Mrs Icarus

Myth:
The son of the inventor, Daedalus, who crafted wings made of feathers and wax for his son. Using this wings he tried to escape the island of Crete, but didn't listen to his father's advice, and flew too close to the Sun, its heat causing the wax to melt. He fell to his death.

Structure:
Mrs Icarus is five lines long, with an A, B, C, D, B rhyme scheme.

Closer Reading:
- "I'm not the first or last" - many women have experienced the same thing, watching their husbands do something stupid. This suggests that women know better than men, but can only watch as they try to do something the women know won't work.
- "to stand on a hillock" - a 'hillock' is a small hill, used to rhyme with the final word. Most of Carol Ann Duffy's poems don't have a distinct rhyme scheme, and she has said that she likes to mess about with the well known structure of rhymes.
- "watching the man she married/ prove to the world" - Duffy is suggesting that men need to be consolidated in their actions. They are needy and desperate for the approval of others; definitely a critical opinon! This line could also suggest that Mrs Icarus knows that Icarus's venture is going to fail, because she's disputed it and know he needs to "prove" himself to others.
- "he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock." This sentence stands on its own at the end of the poem, making it stand out to the reader. The language is colloquial, and slightly taboo, with the use of the word "pillock". The modern slang word helps to put this myth into a mordern context. Using more adjectives when building up a descriptive can make the description stronger and more vivid.
The way that Mrs Icarus continues to insult her husband is negative and moany.

Themes:
Mrs Icarus is presented as an unsupportive wife, that is fed up with her husband's antics. She is similar to Mrs Sisyphus in this way. Both their husbands had to prove to the world that they could complete an impossible task. She mocks her husband because she does not respect him. Icarus is shown as selfish because he is trying to prove to the world he can do something, even when she's told him it's impossible. He doesn't care for his wife's opinion and perhaps this is what Duffy is trying to say; that a woman's opinion is belittled compared to that of a man.