Mrs Sisyphus

Myth:
Sisyphus was known as a crafy king, who used trickery to trap the embodiment of death, Thanatos. As punishment for his trickery, he was thrown into Tartarus, forced to roll a boulder up a hill, that would roll back down as soon as he got close to the top, for all eternity.
He is one of the most famous criminals in the Underworld.

Structure:
Mrs Sisyphus is split into three stanzas, all of unequal length and using different rhyme schemes. The third stanza is displayed on a second page, to show a change in tone.

Closer Reading:
- In the first stanza all lines end in words that end with an -rk sound, creating a constant flowing rhyme, e.g. "jerk", "irk", and "berk". The words Mrs Sisyphus uses to describe her husband are all negative. She is just as irritated as he is about the repetitive task.
- "I call it a stone" - she belittles his task, trying to show that he isn't that strong or capable.
- "I could do something vicious to him with a dirk" - a dirk is a type of dagger. Mrs Sisyphus wishes to inflict pain onto her husband, as her type of punishment.
- Mrs Sisyphus only thinks of how his punishment affects her. He can no longer spend anytime with her. "Think of the perks, he sayss/ What use is a perk, I shriek" - she is not willing to see a positive side to his task.
- They think it's a quirk...A load of old bollocks is nearer the mark" Using taboo language emphasises her stress and anger. Mr Sisyphus, again, doesn't think much for the punishment or her husband. She is self centred.
- "that feckin' stone's no sooner up/ that it's rolling back/ all the way down." - the way the sentence is broken up makes the lines grow smaller and smaller as you read down, like the boulder is rolling down the hill. This is also a link back to the original myth and the property of the boulder, cursed by Zeus.
- "Musn't shirk - /keen as a hawk,/ lean as a shark/ Musn't shirk!" - continued repetition of the -rk sound and also "musn't shirk". Sisyphus isn't really pleased with his wife's moaning behavior. She is taunting him.
- "But I lie alone in the dark,/ feeling like Noah's wife did" - Mrs Sisyphus feels unattached to her husband and disconnected from the world as a result of his lack of affection. She is "alone" because of her husband's lack of consideration for her. This final stanza is meant to envoke symphathy from the reader, about the unfortunateness of her position.
- "My voice reduced to a squark" - she had become unimportant.
-  "he is giving one hundred per cent and more to his work." - Sisyphus only cares about completing his impossible task. He is driven mad by the constant failure, and wishes to prove everyone wrong; he can roll the boulder to the top of the hill. As a result of this selfishness, Mrs Sisyphus is alone.

Themes:
Like Medusa, we are given a character that we are meant to hate because of her unsupportiveness towards her husban
d. However as the poem progress,we symphathise with the lack of affection she feels. Carol Ann Duffy is showing a world where men, and their needs, are more important than women.

Anne Hathaway

Story:

Anne Hathaway was the wife of Shakespeare, world renowned for his poetry and extensive playwriting. They married in 1582. If you type into Wikipedia Anne Hathaway, the page will come up with (Shakespeare's Wife) in brackets. Apparently, that's all she's famous for - little was known about their relationship.

In Shakespeare's will, he wrote "Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed"

Structure:

Anne Hathaway is written as a Shakespearean sonnet, with fourteen lines, which can be split into two quatrains and a sextet, finishing with a rhyming couplet. Being that she is Shakespeare's wife, were we really expecting anything different? 

Sonnets are usually love poetry, which sets this poem apart from most of the poems within The World's Wife, which have a very critical opinion of men and their relationships with women.

Closer Reading:

- "The bed we loved in was a spinning world" Shakespeare was the world to Anne. "forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas" They are together everywhere. The second best bed is a magical place.

- Anne Hathaway uses lots of literary techniques and terminology when writing her sonnet to Shakespeare, mirroring his own poetic style. For example she says "my body now a softer rhyme" and "his touch/a verb dancing in the centre of a noun." The way she uses this terminology suggests that both she and William were a perfect match, they fit together like his words on a page. 

- "In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,/dribbling their prose." - She justifies the fact that she is given the second best bed. The best bed would have been reserved for guests only, so Anne and William would have shared their passionate nights in the second best bed. Will's will could be ambitious and suggest that Anne was "second best" but really, the second best bed to him, was the best bed. "Prose" is seen as boring in Anne's eyes, compared to the sonnets and plays she has heard in bed with William.

- Anne idolises her husband. "My lover's words/were shooting stars which feel to earth as kisses". He is precious to her, shown by this metaphor. She emphasises the happiness that resides within their relationship, also, by alliteration: "My living, laughing, love". As said, this is a very different opinion of men compared to the other poems within the anthology. Instead of being critical, Anne is complimenting Shakespeare's greatness at both writing and loving. 

- "I hold him in the casket of my widow's head/ as he held me upon that next best bed." - the final rhyming couplet shows that Anne will always remember and appreciate her husband, dead or alive. She doesn't feel disappointed with being left the second best bed, but instead relishes in the memories. 

Themes:

Anne Hathaway is showing an uncontrollable love for her husband, much like Demeter for her daughter, in Demeter. Both poems are a type of sonnet and show themes of love instead of jealously, failed marriage and corruption within the male species. 

Medusa

The Myth: 
Medusa was the lover of Poseidon. They were caught together in one of Athena's temples. Athena was enraged, so cursed Medusa to become a Gorgon, a woman with hair made of snakes and the power to turn anything she looks at into stone. Medusa was killed by her own reflection, a tactic used by Perseus, Poseidon's son.

The Structure: 
The poem is made up of eight stanzas. The first here stanzas tell the reader what's happened to her, the next two stanzas show Medusa using her powers to turn various things to stone. The final three stanzas are indented, showing a change in tone, as Medusa grieves for herself and her lost love. The eight stanza is only one line.

Closer Reading: 
- "A suspicion, a doubt, a jealously" - Medusa starts by listing what she believed turned her hair to "filthy snakes." Carol Ann Duffy has changed the original myth so that the reason for her Gorgon transformation is that her lover cheated on her. The use of a triplet emphasises Medusa's paranoid state of mind.
- "My bride's breath soured, stank" - In the second stanza, Medusa describes herself as she is now. She puts a lot of stress on the 's' sound, called sibilance. This clever device is used as a reference to the snake's hiss.
- "There are bullet tears in my eyes." - the metaphor suggests danger and her power to turn things to stone. It also shows that Medusa feels lonely and conscious of her appearance.
- "Are you terrified?" - the interrogative is directed at the reader, but also a specific audience who Medusa wishes to read her poem: the "Greek God", who was once her lover.
- "Be terrified." - Medusa believes that no one can love her, that we should all be terrified of how she looks and of her abilities. Simple sentence adds impact.
- "perfect man, Greek God, my own;/but I know you'll go, betray me, stray/from home." - More detail of her lover, a man who was once her own. The fact that she knows he'll leave her suggest he's done so before. Another example of tripling (my theory is that Carol Ann Duffy uses tripling so much because there were three Gorgons in Greek mythology.)
- As the stanzas go on, Medusa tests her powers on bigger animals. First it is a "buzzing bee" (alliteration) that "fell to the ground." Then a "singing bird" that "spattered down.", "a ginger cat" that "shattered a bowl of milk" and a "snuffling pig". The verbs grow more and more violent as the animals increase in size. Another example of sibilance, that runs throughout the poem.
Medusa also gets more and more intense with how she looks upon the animals. First she "glanced" then she "looked" and then she "stared". She's really testing how far her powers can go and what she's capable of.
- As previously stated the next stanzas have a different tone. The reader is meant to feel more sympathetic towards Medusa, and be more understanding of the pain she's been through.
She "stared in the mirror" like the real myth and states "Love gone bad" She is the epitome of bad relationships.
- "Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain." - the metaphor suggests just how angry Medusa is, and how she let in bubble under the surface before finally erupting. She is simply a broken woman, looking for sympathy, yet does the reader respond sympathetically towards her after she's been so terrifying before?
- "here you come/with a shield for a heart/and a sword for a tongue/and your girls, your girls." - Medusa starts to taunt her lover for all his flaws. The metaphors suggest that he was guarded and knew exactly what to say, but his words hurt like a knife. The repetition of "your girls, your girls" suggests that he's left women before in favour of younger and more attractive girls.
- "Wasn't I beautiful?/Wasn't I fragrant and young?" - Medusa is questioning the Greek God's motives for leaving her, stating that she was once as beautiful and as young as the girls he now prefers.
- "Look at me now" is the last stanza and sentence in the poem. It's a simple, short sentence with an ambitious meaning. It could mean that Medusa wants her lover to realise how much she's changed, but also that she wants him to look at her, so he may turn to stone; she'd previously mentioned it would be "better by far" for her if he was stone.

Themes:
Medusa is about ageing and how beauty can be valued above anything else. Carol Ann Duffy is using Medusa as a critique of men and their fickle opinions on what counts as beautiful. Ageing is something that none of us can escape.
The poem is also talking about how lost love can cause bitterness. Perhaps love isn't worth the risk of getting hurt like Medusa did? Jealousy is also key; snakes are green, like the colour linked to the emotion.

Thetis

The Myth:
Thetis is the mother of Achilles. She is a water nymph, with the ability to shape shift into anything.She is married to Peleus, because an old sea god told him to go and find the nymph while she was asleep and tie her down to stop her from changing form. When he succeeded in this task, Thetis agreed to marry him.

The Structure:
Thetis is divided into eight different stanzas, each representing a form she took whilst shape shifting. All stanzas are a regular length of six lines each.

Close Reading:
 - "I shrank myself/ to the size of a bird in the hand/ of a man." - Thetis starts by shape shifting into something small. The bird is "sweet" and could symbolise her innocence and naivety towards the task Peleus had been given.
- "I felt the squeeze of his fist." - the man is holding her down
, restricting her.
She continues to be a bird, but feels her wings "clipped by the squint of a crossbow's eye."- her movement is consistently obstructed by the man, that uses physical abuse to subdue her.
- "So I shopped for a suitable shape./ Size 8." - the poem is put in a modern context by showing what, nowadays, society calls a suitable shape. Duffy is proposing that it is not just men that try to tell women what is the right thing to do, but everyone else as well.
- "Snake./ Big Mistake./ Coiled in my charmer's lap,/ I felt the grasp of his strangler's clasp/ at my nape." - this section is referring back to the original mythology. One of the shapes Thetis took was a serpent. This stanza has the rhyme scheme of A, B, B, C, C, A, which could suggest the cycle that no shape is right. No matter what shape Thetis takes on, she will always be strangled by the man. The use of minor sentences also adds emphasis.
- The next stanza highlights when Thetis transforms into a lioness. "Next I was a roar, claw, 50 lb paw"  Again, this shape isn't satisfactory, the man is still constricting her. "the guy in the grass with the gun" Even as a lioness, the most powerful animal in the jungle she is unable to escape the man's clutches - her transformations grow bigger and bigger, from a bird to a lion.
- The next two stanza list more attempts to change her nature. "Mermain, me, big fish, eel, dolphin", "raccoon, skunk, stoat."
-In the penultimate stanza, Thetis becomes intangible things: "I was wind, I was gas, I was all hot air."Still, the man cuts her down.
- The final stanza shows her transformation into "flame". This was her last attempt, before she relented and let Peleus marry her.

Themes
"I changed, I learned" Carol Ann Duffy is showing how it must always be the woman who changes and she should always obey a man's orders. She is showing how women, no matter how strong, there will always be a man that is strong.

Demeter

The Myth:

Demeter is the Greek goddess of harvest. She is one of the twelve Olympians. Her daughter is Persphone, the goddess of spring. Persphone was captured by Hades, the god of the Underworld, and tricked into marrying him. She spends half of her time in the Underworld and half of her time in the mortal world. Her absence is what causes the seasons to change. Demeter was distraught when Persphone was taken.

The Structure:
Demeter is written as a broken sonnet. It had fourteen lines, and ends with a rhyming couplet. Like a sonnet, a problem is introduced to begin with and as the poem progresses, a resolution is found.

Close Reading:
"Where I lived - winter and hard earth" - the poem is told from Demeter's perspective. She is talking of the world without her daughter.
"I sat in my cold stone room" - The room mirrors her feelings towards the loss of her daughter. Without Persphone, everything is "cold". A "cold stone room" could also be a reference to Hades' palace in the underworld, where Persphone resides, showing that both mother and daughter are at a loss.
"choosing tough words, granite, flint/ to break the ice." - Emjambement used to show how broken Demeter feels. She tries a multitude of methods to "break the ice". The tripling adds emphasis to her sruggles.
"My broken heart-/I tried that, but it skimmed,/flat, over the frozen lake." - Demeter is so desperate for her daughter's return, she'd almost sacrifice herself. Duffy uses a metaphor, that Demeter's "broken heart" is like the "granite, flint" she tried before. Her heart has become just as cold as those things.
"She came from a long, long way,/but I saw her at last, walking," - Persphone is returning from the Underworld. Demeter is the first to notice her, even though Persphone was a long way off. Her devotion to her daughter is displayed in her eagerness for Persphone to return.
"my daughter, my girl" - the repetition of "my" shows how possessive Demeter is of her daughter, and how much she means to her. She wishes that Persphone could be her's all year round.
"across the fields,/in bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers/to her mother's house." - Persphone's return represents the coming of spring. Flowers symbolise her beauty, and her "bare feet" suggest innonence, like she knows nothing would hurt her.
"I swear/the air softened and warmed as she moved," - the personification of nature, feeling just as happy as Demeter at Persphone's return.
"the blue sky smiling, none to soon/ with the small shy mouth of a new moon" - rhyming coouplet.

Themes: Like Anne Hathaway, Demeter lacks a sense of anger at men, or a critical opinion of men as most of the other poems within The World's Wife. Demeter is portrayed, first and foremost, as a mother, not a lover, that has lost the one she loves the most: her daughter. In mythology she is not linked with any god or man in particular. However, the poem could show hate towards Hades, who was the cause of Demeter's loss.
Although Demeter is an independant woman, she relies on her daughter for happiness. Women can be strong on their own, but without love, a life is half lived.