What Is The Worlds Wife Propaganda

How far do you agree with the view that ‘The World’s wife’ is ‘nothing but feminist propaganda’?
Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright; frequently dealing with issues of gender, oppression and violence. In ‘The Worlds Wife’ Carol Ann Duffy explores the portrayal of women in literature, and many of the poems seem to smite men; viewing them as being subordinate instead of women. She explores these ideas through monologues of different historical and mythical events from a female perspective, by doing this Duffy contrives to give women from the past a voice. ‘The Worlds Wife’ has many feminist elements that may seem overly strong to some, but it is still extreme to say that ‘The Worlds Wife’ is ‘nothing but feminist propaganda’. It …show more content…
From a first glance ‘The Worlds Wife’ could come across misrepresentative as ‘feminist propaganda’ misled by the usual female voice, and negative portrayal pf men. Notwithstanding, Duffy’s poems go deeper than her ‘hatred of men’ which is a common misconception when dealing with feminism, and what it is truly about. Represented well in ‘The Sisyphus’ consisting of doggerel stanzas and filled with Scottish colloquialism, the poem is seemingly about a wife complaining resentfully about her ‘workaholic’, ‘simple-minded’ husband, who is giving all of his attention to his work, instead of his wife. The female narrator, Mrs. Sisyphus uses many slang terms, such as “Jerk”, “Berk” and “dork” making Mrs. Sisyphus more relatable to the readers, allowing the readers to empathise with her anger. Besides her attitude towards her husband, the violent reactions from Mrs. Sisyphus, such as “I could do something vicious to him with a dirk.” Once again, makes clear the agitation that Mrs. Sisyphus feels towards her husband, it makes it seem as she can …show more content…
Unlike her other poems, she in fact appears to be defending Shakespeare. The poem states Shakespeare left his wife their “second best bed”, we later find out that it is custom to offer the best bed in the house hold to guests, “the best, our guests dozed on” meaning the second best bed would where Shakespeare and his wife slept together. During the poem, the relationship is characterised as idealistic between Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare. The poem, written in the style of a sonnet, a trademark to Shakespeare, is much freer in style as there is no iambic pentameter, alluding to the lack of restraint in their love life. The bed could be seen as a symbol as the centre of their ‘imaginary universe’ and the adjectives used to describe their relationship, such as “echo”, “assonance” and “verb” all show how synchronous they were together, in contrast to the relationship in Mrs Sisyphus. However, the turning point appears to come in the last two lines, “I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head” where she now refers to herself as a widow, and where she first begins to use rhyme. Almost mourning, she is seemingly paying a tribute to her husband’s memory by ending the poem in the same way as Shakespeare, a rhyming couplet. It is easy to say that there is no