Feminine Gospels

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Some lines of The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High are written in italics. These symbolize the teacher’s speech, often discussing what the students are learning. These moments are designed to be incredibly boring, listing off things to memorize. Duffy is commenting on the school system, going against the rote memorization tactic that was often used to teach. The teachers, as they become more accepting and freer, stop talking in italics, symbolizing their personal liberation. Within the fourth stanza, Duffy makes reference to ‘Dr Faustus’, ‘A thousand ships’ echoing the description of ‘A face that launched a thousand ships’. This confirms to the reader that Duffy is focusing on Helen of Troy, who features in Christopher Marlowe’s play. This is further suggested by ‘she rolled’, Cleopatra being the active participant in lines. Cleopatra ‘reached and pulled him down’, controlling Caesar with her intelligence and beauty. Demara, Bruce (7 July 2016). "The Bizzaro History of the Poet L aureate". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016. According to The Guardian, schools were urged to destroy copies of the unedited anthology, [37] though this was later denied by AQA. [38] Duffy called the decision ridiculous. "It's an anti-violence poem," she said. "It is a plea for education rather than violence." She responded with "Mrs Schofield's GCSE", a poem about violence in other fiction, and the point of it. "Explain how poetry/pursues the human like the smitten moon/above the weeping, laughing earth ..." [39] The Mrs. Schofield of the title refers to Pat Schofield, an external examiner at Lutterworth College, Leicestershire, who complained about "Education for Leisure," calling it "absolutely horrendous." [38]

Flood, Alison (27 April 2009). "Betting closed on next poet laureate amid speculation that Carol Ann Duffy has been chosen". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 April 2009.

Firstly, the consonance across ‘deep, dumped’ creates a sense of oppression, the language flowing in hypnotic circles. Furthermore, the plosive ‘p’ within both these words cuts through the narrative, representing the brutality Monroe experienced on a daily basis. Duffy likes to take a familiar psychological reality and extend it as an outrageous metaphor. In "The Map Woman", for instance, an A-to-Z street map of the town in which a woman has grown up is tattooed over the skin of her whole body. Wherever she goes, and whatever she becomes, that geography remains an indelible pattern she cannot escape; until, that is, almost accidentally, she hits on the remedy. She decides to return to the real town that haunts her. In the intervening years, the place she remembers has become almost unrecognisable under newly built arcades and shopping malls. Bewildered by these changes, she retreats to her hotel room. There, she sloughs her skin like a snake. In the last verse, Duffy escapes from the metaphor to close the poem with a resonance that recalls some of Larkin's memorable conclusions:

One of these is mythological, Helen of Troy. One stems from ancient history, Cleopatra. Finally, both Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana come from more recent history. Despite the status they held and the time period they lived through, these women were all equally prosecuted and exploited. The world this creature inhabits is apocalyptic, with the old alone and vulnerable to thieves in the night: a b "Interview: Carol Ann Duffy". Stylist. Archived from the original on 7 October 2011 . Retrieved 4 October 2011. As Carol Ann Duffy makes coffee to accompany the rather rare experience of being interviewed, The Marriage of Figaro is playing in the room. She has just finished a libretto for The Magic Flute for Opera North, due to be premiered next April. It's a cut above the average poet's commission and Duffy says: "It's just the most marvellous work I've ever been asked to do. I'd like to do them all now" - the Mozart operas, she means. Her appetite for work is legendary and she keeps raising her game. So why not? After the success of The World's Wife (1999), her book that brought a huge new audience, a friend was rash enough to suggest that perhaps she'd earned a break, a bit of resting on the laurels. He was severely reproved, perhaps in a tone learned from her strict convent-then-grammar-school education: "I'm busier than ever - it is a vocation, you know." Duffy writes that ‘Doctor Beam’ calls a staff meeting, the staff ‘filed in at 4.15’. All the teachers, presented in an asyndetic list, are present. The head talks in italics, ‘I think we all agree’, asking the teachers to report on the situation of the laughter. She believes that ‘Discipline’s completely gone’, wanting to hear their opinions.BBC Radio 4 – Woman's Hour – The Power List 2013". BBC. Archived from the original on 19 March 2014 . Retrieved 17 July 2016. Duffy's work explores both everyday experience and the rich fantasy life of herself and others. In dramatizing scenes from childhood, adolescence, and adult life, she discovers moments of consolation through love, memory, and language. Charlotte Mendelson writes in The Observer: The fourth section discusses Princess Diana. This is the most structurally confined section of the text, being written in quatrains. These carefully planned stanzas could reflect the pressure on Diana to conform to the stereotypes of a princess. Her life was measured and directly compared to other royals, the pressure on her immeasurable. Duffy emulates this pressure by confining the structure to a particular style – representing Diana’s entrapment through the form and structure of this section. The end of this section points to Cleopatra’s downfall, yet is much more subtle than the other sections. This is perhaps relating to how successful Cleopatra was in her life, her demise only a tiny part of her story. The historic romance of ‘armies changing sides, of cities lost forever in the sea’ creates a tone of reverence. Cleopatra is fantastically powerful, her demise coming from a self-inflicted ‘snake’ bite. This section ends with a powerful demonstration of Cleopatra’s success. The clever grammatical division, using caesura, or everything in this section coming before ‘of snakes’ represents her final moment. Death to a snake bite is her final act, ‘snakes’ bluntly finishing her section.