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Carol Ann Duffy cares very little about the aftermath when it comes to writing poetry. She has no limits to where she is willing to go and into what depth; whether it is rape, misogyny, homophobia and speaking out about general hardships people like her (as a gay woman) have gone through in history. All of her works speak out about something, something she feels isn’t talked about enough, something men as a group don’t fully grasp. Her Worlds Wife collection is a prime collection of poetry that encompasses and encapsulates these ideas. Most of her views are about misogyny and the misuse and treatment of women through the ages, but a much less talked about view is her belief that a mother and child bond is a bond that is close to unbreakable. Duffy is personally a mother to a now 27-year-old daughter (born 1995) and is open about her feelings towards her daughter. Her ideas and experiences about mother-daughter bonds seep through very strongly into the poems Demeter and Queen Herod, released in the 1999 publication of The Worlds Wife collection.
Queen Herod, By Carol Ann Duffy
The midnight hour. The chattering stars
shivered in a nervous sky.
Orion to the South
who knew the score, who’d seen,
not seen, then seen it all before;
the yapping Dog Star at his heels.
High up in the West
a studded, diamond W.
And then, as prophesied,
blatant, brazen, buoyant in the East –
and blue –
The Boyfriend’s Star.
We do our best,
we Queens, we mothers,
mothers of Queens.
We wade through blood
for our sleeping girls.
We have daggers for eyes.
Behind our lullabies,
the hooves of terrible horses
thunder and drum.
My baby stirred,
suckled the empty air for milk,
till I knelt
and the black Queen scooped out my breast,
the left, guiding it down
to the infant’s mouth.
No man, I swore,
will make her shed one tear.
A peacock screamed outside.
Afterwards, it seemed like a dream.
The pungent camels
kneeling in the snow,
the guide’s rough shout
as he clapped his leather gloves,
hawked, spat, snatched
the smoky jug of mead
from the chittering maid –
she was twelve, thirteen.
I watched each turbaned Queen
rise like a god on the back of her beast.
And splayed that night
below Herod’s fusty bulk,
I saw the fierce eyes of the black Queen
flash again, felt her urgent warnings scald
my ear. Watch for a star, a star.
It means he’s here…
Some swaggering lad to break her heart,
some wincing Prince to take her name away
and give a ring, a nothing, a nought in gold.
I sent for the Chief of Staff,
a mountain man
with a red scar, like a tick
to the mean stare of his eye.
Take men and horses,
knives, swords, cutlasses.
Ride East from here
and kill each mother’s son.
Do it. Spare not one.
Ice in the trees.
Three Queens at the Palace gates,
dressed in furs, accented;
their several sweating, panting beasts
laden for a long hard trek,
following the guide and boy to the stables;
courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts
for the King and Queen of here – Herod, me –
in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds,
fruit, the best of meat and wine,
dancers, music, talk –
as it turned out to be,
with everyone fast asleep, save me,
those vivid three –
till bitter dawn.
They were wise. Older than I.
They knew what they knew.
Once drunken Herod’s head went back,
they asked to see her,
fast asleep in her crib,
my little child.
Silver and gold,
the loose change of herself,
glowed in the soft bowl of her face.
Grace, said the tallest Queen.
Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed hands.
The black Queen
made a tiny starfish of my daughter’s fist,
said Happiness; then stared at me,
Queen to Queen, with insolent lust.
Watch, they said, for a star in the east –
a new star
pierced through the night like a nail.
It means he’s here, alive, newborn.
Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.
The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je t'adore.
The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist.
The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake. The Rat.
The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr Right.
The story of Queen Herod is based on the “‘Massacre of the Innocents”, one of the most violent stories in the entirety of the bible. The original story had the king murder all the male children in fear they would take the throne from his son, but this reinterpretation by Duffy has the queen order all the male children killed in fear they will take her daughter away. In the poem the persona describes her child as “Silver and gold”, this metaphorically describes her daughter's value from the queen’s perspective, she is precious. It could also refer to her patriarchal value within a system that prioritises worth in marriage as a social currency. The use of this metaphor is only adding to this theme of Duffy’s, that a daughter is rare, precious, and irreplaceable even from the perspective of the mother. At the climax of the poem, the persona Queen Herold replies to the star in the east which symbolises a boy taking her daughter away. Carol uses a brutal tone to describe how scary the chief of staff is, “a mountain man / with a red scar, like a tick,” and by extension, how desperate and bloodthirsty she feels at the idea of someone hurting and/or taking her daughter away from her. “knives, swords, cutlasses,” the consistent sibilance suggests a hissing, dismissive tone. “Do it. Spare not one,” Duffy connects the murder to the number zero showing the persona is ruthless to anyone who has the slightest chance of harming her daughter. “We do our best / we Queens, we mothers,” These collective first-person pronouns voice maternal protection and aggression. A sense of sisterhood and community is depicted that provides insight into Duffy’s beliefs on maternal love and protection that comes with every mother. Carol’s depth of meaning in this poem only shows that she put a lot of effort into composing this piece, as well as that it was clear she wanted to twist the original story of the massacre of the innocent's into a story depicting the extent a good mother will go to protect her daughter from any man who may damage her.
Demeter, By Carol Ann Duffy
Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart –
I tried that, but it skimmed, 5
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon
The second poem in The World’s Wife collection that focuses on the bond between a mother and her daughter is Demeter. This poem takes both a much similar and completely different route to Queen Herod. Demeter is a greek goddess who symbolises fertility and agriculture. In the myths, she had a daughter named Persephone, who spent one-third of each year in the underworld, this caused Demeter much grief and is why the Greeks believed winter occurred. When looking at the poem, Demeter is different compared to the rest of The World's Wife collection. The rest of the collection contains themes that challenge men and male ideas against women, but Demeter contains no mention of any male. This still makes sense and fits in with the overarching theme of the collection, to the extent of no man could ever mean as much as the persona's daughter in the fact she doesn’t care to mention any male figure. Demeter’s suffering does not come from the existence of any man, but in actuality, it comes from the absence of her daughter, which means a lot in this collection comparing this pain, the absence of her daughter, to the other poems' male-centred conflicts. At the mere fact that Carol doesn’t bother mentioning the man who took Demeter's daughter in the myths, which would have been a very easy task to complete, Duffy chose not to mention him. The poem uses a sonnet form, which is usually used to explore themes of love and nature, this ties in well with the overall theme of the poem being about Demeter's love for her daughter and Demeter being the goddess of agriculture with consistent mention of the natural world. This sonnet also contains heavy use of enjambment in the first two stanzas. This highlights how Demeter feels incomplete while she is separated from Persephone, only to be further emphasised by the final rhyming couplet showing unity when her daughter is returned to Demeter. This only promotes the completeness Demeter feels with her daughter, and how nothing can replace that. The final couplet, “the blue sky smiling, none too soon, / with the small shy mouth of a new moon.” uses sibilance to suggest the resolving of the story, Demeter's daughter is back. Furthermore, this juxtaposes the harsh syllables at the start of the poem indicating the melting away of winter and grief, only to solidify the overarching idea that Demeter NEEDS her daughter. The couplet also uses the personification of nature to demonstrate that even nature is welcoming her daughter back. This is Duffy trying to spread awareness that the mother-daughter bond is a bond meant to be left unopposed, unchallenged, as a warning for the outcomes of opposing these relationships. Finally, “the blue sky smiling,” suggests that the love between a mother and daughter is universal between all mothers and their daughters. This all helps support the claim that Demeter is a poem that shows independence and liberation in comparison to the rest of The World’s Wife, Demeter is not dependent on men nor is she defined by them, whereas she is defined by her daughter, and without her, she feels empty and purposeless, tying into this key theme of Duffy’s.
“I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.” - Carol Ann Duffy
To finalise, it is clear to see that both Queen Herod and Demeter, are prime examples showing Carol Ann Duffy’s under-discussed signature style of raising awareness on the attachment a mother has to their daughter, and the extent their love would go to to protect their special relationship with said daughters; Queen Herod protecting her daughter from the harm of a man by ordering the slaughter of every son in the kingdom, and Demeter feeling empty and incomplete in the absence of her special daughter. Both poems touch on the unity and sisterhood of mothers to support each other in their efforts to have that bond with their children. These ideas only irrevocably define Duffy’s views on motherhood, and the need to protect their young, as well as the aftermath of losing their children, and the loss and grief they feel. It can all be seen as a warning to society about the ends and limits these mothers would go to in order to protect their children.