Duffy���s Feminism and Dramatic Monologues

This research aims at investigating Carol Ann Duffy’s representation of feminist issues by recalling historical religious and mythological figures using the dramatic monologue. Duffy subverts feminine archetypes through a series of dramatic monologues in her volume The World’s Wife whose structure is based on an eclectic mixture of influences that build up intertextual and metatextual webs reflected in themes of love as well as the loss of love sexist oppression sadness and loneliness and many others. Be it noted that The World’s Wife shows difficulties set by a patriarchal society in the way of women as well as men. Duffy’s simple language is traced back to Wordsworth while her use of the dramatic monologue reminiscent of Browning and T. S. Eliot. To express female desiderata Duffy has revisited different female figures such as Medusa Mrs. Midas that holds intertextual semantic relations based on world text theory with Ovid’s king Midas’ story from Metamorphoses and Delilah and Salome. Other gender-bending figures illustrated not by cross-dressing but by cross identification appear like Mrs. Darwin Mrs. Aesop Mrs. Sisyphus and Mrs. Faust.