A Comparative Analysis of Femininity in Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife and Standing Female Nude

Abstract

The study in this paper concerns the theme of “femininity in the poems of Carol Ann Duffy” by examining these poems The World’s Wife(1999) and Standing Female Nude(1985). Both poems depict how femininity is advancing to empowerment in contrast to the male-dominated traditions of poetic structure. The research seeks to illuminate how Duffy uses poetic means, diction, and other stylistic devices to enforce silenced voices of females and, in the process, becomes a feminist poetic voice to deconstruct male myths and guarantee female selfhood in art and literature. Through a qualitative analysis methodology based on the feminist literary theory of Beauvoir, Butler, and Showalter, this study analyses some common themes of voice, body, sexuality, and identity. This discussion demonstrates that Duffy’s Standing Female Nudearticulates the idea of class-conscious femininity and the commodification of the female body, whereas The World’s Wife extends her arguments into a universal re-voicing of women who are being left out of cultural histories. The paper finds that Duffy’s poetics of femininity is a revolutionary re-definition oflanguages and powers and makes poetry a place of gendered resistance and political activities