Compare and contrast the poems Mrs Faust and Eurydice

Compare and contrast the poems Mrs Faust and Eurydice

The poems Mrs Faust and Eurydice are taken form the collection of

poems called ‘The Worlds Wife’. The collection is written by Carol Ann

Duffy, it is a compilation of poems that explores feminist principles,

the state of feminism today and other such similar topics. The poem

Mrs Faust however is not particularly a feminist poem; instead it

looks into the shallow materialistic values of our society. Eurydice

has feminist connotations, again though is not particularly a strongly

feminist poem.

Mrs Faust is written in a style that attracts the reader’s attention,

the opening passage has conversational undercurrents, which has the

effect of involving the reader, and in effect urging the reader to

read on. “First things first-” the first line of the poem is an

excellent example of the conversational tone that Carol Ann Duffy has

adopted. This style of writing is also in effect in the poem Eurydice,

again the opening statement is a good example of this. “Girls, I was

dead and down in the underworld,” in this she has taken the

conversational tone to the next level. This statement is now aimed at

a specific group of people; women. By doing this, women, perhaps the

main target demographic can relate to the poem more easily, and as

such it will have a larger effect on them.

The language and structure of Mrs Faust is very important to the

meaning and effect of the poem. “We met as students, shacked up, split

up, made up, hitched up….” The fast pace use of short sentences and

the language here reflects the fast pace of the lives Mrs Faust and

her husband shared. The attention to the materialistic gains in the

poem also reflects both upon the shallow love that Faust shares with

his wife, and also perhaps the superficiality of our modern society.

“Fast cars. A boat with sails. A second home in Wales.” This passage

is quite possibly an accurate representation of the materialistic

wealth that people have. She also implies that because of this the

love that they share is very shallow, and perhaps does not even exist.

The use of language in Eurydice is also very important in creating the

tone of the poem. The opening stanza of the poem uses an extended

metaphor; it uses literacy and words as a metaphor to describe the

desolate underworld. “It was a place where language stopped, a black

full stop, a black hole where words had come to an end.” Because of

the importance of language for Orpheus and Eurydice, by describing the

underworld as a lack of language and words, it shows the bleakness of