What Is The Mood Of The Poem Mrs Faust And The Devil's Wife

‘Mrs Faust’ fits in the anthology by, in Duffy’s words, ‘looking at the more unpleasant aspects of being a woman’ and emphasises the complexity of women. While exploring the wife of Faust, a businessman who sold his soul to the devil, the poem satirises the way some women drift into a corrupt ‘lifestyle’. Mrs Faust is the first woman in the anthology to be presented as ‘just as bad’ as her male counterpart, later echoed in ‘The Devil’s Wife’. These more complex characters allow Duffy to address her concern in showing women as a varied and complete group.

‘Mrs Faust’ is split into fifteen stanzas, each consisting of nine short lines. The style of the poem is a dramatic monologue and the tone is set as informal from ‘first things first’ and
Though there is humour in her attention to detail, making sure to mention that the Devil’s hand ‘poked up’ through the ‘terracotta Tuscan tiles’, it proves that she cares more for her house than her husband and the harsh alliteration of the t’s mimics tutting, suggesting that she feels it is a just punishment for his behaviour. This is reinforced by her description of what was left to her in Faust’s will ending in ‘et cet, et cet’ showing how she doesn’t care how the money was acquired, despite demonstrating earlier that she knew it was gained through immoral means. Again, she proves this by saying that when she fell ill she ‘bought a kidney / with my credit card’, which shows Duffy employing situational irony to make a satirical point about the power of money and the moral degradation that can come with
Even before his deal with the devil, he would ‘meet panthers, feast’. The animalistic imagery of feasting and the zoomorphism of the other sleazy businessmen paints Faust as an animal. Similarly, in ‘Queen Herod’, Duffy describes the Queens’ ‘several sweating, panting beasts’ and the phrase is ambiguous as to whether it is describing the horses or husbands, but the heavy rhythm of ‘sweating, panting’ suggests a sensual aspect to the line while the sibilance creates a disgusted