Carol Ann Duffy's poems touch on awareness and its searing effects on love and the personal spaces they inhabit. Through her poetry, these realities come to life where they would otherwise remain hidden, allowing readers to crawl into the tight, uncomfortable spaces of thought and feeling. These are made possible by her faithful use of monologues. The women in Duffy's poems exist very well within the gender constraints of their time. As such, they are already steeped in their own conformity. It is their very awareness of their reality that makes their subversions gain power.
The poem, "Woman Seated in the Underground, 1941," was written after a sketch of Henry Moore where a woman sits in a tunnel separate from a line of people far behind. It is a scene from a World War II bombing raid. Duffy dives straight into this confined, smoke-filled space and makes the persona speak as she seeks freedom from the situation through her assessment of her immediate reality:
I forget. I have looked at the other faces and found / no memory, no love.
She is still recoiling from the blast and could not remember whether she was married or alone. She could not even remember her own name. All she could grasp is the fact that she is with child. Here, we see how she is very much in touch with her gender role as a mother, despite failing to remember anything else, even her own identity. This way of presenting the psyche of the woman reflects how internalized her gender role is, and how it exists superior to her own sense of self (her own name).
We see more of her feeling lost inside as she clings to the memory of things that define her (and define women within the virgin-whore dichotomy, in general):
I have either lost my ring or I am / a loose woman.
In trying to gather 'pieces' of herself, she inadvertently gathers what defines a woman during her time for everyone to see: a husband, a child, the memory of knitting, a home. She then wills herself to act and decides to emancipate herself from her situation. Here, we see her attempt at agency, however, she is still very much trapped within the small space created by gender stereotypes:
In a moment, I shall stand up and scream until / somebody helps me.
In contrast to this, the poem, "Standing Female Nude" opens with the persona's terse grasp of her work as a nude model:
Six hours like this for a few francs.
Immediately, we are brought into the perspective of the female on a pedestal. From the moment she speaks, she asserts power—despite her constraints. This is a powerful image in itself, as it reflects the double standards placed on women in upholding beauty and purity, and how easily they can 'fall from grace' with so much as a misstep. The male painter's eyes are on her as he directs her only to recreate her:
Belly nipple arse in the window light,he drains the colour from me. Further to the right,Madame. And do try to be still.
In a way, the persona aware of being under scrutiny is a direct commentary on the female experience under the light of the male gaze. It touches on the role of woman as muse, the object of scrutiny, and visual pleasure subject to control and consumption. The persona then goes on to mention that much will happen beyond her, beyond this moment:
I shall be represented analytically and hungin great museums. The bourgeoisie will cooat such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art.
This is where Duffy juxtaposes concern over the technical aspects of art and its bureaucracies with the female model's immediate, basic concern:
He is concerned with volume, space. / I with the next meal.
The power of the woman in this poem lies in her possession of her own gaze. Her wanton disregard for art and its trifling details strips it of its power over her. Even as she is subjected to the demands of the painter, her thoughts remain untouched, uncontrolled. Moreover, beyond her work as muse on a pedestal, she leaps over the stiff notions of female virtue and purity as she "fill[s] [her]self with wine and dance[s] around the bars.”
In the end, she reclaims power over her own likeness when, seeing the man's finished work, she opines:
It does not look like me.
The work of the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy frequently subverts stereotypes about traditional gender roles by encouraging readers to approach topics in new ways.
For instance, in "Anne Hathaway," Duffy takes up the point of view of William Shakespeare's wife, speaking about the bed she shared with her husband, which he referred to in his will as his "second-best bed." In Duffy's account, Hathaway has an active, rich imagination and contributed to the inspiration for Shakespeare's work, but her contribution was devalued by men.
In Duffy's poem "Valentine," she subverts the romantic expectations about love between men and women. The speaker of the poem gives her lover an "onion," which brings tears, instead of a symbol of love like a red rose or a satin heart, and describes her love as being "lethal" and stinging like a knife. Instead of being passive and courted, the speaker of the poem is active, threatening, and even violent.
In poems like these, Duffy challenges conventional attitudes about gender, as well as traditional beliefs about love and relationships.
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