Feminine Gospels

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Flowers’ are often used as a stereotypical symbol of fertility and the delicate nature of women. Yet, by connecting with ‘sore’, placing this adjective before ‘flowers’, Duffy removes this archetypical notion of how women should portray themselves, tainting ‘flowers’ with an aching pain ‘sore’. This speaks to the female experience, childbirth is incredibly painful, and the delicate ‘flower’ symbol of women is ridiculous, Duffy transforms the image into something more realistic through the use of this oxymoron. in stripping women bare of their layers, carol ann duffy centres her anthology feminine gospels on expanding upon the historical, the archetypal, the biblical, and the fantastical visions of female identity, often rewriting them as she sees fit. The Long Queen” in a literal sense is about Queen Elizabeth I of England, the last Tudor monarch, who reigned for forty-five years. Duffy draws on the first English Epic poem, ‘The Faerie Queene’ by Edmund Spenser, who immortalized in the figure of ‘Gloriana’. The syntax of the opening line also places ‘my breasts’ at a focal point, the meter of the line falling upon the word ‘breasts’. This, too, places the feminine experience in plain sight, Duffy making clear the female body in her narrative depiction of a new history.

Duffy introduces a character who helps Helen, her female ‘maid’. This woman ‘loved her most’, loving her for herself instead of her beauty. Indeed, she would not ‘describe/one aspect of her face’, protecting Helen of Troy. Instead of furthering the iconic legend of Helen, she remains faithful, the only friendly character of this section is a female. This could be a mechanism through which Duffy suggests that women always support women, especially in retaliation to the male gaze. The voice is that of a first person narrator, the poet. The tone is solemn, understatedly emotional and deeply sad. It is within the fourth stanza in Duffy introduces the first ‘law’ of Elizabeth’s, ‘Childhood’. Duffy states that Queen Elizabeth created a society in which ‘a girl’ would feel safe wherever she was, ‘no girl growing’ without being protected. The consonance of /g/ across ‘girl growing’ reflects the sense of ageing, with the extended sound being emblematic of growing and changing.Alongside the innate eroticism of Duffy’s language here, she also presents a note of violence. Monroe is a commodity to be employed, ‘investors’ gold’, Duffy suggesting how people capitalize on her beauty. Indeed, ‘her eyes’ are ‘pressed by a banker’s thumb’, the violent imagery being covered in false ‘sapphires’ and ‘platinum’ to cover up the horrors of her mistreatment. Monroe is manipulated and controlled by those around her, made into a money-making machine instead of treated like a human. After the match, a tone of melancholy sets into the poem, Duffy not celebrating ‘with the lads’, instead of washing in the ‘solitary shower’. The sibilance across these words carries the melancholy of the stanza, furthering the depressing depiction of this post-victory celebration.

After her transformation, finally coming to terms with where she was born, nothing really changes. Duffy uses a rhetorical question to signal how the woman is still unsure of her own identity, ‘was she looking for?’. The semantics of death ‘ghost’, ‘dead in’, and ‘suicided letter’ could represent how her identity has been partly destroyed by this change. Yet, not to the extent she thought it would. She longed for a new start, a completely fresh approach to life. Indeed, there is a moment of false hope. Duffy writes, ‘sun glitter’. While ‘glittered’ may be understood as a moment of happiness and hope, it could also be a reference to Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: “ All that glisters is not gold”. Duffy states that this happiness is only a false promise. In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Carol Ann Duffy’s 2002 collection, ‘Feminine Gospels’. After an introductory module in which we think about the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy in general and the collection as a whole – and especially the implications of its title – the course continues with a reading and analysis of each of the twenty-one poems in the collection, one by one. Are these poems placed at the end to the book to signal a movement or development? We shall have to wait for the next book to know. For the moment Duffy prefers to wear a tougher face, and to keep her voice jaunty. She moves through the lives she invents with a kind of casual confidence which her characters sometimes briefly share, like the shopaholic who The final law that Elizabeth comes to represent is ‘Childbirth’, safety, and support to all those the ‘lie on the birthing beds’. Duffy presents the pain of childbirth, ‘screamed scarlet’ using the symbolism of deep red to reflect pain, and also the symbol of blood, inherent in childbirth. Within the fourth stanza, Duffy makes reference to ‘Dr Faustus’, ‘A thousand ships’ echoing the description of ‘A face that launched a thousand ships’. This confirms to the reader that Duffy is focusing on Helen of Troy, who features in Christopher Marlowe’s play.When she wants to, Duffy can write with lyric intensity, noticing "where the lights from the shop ran like paint in the rain", observing a child's beauty in the glow under the skin of her hands, or watching the same child sleeping "with the whole moon held in your arms". Not everything is this dark, but there’s this underlying sense of vulnerability echoing throughout the collection. The longest poem, although my least favourite, “The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High,” is the one where the poet’s pure delight in language is clearly tangible. The final image of this section focuses on ‘little bird inside a cage’, representing the trap that beauty is. Helen’s whole life was marred by the prosecution of men, trapped due to her physical features. The final image of a ‘cage’ symbolizes this oppression, Helen’s life is destroyed due to her beauty.

Firstly, Duffy begins this section with a premonition by the end, ‘dead’. The caesura following this word adds emphasis, creating an unsettling moment of pause. Diana, apart from her fantastic activism and philanthropy, is also known for how badly she was treated by the press. Her death came in a car crash while fleeing from the press, perhaps signaling ‘dead’ as her final resting state. One could argue there is a slight reference to Desdemona from Othello, ‘a handkerchief she’d dropped once’. This reference bears relevance as Desdemona is murdered by Othello due to his male rage, unable to believe his loyal wife. Placed as the first poem within Duffy’s ‘Feminine Gospels’ collection, this poem comes to represent a gold standard of remembering women’s experience, both on an individual and collective level. It is prioritized due to being first, the impactful first line, ‘The Long Queen couldn’t die’ symbolizing the extent of women’s influence and power, extending onwards throughout time.This is further suggested by ‘she rolled’, Cleopatra being the active participant in lines. Cleopatra ‘reached and pulled him down’, controlling Caesar with her intelligence and beauty. The Long Queen‘ by Carol Ann Duffy elevates the status of women by focusing on one of the most influential rulers in history. Duffy begins by focusing on the principle of marrying ‘Time’ instead of an actual husband, and Elizabeth focuses on ruling successfully instead of marriage and romance. Duffy then moves through the type of people that Queen Elizabeth rules over, focusing on the blinding quality of being a woman, everyone encompassed within her reign. Duffy explores how the Queen’s ‘laws’: supporting all women, dispelling the fear and shame around periods, ensuring that emotions are shown, and safe childbirth. The final stanza suggests that Queen Elizabeth would have given up everything to extend the voice of women, championing females across her ‘time’ and long into the future.

There is a great deal of male lust in these stanzas, with everyone wanting to be with her. The use of caesura around ‘line, sighed,’ signals the desperation of the men that follow her. Helen’s beauty captures these people in a spell, then all want to follow her ‘till death’. Although Helen has a great deal of power, it is all based on her beauty, the overwhelming ‘every man’ following her being an incredibly daunting image. I sat down in the library to read some of the books I'd already chosen, but this one caught my eye and attention somehow, sitting on a shelf just to my right. It combined a few of the best things in the world: poetry, poetry written by women & poetrt about women. I read in it one sitting, still at the library, sitting on a worn colourful striped armchair. Feminie Gospels is Duffy's sixth collection of poetry, and features poems with subjects ranging from women in history, lesbian school teachers & Anonymous (who in Virginia Woolf's words was a "woman" - as always, I agree with her). The standouts for me were The Diet, Tall, Loud & The Laughter of Stafford Girl's High. This collection is lyrically written, powerful, beautiful. I am very interested in researching further in how Duffy explains her own poetry and the intent behind them. I wish my brain was advanced enough to understand every poem I read but then again, that would take away a lot of the magic. Duffy’s Sub spans over 7 stanzas, each measuring an equal 10 lines. There is no rhyme scheme within the poem, Duffy instead of creating a metrical rhythm through the use of enjambment and internal rhyme. ‘Feminine Gospels’ has internal rhyme throughout, with this poem being no different, Duffy uses this technique to connect ideas while also speeding up how the poem is read – perhaps reflecting the intensity of the situations Duffy imagines herself in. The complete regularity within the poem could be a reflection of how women have been excluded from these historic events, the monotony of form reflecting the unchanging exclusion. One could argue that using a 7 stanza structure bears reference to the 7 days of the week, Duffy uses this idea to suggest that female exclusion from history is an occurrence that happens every day. The voice is that of the poet, using the first person pronoun “I”. Duffy is personally speaking about women whose talent is wasted.

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Another point of context is the use of ‘A Room of One’s Own’. This is making reference to Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same name, in which the female identity is similarly explored. This novel is concerned with identity and place, making a good match for Duffy’s ‘ The Map Woman’. The second character discussed is Cleopatra, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. She ruled from 51-30BC. Cleo, similarly to Helen of Troy, is a figure much favored by art and literature. In 30 BC, her naval fleet (including her husband, Mark Anthony) was defeated. This led to Antony’s suicide. Once Cleopatra learned of this, she killed herself by poisoning. While history is not certain if this death comes from self-poison or being bitten by an asp, many believe she self-inflicted the snake bite. The world this creature inhabits is apocalyptic, with the old alone and vulnerable to thieves in the night: A dominant technique is the use of asyndeton, lists without conjunctions “and” or “but”. The purpose is to emphasise the power and scope of the Queen, each stanza with a different application, for example, the description of first menstruation and childbirth.