Analysis of Poems 'Eurydice' and 'Mrs. Midas' by Carol-Ann Duffy
Analyse how a writer used language to strengthen your understanding of their ideas.
“Behind every great man is a woman.” The famous saying reflected through countless couples over the course of history, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Alexander the Great and his Mother Olympias, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana. However this famous saying not only reflects the success of a man, but also how a woman is always “behind” a man. Behind the scenes is where a woman has spent most of her time, with a substantial focus on ‘history’ not ‘herstory’. A woman’s voice, her opinion and her viewpoint have all been heavily disregarded in the past centuries, with a woman being seen as an accessory to a man rather than an individual with the capability to think for herself. However, Carol Ann Duffy’s anthology ‘The World’s Wife’ seeks to correct the gender inequalities, with the poems Eurydice and Mrs. Midas portraying strong minded and authoritative females that retell the Greek mythological stories from a women’s point of view.
In both poems Eurydice and Mrs. Midas we are introduced to two women who in mythology have been overshadowed by their more famous husbands or left out of the story completely. Through Duffy’s extensive use of language features such as humour and metaphors in the poem Mrs. Midas, we are able to understand the previously unheard point of view of Mr. Midas as she comprehends the breaking down of her marriage to the mythological King Midas and deals with the selfishness of her Husband’s wish for the ‘golden touch’. Through the use of allusions, capitalization and humour in the poem Eurydice we can see Duffy’s intent to transform the original Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to give a rather unspoken and innocent Eurydice a new devious persona. Duffy seeks to make the reader consider another viewpoint in a rather one dimensional society by allowing Eurydice to voice her opinion of not wanting to return to Orpheus despite him trying to rescue her
“Behind every great man is a woman.” The famous saying reflected through countless couples over the course of history, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Alexander the Great and his Mother Olympias, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana. However this famous saying not only reflects the success of a man, but also how a woman is always “behind” a man. Behind the scenes is where a woman has spent most of her time, with a substantial focus on ‘history’ not ‘herstory’. A woman’s voice, her opinion and her viewpoint have all been heavily disregarded in the past centuries, with a woman being seen as an accessory to a man rather than an individual with the capability to think for herself. However, Carol Ann Duffy’s anthology ‘The World’s Wife’ seeks to correct the gender inequalities, with the poems Eurydice and Mrs. Midas portraying strong minded and authoritative females that retell the Greek mythological stories from a women’s point of view.
In both poems Eurydice and Mrs. Midas we are introduced to two women who in mythology have been overshadowed by their more famous husbands or left out of the story completely. Through Duffy’s extensive use of language features such as humour and metaphors in the poem Mrs. Midas, we are able to understand the previously unheard point of view of Mr. Midas as she comprehends the breaking down of her marriage to the mythological King Midas and deals with the selfishness of her Husband’s wish for the ‘golden touch’. Through the use of allusions, capitalization and humour in the poem Eurydice we can see Duffy’s intent to transform the original Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to give a rather unspoken and innocent Eurydice a new devious persona. Duffy seeks to make the reader consider another viewpoint in a rather one dimensional society by allowing Eurydice to voice her opinion of not wanting to return to Orpheus despite him trying to rescue her