Salome and Anne Hathaway in Carol Anne Duffy's Poems

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Salome and Anne Hathaway in Carol Anne Duffy's Poems

Carol Anne Duffy wrote both Salome and Anne Hathaway. In this essay I

am going to be comparing how the characters of Salome and Anne

Hathaway are presented in Duffy's two poems.

Duffy's intention as with all of her poems is to give historically

famous women who were previously unheard a new voice. Both these poems

are written in the women's view like a monologue, both deal with death

and have a sexual content.

Anne Hathaway is Shakespeare's wife. It is written in the style of a

sonnet to celebrate her husband's work, Shakespeare wrote many

sonnets. I can tell this because there is a rhyming couplet at the

end, it is a fourteen line poem about love with a regular rhythm

pattern of 10 syllables per line where the second syllable is

stressed. It is therefore an iambic pentameter. It uses lots of heavy

imagery written as metaphors and similes throughout the poem. "My

lover's words were shooting stars which fell to Earth as kisses". In

history we learn that Shakespeare in his will, left Anne the second

best bed. Before reading this poem I thought she would have felt

degraded, humiliated and upset about being left this bed. This poem

showed me Anne's feelings from a completely different perspective. The

poem is a reflective, celebration of love. Anne and Shakespeare's most

loving, passionate, happy memories are in the second best bed. It has

the most sentimental value to them. 'My living, laughing love'. An

alliterative quote showing just how, for her, her love for Shakespeare

is still very much alive even though he is dead.

This is contrary to Salome, a biblical character who...

... middle of paper ...

...e me-whose?-what did it matter?" She doesn't seem to

care about the men she kills and knows she will do it again sooner or

later. "In the mirror I saw my eyes glitter". She likes the feeling of

being in control of someone's life. "And there like I said-and ain't

life a bitch-was his head on a platter". The language used in this

quote is slang it shows me that Salome has been bought forward to the

20th Century.

It seems that Duffy has based her modern character on a promiscuous

Salome that gets what she wants and cares very little about the

consequences. This is quite the opposite to how Duffy presents Anne

Hathaway. Anne Hathaway misses her husband terribly, she celebrates

his work and their passionate love affair with each other. Salome is a

very negative poem whereas Anne Hathaway is a positive, uplifting

poem.

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