Feminine Gospels

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There is a sense of mythical to this style of ruling, with Queen Elizabeth being idolized through Duffy’s mythic semantics, ‘some said’ playing into the narrative of a legendary figure. All her possessions for a moment of time’ illustrates the power of Elizabeth I and her devotion to women. Like the best of her novelist peers - Rose Tremain, Michael Cunningham, Shena Mackay - she slides in and out of her characters' lives on a stream of possessions, aspirations, idioms and turns of phrase. Last poem in the collection, suggests she has done all she can do, and the struggle for feminism is down to other people. This reference bears relevance as Desdemona is murdered by Othello due to his male rage, unable to believe his loyal wife.

These carefully planned stanzas could reflect the pressure on Diana to conform to the stereotypes of a princess. Despite prizes, professorships and bestsellers, Carol Ann Duffy is still considered a top British poet: nothing more.

Sports is an important consideration, as well as music; both of which there have been male and female seperation. After witnessing a woman waste away to almost nothing, being swept by the wind there is almost this relief when we realize it is merely an inner desire. The final word demonstrates Cleopatra’s power, able to ‘wreck’ men through her commitment to being extraordinary.

In “Beautiful,” we meet a series of famous female figures - mythical or historical -, defined by their ability to excite the longing of men, to be their “lucky charms”: “Beauty is fame. In this case, asyndeton is used to display the lengths to which the Map-Woman goes to hide her body. This confirms to the reader that Duffy is focusing on Helen of Troy, who features in Christopher Marlowe’s play. The fact the stanzas get longer as this section progresses could reflect how controlling the media were of Marilyn. There is a tragedy written in “The Diet” that echoes that of the modern woman, and the final three lines of the poem “inside the Fat / Woman now, / trying to get out” helps the reader to truly examine how our world defines beauty.

Furthermore, even the ‘smoking cop’ that ruled over her death is nonchalant, ‘smoking’ suggesting how at ease he is. 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. Even if, in this particular poem, the character is hardly given Duffy's approval, that readiness to move on is intoxicating. Using ‘breast’ also centers the poem on a uniquely female perspective, Duffy further connecting with other poems in ‘Feminine Gospels’. Duffy further suggests that she was constantly under the influence of the media, subjugated by a Hollywood machine that sought only profit.