Duffy's Lens into Female Empowerment

Carol Ann Duffy, a renowned Scottish poet and playwright, is best known for her efforts in “giving a voice to the voiceless." Being the first female and openly lesbian poet to ever win the Poet Laureate, it isn’t an exaggeration to say her work redefined history for contemporary artists everywhere.

Duffy’s poems are almost always inspired by the patriarchy’s double standard, voicing strong opinions on oppression, gender, and violence. Some of her most famous works include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award, and Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award.

Duffy’s heartfelt, feminist views are predominant in all her poems, particularly her first collection, “Standing Female Nude." The collection’s title reflects the struggles of a working-class girl in a male-dominated society, drawing inspiration from the Cubism art form. The poem deconstructs traditional beliefs, shedding light on a stark double standard, including women only being appreciated when it’s through the “male gaze.”

Along with “Standing Female Nude," Duffy is famous for her collection “The World’s Wife,"  a feminist retelling of popular folk stories. Traditionally, the mythic and folklore world centers around the male perspective, often casting aside the woman’s point of view as irrelevant or abhorrently wrong. In a society dominated by men, poems are easily able to perpetuate or disregard women’s roles, creating a very sexist and misogynistic narrative.

Over the years, female feminists, including Duffy, have tried to reclaim the unheard, marginalized voices of women in these stories, humanizing them in a way that had never been done before. In The World’s Wife, Duffy subverts the overarching notion that men and their contributions are inherently superior and more valuable than a woman’s, instead placing the wives of these men in such roles.

Her poems give voice to a multitude of underrepresented female characters, from Little Red Riding Hood to Mrs. Sisyphus, from Havisham to Anne Hatheway, from Medusa to Queen Herod. She also places female characters in modern settings and situations, making them all the more relatable and powerful for readers and admirers of her work.

Duffy’s poems are bold, unabashed, and raw. They paint a woman's struggles and character for what they are, crossing out what a patriarchy-ridden society appropriates her to be.

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Sources Used:

https://www.thecuriousreader.in/features/carol-ann-duffy-the-worlds-wife/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/carol-ann-duffy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Ann_Duffy