How does Carol Ann Duffy use myths in her poems in The Worlds Wife?
by
japx (student)
Myths in The Worlds Wife
How does Carol Ann Duffy use myths in her poems in The Worlds Wife? Duffy uses myths as a base of many of her poems, and by doing this she doesn’t have to introduce a completely new character but instead she can build on to already existing characters that people already know of.
Lets take “Little Red Cap” as an example this is technically not a myth but a fairytale, but she used it in the same matter because most of her readers know of the fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood”. She used this story as a kind of background for her poem because as we know in the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood is still a child, but in Duffys poem she is more of a young poet who falls in love with an older more experienced poet who is the wolf. So again she used the fairytale because she brought in the wolf because in the fairytale he is the big bad wolf but in the poem I guess you could call him the big bad poet because he uses little red cap and leaves her heartbroken. Now let’s take the example of “Mrs. Midas” in this poem she takes the Greek myth of Midas the man with the touch of gold which means anything he touched would turn into gold. So she took this myth and made a poem from the wife’s perspective or at least how she imagined the wife to be. She describes how hard it became for the wife because of her husbands choice and how she became scared that he will turn her into gold and she sent him away to live in a forest.
