the problem with the worlds wife is that having found one joke duffy retells it throughout the anthology
“The problem with The Worlds Wife is that, having found one good joke, duffy just tells it over and over again” How far do you agree with this assessment? Refer to at least two or three poems in your answer.
Within The Worlds Wife Duffy explores the idea that men are inadequate. Although the book of poems does unveil feminist issues and coveys an inequality between men and women, it does also contain other issues such as social acceptance, self-confidence and love. Duffy places an interesting slant on a number of these poems that serves to establish the idea that feminism can be ironic.
Poems such as Anne Hathaway directly oppose the idea that Duffy is re-telling a ‘joke’ throughout the anthology. The poem creates a persona of Shakespeare widow and the best bed becomes the focus of the fourteen-line sonnet. In the opening two lines, Duffy uses a metaphor to express the magic of the bed in which Shakespeare made love to Hathaway “it is a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff tops seas”. By using these metaphors, she embraces his talent and, when describing the notion that Shakespeare would ‘dive for pearls’ suggests he is somewhat a sexual athlete and far from inadequate. From line five to ten Duffy uses imagery in a fascinating way that relates directly to the fact Shakespeare was a writer. Anne sees her body as a “softer rhyme to his…. now assonance” followed by the personification of his torch “a verb dancing in the centre of a noun” giving the feeling of grace and delicacy. The impression of Hathaway’s complete appreciation of Shakespeare talents suggests she sees his love making as an act of drama enacted through “touch”, “scent” and “taste”. Duffy writes that Hathaway wishes sometimes that Shakespeare had “written” her, illustrating her fascination with his artistic creation. The poem itself is not typical of the collection, expressing men in a much more respectful light. Therefore within this poem there is no evidence that Hatchway views Shakespeare as inadequate. The poem takes a tone of tenderness, and Duffy’s last lines are poignant. Anne Hathaway is full of rich imagery, the tale of women who remembers her husband in a wonderful loving way with no hint of sorrow.
