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Women Behaving Badly in The Worldâs Wife â Delilah, Salome and Medusa
Victoria Leslie looks at the bad women in Carol Ann Duffyâs collection, the women who got their revenge on men, and shows how a re-working can introduce a note of sympathy for them and their modern counterparts.
As the title of Carol Ann Duffyâs collection The Worldâs Wife suggests, her poetry is concerned with marriage and patriarchy. The thirty poems revisit well-known narratives, often offering a humorous voice, speaking from previously silenced female perspectives. Most are from the viewpoint of the women behind famous men. But not all of Duffyâs characters are wife material. âDelilah,â âSalomeâ and âMedusaâ are all mythical femme fatales who derive their power through the symbolic emasculation of men. These temptresses are notorious for their penchant for violence, achieving power through their sexuality or, in some cases, stealing it from their male counterparts.
Unlike some of Duffyâs other poems, these stories have been told countless times before; in literature, art, music and film, these women figure in the popular imagination as being strong and independent. So what new perspective could Duffy be offering? Perhaps one answer lies in the title of the collection. The collection focuses on women from myth and legend, women from a past patriarchal world. However, Duffy gives all three poetic monologues a modern voice and by doing so reveals that these stories are vehicles to explore modern issues and anxieties.
âSnipping at the black and biblical airâ
In the biblical story, Samson is born to rescue the Israelites from long oppression by the Philistines. Delilah, a Philistine, is persuaded with a bag of silver to find Samsonâs weakness. It resides in his mane of hair and Delilah and her scissors are the instruments of his demise.
Duffyâs âmodernâ reworking is apparent in the first stanza with Samson and Delilah lying in bed and Samson drinking beer. The bedroom as a location is significant as it emphasises the intimate sexual nature of their relationship. Duffy portrays them as a couple that can talk through their problems and Samson confides that he is fed up with being the strong one. The poem begins with Samson imploring Delilah to teach him âhow to love'. Though he boasts he can, ârip out the roar from the throat of a tigerâ and âgargle with fireâ he realises his macho image is preventing him from being emotionally open. But with the entire second stanza dedicated to Samsonâs strength and prowess, he is clearly also proud of his accomplishments. In fact, the hyperbolic nature of his feats reaches such mammoth proportions that he boasts about having ventured into âthe Minotaurâs Lairâ despite the fact that this particular tale belongs to Greek mythology. This, as well as Duffyâs use of a series of half rhymes (âbearâ and âfearâ) reveals that Samsonâs claims do not quite add up, suggesting that he could be exaggerating in a bid to impress Delilah or to appease his own ego. The half rhyme also mirrors the fact Samson is flawed, which is why he wants to change.
But Samson confuses love with lust. The poem is filled with sexual innuendo; in the third stanza Samson asks Delilah to âput your hand hereâ but he is actually referring to his heart. Delilah calls this a âscarâ perhaps alluding to Samsonâs previous physical war wounds or wounds of a more romantic variety; either way it foreshadows the fact that his heart is in danger again. He implies that the cost of being strong is loneliness and asks Delilah for âa cureâ. What follows is sex, leading the reader to question if this intimacy is the remedy he seeks.
Interestingly, Duffy uses quite crude language to describe the sex act â âhe fucked me until he was soreâ â implying that Samson is the active participant, that he is indeed incapable of tenderness. Alternatively, this lexical choice could give us more of an insight into the first-person narrator; Delilah, as a paid temptress in the original myth, could be viewing this encounter as nothing more than a monetary exchange and it is actually her who could be viewed as heartless.
As Samson slips into a post-coital slumber, Delilah begins to sharpen her scissors. Duffy uses sibilance, âsoftenâ, âsleepâ, âslideâ to emphasise Samsonâs sleepiness but also the sound of scissor blades. Delilahâs scissors are an important symbol as they allow Delilah symbolically to tame Samsonâs wildness. In older literature a womanâs hair represented her sexuality. In Christina Rossettiâs âGoblin Marketâ (1862) Laura pays for fruit with a lock of her hair. If we apply this to the original myth, Samson is allegorically raped of his power, which is transferred to Delilah. The difference in Duffyâs poem is that Samson seeks this transformation and sees his strength as a curse. In a society where compound expressions like âsingle dadâ and âhouse husbandâ are quite common, perhaps Samson and Delilahâs relationship is a modern one, irrespective of traditional gender roles. Duffy is offering us a critique on modern relationships and arguing that living up to a masculine stereotype is not only impossible but archaic. Delilahâs act of severance, though disarming Samson of his power, could be seen as an act of kindness.
âLamb to the slaughterâ
Like Delilah, Duffy presents Salome as a modern young woman. In the original myth she is a princess, asked to dance for her stepfather King Herod who in return agrees to permit her any wish. She requests the head of the prophet John the Baptist who has rebuked her mother. As in âDelilahâ this monologue is set in the bedroom, beginning with Salome waking up with a hangover from âa night on the batterâ to find next to her a âhead on the pillow.â This idiomatic expression is clearly meant in a literal way, Salome presented as a serial killer as well as a serial lover. The light-hearted tone of the poem is further emphasised through the use of colloquial language, âfagsâ and âboozeâ and the use of half rhyme, with âclatterâ, âclutterâ, âpatterâ all building towards the inevitable conclusion of discovering in her bed the âhead on a platter.â The parenthesis in the first stanza reveals that Salome wakes up with a different man quite regularly and the listing of interrogatives, âWhat was his name? Peter? Simon? Andrew? John?â emphasises her hedonistic lifestyle and her disregard for her sexual partners. These ânotches on her bedpostâ are immediately recognisable as apostles and the religious imagery continues the satirical tone by referring to her lovers as âlamb[s] to the slaughterâ.
This kind of sexual freedom is stereotypically associated with men. However, Salome, like Samson, appears eager to change. She wants to âclean up her actâ, equating her sexual hunger to a bad habit she needs to kick, like smoking or drinking. Yet when she looks in the mirror she sees her eyes âglitteringâ, perhaps representing an acceptance of who she really is. Coupled with the second line, âand doubtless Iâll do it againâ it seems that despite her best efforts she is doomed to perpetuate her role as a femme fatale.
As with âDelilahâ, Duffy puts a modern face on this myth and arguably dilutes it. Salome is not seen as a figure of awe but as the type of woman we recognise as being sexually available, enjoying casual sex with disposable partners, leaving it to the reader to interpret this behaviour as a strength or as a weakness. However, the fact that she wants to change suggests that life as a âman eaterâ is unfulfilling.
Off with her Head
Medusa is also given the modern treatment by Duffy. According to Greek myth, Athena was jealous of Medusaâs beauty and, enraged because Medusa and Poseidon had lain together in her temple, she transformed Medusa into a gorgon. Athena turned Medusaâs hair into serpents and made her face so monstrous that the sight of it would turn men to stone. As opposed to other femme fatales, it is not her beauty that lures men but her distortion of femininity, her monstrousness. Her head is sought as a prize by warriors eager to fulfil a masculine quest. She needs to be slain like any other monster.
Duffy departs from the original myth by giving a reason for her monstrous nature. The poem begins with a description of her hair as the manifestation of her jealousy:
a doubt, a jealousy grew in my mind, which turned the hairs on my head into filthy snakes
We learn in the second stanza that she is a âbrideâ though this is coupled with negative imagery, her breath described as âsouredâ to suggest her marriage is far from rosy. The imagery of decay continues with descriptions of Medusa as âfoul mouthed,â and âfoul tonguedâ adding to the impression that she is embittered and angry. We learn the reason for her anger in stanza three. Though she still loves her âperfect man, Greek Godâ she knows he will âbetrayâ her and âstray from home.â Medusa could therefore be any woman for whom âlove [has] gone badâ. Her bitterness is due to her loverâs supposed infidelity making her feelings towards men lethal instead of loving.
In the original myth, Medusaâs gaze is fatal. In Duffyâs poem Medusaâs deadliness is borne out of her anxieties, her coldness towards men a defence mechanism to protect her from falling in love. It is the arrival of a male figure, we assume the original Perseus, armed with âa shield for a heartâ, who presents a serious threat to her. The use of direct address throughout, however, âand here you comeâ means the reader adopts the perspective of Perseus about to face his adversary. This blurring further alienates Medusa as even the reader is not on her side, perhaps implying that the modern world is not very sympathetic to the plight of possessive women. Duffy appears to make up for this by not completing the original narrative, ending the poem with Medusaâs command to look at her, thus saving her neck. With her âyellow fangsâ and âbullets for tearsâ Medusa should be a figure of horror, which she seems to need confirmed as she asks âare you terrified?.â We are, not because we are scared of her, but rather because we are scared of becoming her. Duffy has held up Perseusâ shield and in it we see the reflection of a woman we recognise, a woman whose bitter relationships have coloured her existence. The reader instead feels pity for this lonely woman who is no longer âfragrantâ and âyoung'. Her last line is ambiguous, demanding âLook at me now.â This could reassert the potential danger she poses to men and the reader, it could be a plea to be noticed once more, or it could be a verbalisation of her regret at what she has become.
As with âSalomeâ, Duffyâs modern retelling may lead some critics to the opinion that she dilutes and trivialises the power of the original myth. Alternatively, Duffyâs retellings could be considered more powerful because they are not distanced by centuries but rather show a modern face of femininity.
A Womanâs World
Delilah, Salome and Medusa are notorious for being bad women. But their stories are embedded in myth and legend, portrayed by men to illustrate societyâs distrust and fear of women. Our world is different and Duffy seeks to equate these women with their modern counterparts, women we see as not wholly bad but deserving some sympathy. She presents us with characters we can relate to, women who are as flawed as they are powerful, and, in doing so, shows us the many facets of modern femininity.
This article first appeared in emagazine 52, April 2011.
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