female readers. This is a narrative addressed by a woman to women; this is an attempt to create a dialogue between women that speaks of female experience. Eurydice reveals that because of the limitations of the space in which she has been confined, she has been reduced to "a shadow of my former self"; the conventional spaces that women are confined to ensure that they are not given the liberty to determine a sense of their own selves. Duffy is quick to follow up this declaration of anger with sardonic humour, as Eurydice remarks that in this place, she is at least free of the man who "once sulked for a night and a day/ because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns" (lines 23-24). This recollection creates a humorous picture of a man who feels offended that his sense of grammar is being critiqued by a woman, and he sulks because his sense of male authority is offended by this observation of hers. Significantly, this apparently light-hearted comment also contains an underlying sense of the concept of Logos, the word, which is traditionally male. In this, Eurydice is not only recalling a personal memory, but also representing the female author, who takes up her place in a literary tradition where men have been in authority. By commenting on her husband's language skills, she is the archetype of the woman writer, who 'dares' to challenge the man's authority by pointing out his shortcomings in his own field of authority. The idea of using the female body as the site of domination is common in myths, is based on the model of using the 'weaker sex' to perpetrate notions of power and further political agendas which seek to denote a gendered sense of identity in terms of masculine ideals of power. In her undermining of such absolute power structures, Duffy sets up an autonomous construction of female authority by deconstructing the authority of male writers as well as patriarchal agendas of power. She deconstructs domination as a form of oppression, and her poetry seems to examine all such forms of injustice as stemming from political agendas based on dialectical systems of thought, that see the world in simplistic terms by creating polarized and divided structures that bisect the societies that we live in into two kinds of genders: that one that seizes power by appropriating it, and the one that is subdued by having hegemony exercised over it. Continuing the idea of the manner in which women are used as subjects of authoritarian narratives in both myth and history, Duffy also points out that Eurydice is forced to deal which the reality that not only can she not create her own narrative easily, but that all existing narrative spaces are already controlled by insidious authoritarian agendas that seek to subvert her sense of autonomy as an individual and as a woman. Even "at Death's door," Orpheus appears "Larger than life./ With his lyre/ and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize" (lines 31-33). The woman is confined to the role of the Muse, the passive inspiration, as the man appropriates for himself the role of musician and poet. As Duffy also observes, the woman herself becomes a 'sign' in such discourses; she becomes the object of art rather than its generator, forced to be written about rather than to be empowered through writing her self. Eurydice says: And given my time all over again, rest assured that I'd rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess, etc., etc. In fact, girls, I'd rather be dead. (lines 47-50) The poem delves into areas of self-representation, since the icons available for representation in linguistic or semantic terms have all too often become crystallized in patriarchal discourses, and cannot easily be redeemed from their fossilized state. Whether a woman is seen as "dark" or "white" in patriarchal texts, she is always reduced to a rigid stereotype, and Duffy's Eurydice resists such representation by stating that she would "rather be dead." Alternatively, the poem's reworking of the patriarchal narrative of Eurydice seeks to reclaim logos from being the stronghold of patriarchal domination. Duffy's use of the female narrators addressing female readers through the repeated use of the term "girls" seeks to subvert traditional forms of storytelling by replacing the conventional male narrative voice with female perspectives. As she observes, "the Gods are like publishers, usually male" (line 51), and the woman writer has to consistently deconstruct traditional stereotyping and gender domination by writing herself into being, and by claiming autonomy over her own sense of self. As Duffy's collection indicates, the advantage of using the feminine narrator is not only to subvert male authority, but also to invalidate the idea of authority itself by presenting an alternative world-view that disregards the need for authoritarian discourse to create order in reality. Duffy questions the idea of 'authoring' as 'authoritarian' by using female narrators from traditionally patriarchal myths who discount the need to territorialize literary spaces as they tell their stories, thereby encouraging readers to participate in the act of writing and reading instead of being relegated to the margins of the text as passive observers. Duffy's women indicate that utterances - both in poetry and in history - may be liberated from power structures. In "Penelope," we see yet another woman, Ulysses' wife, attempting to deconstruct the male authority that tries to subjugate her to its will. She is given "cloth and scissors, needle, thread" (line 9) with which to "amuse myself" (line 10) as she is expected to passively await her husband's return from his grand adventures. She is confined to the domestic realm as he explores the world outside. However, she uses these instruments of subjugation to create tapestries in which her anger and frustration come out through radiant images that represent her creative, liberating impulses. Anger is channeled into art. Her thimble is "like an acorn" (line 19), an organic emblem of growth and evolution. She describes how she "lost myself completely/ in a wild embroidery of love, lust, loss, lessons learnt" (lines 24-25). The cold, limiting interiors of her surroundings pale in comparison to the colours she weaves into her embroidery, and she sets up for herself a forum in which she can examine her own unfettered wildness. Significantly, she uses the conventional tools of women's household work to subvert patriarchal authority by inhabiting her space in such a way that she liberates herself and allows herself to explore who she really is. Therefore, one may suggest that Duffy's writing not only subverts traditional poetic spaces, but also looks for possibilities beyond the spaces that are traditionally created by existing structures. The idea of femaleness is extended not only to the narrators and the narratives that Duffy creates by subverting patriarchal myths, but also to metaphors and symbols that reflect the manner in which art is viewed by the writer. Since the representation of a narrator as female somehow 'violates' the conventional idea of a narrator, the carnivalized disruption of the authority of patriarchal storytelling is encouraged and welcomed by such narratives. This conception of female narrativization calls into question the validity of writing itself as an adequate form of representation. Duffy's poems are about women who seek to be autonomous and whose objective in writing and other methods of representation is to recreate their senses of self independently. She suggests that the solutions to the problems regarding gender politics may only be found if intellectual systems try to break out of the tyranny of thinking in terms of dichotomies. Transformations, in Duffy's poetry, must stem from a poststructuralist impulse to change things internally. Her poems allow us to imagine a hypothetical reality in which nobody has to conform to models of behavior, especially those that are set down for one by others. While this is not to suggest that writers like Duffy recommend that people should be allowed to do as they like, it does imply that autonomous means of self-definition are the only channels through which we may liberate ourselves from tyrannical systems that seek to control us. Reference Duffy, C. A. (1999). The World's Wife. London: Picador. Read More