Carol Ann Duffy- queen herod poem PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Carol Ann Duffy- queen herod poem PDF

Description

 Queen Herod - Carol Ann Duffy  Herod is a king that ordered the slaughter of all children below the age of two. This poem turns idea about women and maternal love on its head. Mother’s characteristics: - Sacrificing. - Thoughtful. - Consumed with their children. - Child becomes center of universe. - Nurturing and supportive.  Helene cixous states that there is a cultural hierarchy of values, and that feminine coded ones have been devalued.  - Figurative imagery uses figures of speech. - Concrete imagery.  Ice in the trees. (Concrete winter imagery) Winter is ruthless. Desperation of the mothers. A minor sentence (since there is no action here) just an image being painted in our minds. Poem starts quite passively. As does the speaker. Three Queens at the Palace gates, Takes the 3 kings/wise men and makes them woman. dressed in furs, accented; CONCRETE IMAGERY Exotic queens, foreign to queen herod. their several sweating, panting beasts, laden for a long, hard trek, following the guide and boy to the stables; courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts for the King and Queen of here – Herod, me – Listing King first again demonstrates the idea of hierarchy, she puts herself second to husband. in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds, fruit, the best of meat and wine, Listing the lavish riches of Herod’s palace. dancers, music, talk – as it turned out to be, Things to be enjoyed but Queen Herod is still awake.  with everyone fast asleep, save me, She is awake worrying about (what we realise at the end of the poem is) her daughter those vivid three –

 

Vivid- an adjective that describes the noun of the three. Interesting, violent, queens. till bitter dawn. Cold weather. Foreboding, perhaps she is bitter. Pathetic fallacy. They were wise. Older than I. Pronouns on separate ends of the line show the perceived separation/isolation of Queen Herod from these women. They knew what they knew. The use of they twice, demonstrates certainty of the queens. Whilst Queen Herod is not assured of her knowledge. Once drunken Herod’s head went back, they asked to see her, This world of children belongs to women. They are making space away from patriarchal ears. This does not concern King Herod. fast asleep in her crib, my little child. Simple. Ownership of the child. Silver and gold, the loose change of herself, glowed in the soft bowl of her face. Imagines her daughter as currency/wealth. Metaphor shows daughter as value to Queen Herod so she is precious. Part of Queen Herod. Metaphor also speaks to her financial value in the patriarchal system where marriage is a form of social currency. Use of sibilance. Grace, said the tallest Queen. Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed hands. The black Queen made a tiny starfish of my daughter’s fist, These differ from the three gifts granted Sleeping Beauty. She unclasps fist. Open palm =acceptance, safety, yearning for something. said Happiness; then stared at me, This is key to Queen herod’s decision. She considers an institution like marriage to be the cost of her daughter’s happiness. Queen to Queen, with insolent lust. Negative rude (adjective), cheeky. Defiant. Watch, they said, for a star in the East – a new star pierced through the night like a nail. Simile: Forceful, violent. Piercing. Allusion to crucifixion. Suggests the daughter-like christ may be a martyr to society’s pressures on women or a husband’s anger. Was queen herod’s daughter born only to suffer according to her position as a woman.

 Litany of terms/euphemism for dudes. It means he’s here, alive, newborn. Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk. The alliteration of H, dismissive tone of “hush”. The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je t'adore.  The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist. The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake.(Rakehell) The Rat. The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr Right. ( Modern terms. This makes the reader ask what has changed?)  My baby stirred, suckled the empty air for milk, mix of maternal and erotic. till I knelt and the black Queen scooped out my breast, the left, guiding it down Collaborative parenting. Sisterhood. to the infant’s mouth. No man, I swore, will make her shed one tear. It is a promise/ an assertion. Simple declarative sentence. A peacock screamed outside. Peacocks show off, by screaming/flashing feathers (how they attract a mate). Protection, and watchfulness (Queen Herod takes action).//Royalty, beauty, vanity. It augurs bad times. Is the scream a rebuttal?  Afterwards, it seemed like a dream. Simile. Mystical, unreal, too good to be true. The pungent camels kneeling in the snow, the guide’s rough shout as he clapped his leather gloves, hawked, spat, snatched the smoky jug of mead from the chittering maid – A little reminder of female servitude. she was twelve, thirteen. I watched each turbaned Queen rise like a god on the back of her beast. Simile shows awe and respect. And splayed that night (splayed- a passive verb). A reminder of wifely servitude. below Herod’s fusty bulk, I saw the fierce eyes of the black Queen

Another hint of homosexual yearning. An adjective that suggests action and power. Contrast with Queen Herod’s passivity. flash again, felt her urgent warnings scald A metaphor. my ear. Watch for a star, a star. It means he’s here   Some swaggering lad to break her heart, Sarcastic (swaggering). some wincing Prince to take her name Away Allusion to act of taking husband’s name. The s sounds suggests dismissive, veremous, hiss. Diminishing. and give a ring, a nothing, a nowt in gold. Big Zilches. Meaningless. The institution of marriage and patriarchal, society offers nothing to women in terms of enrichment, and agency. I sent for the Chief of Staff, a mountain man with a red scar, like a tick to the mean stare of his eye. Brutal tone. Take men and horses, Imperative. knives, swords, cutlasses. Ride East from here and kill each mother’s son. Do it. Spare not one. Connecting murder with the number zero.  The midnight hour. The chattering stars Connotations of werewolves, witching hour. Something ends or begins. Chattering-personification. The fateful moment is drawing closer. Is queen Herod nervous for the arrival of the star. For her daughter? shivered in a nervous sky. Orion to the South who knew the score, who’d seen, not seen, then seen it all before; Orion(rapist, history) clearly intertwined with women. the yapping Dog Star at his heels. High up in the West a studded, diamond W. Cassiopeia: sent to the stars for sacrificing of her daughter to a sea monster. And then, as prophesied, blatant, brazen, buoyant in the East – Bold cheeky, rude , assertive. Confidence, assurance, joyfulness.

and blue – The Boyfriend’s Star. Sarcastic tone. This boyfriend has the ability to hurt her daughter within such an ill balanced system as this. The repetition of the plosive B sound- staccato, persuasive, spitting the words, out.  We do our best, we Queens, we mothers, Collective first person pronouns mouthpiece for maternal aggression and protection. Sense of community and sisterhood. Women coming together to help each other. Collective empathy and understanding. Is she over compensating? Are the justifications for violence. mothers of Queens.  We wade through blood Allusion to the physicality of childbirth. The physical toll. Wade is a gentle verb? Juxtaposition with blood/violence. for our sleeping girls. They are not aware of all their mothers do for them (metaphor). Are they ignorant to the world? The dangers that the mothers have seen We have daggers for eyes. Metaphor. Goes against the idea of maternal softness.  Behind our lullabies, Terrible (alarming/frightening) depth of love. the hooves of terrible horses Allusion to prince charming (Horsemen Of the Apocalypse). thunder and drum. 

The analysis that follows examines these poems in two separate sections: their portrayal of love and sexuality, and their portrayal of motherhood respectively, within the theoretical framework of feminist theology. 

In “Queen Herod” the Massacre of the Innocents, one of the most terrifying deeds in the Bible is attributed to motherhood, and to the love a Queen displays for her daughter. The story is presented slightly different at the beginning, at the point where, in the conventional version, three Kings arrive at King Herod’s palace when Christ is born. In Duffy’s version it is “three Queens” (2) and not three Kings. Once Herod is asleep, they “asked to see her [the Queen]” (19), and the King, they offer gifts to her newborn daughter, which include not the materialistic conventional ones offered to Christ, but “Grace” (25), “Strength” (26) and “Happiness” (29), and warn her to “watch ... for a star in the east” (31), which will signify the birth of a boy who will

take her daughter. The three Queens’ aim is thus to inform King Herod’s wife of the imminent danger of losing her daughter by the new King. Queen Herod, determined to allow “no man” (46) to “make her [daughter] shed one tear” (47) gives the order for “each mother’s son” (76) to be killed. The story of “Queen Herod” has been interpreted as a feminine manifesto of “an alternative, female, logic for Herod’s murder of all male children” (Michelis & Rowland 111). According to Horner, this poem “marks both the beginning and end of a matriarchy” (Michelis & Rowland 112). The line “No man, I swore, will make her shed one tear” (46-47) signifies “its own optimism and confidence in modern women’s ability to protect each other from masculine exploitation and abuse” (Michelis & Rowland 112), that is, the belief that women have the power to protect themselves and their daughters. The last lines of the poem close this circle. As Horner notes, “in historical retrospect—the reader knows that the birth of the Messiah will usher in a long era of Pauline Christian thought antipathetic to women’s bodies and minds” (Michelis & Rowland 112). This poem thus constitutes an allegory. The coming of Christ is equated with the rise of an oppressive for the women era. All these show the way this poem can be interpreted within the theoretical framework of feminism. However, religion’s dominant role in the above interpretation cannot be sidelined. Its centrality in Duffy’s poem is evident, and its influence in Western thought acknowledged. It can be argued that “Queen Herod” constitutes, apart from an excellent example of allegory, an implicit critique of what male thought has turned Christian religion into: a world so oppressive for daughters that women actually need to be protected from Christianity. Through this, Duffy unveils issues that have been disregarded for centuries: the way religion has marginalized women for so long, using also the institution of marriage to succeed it. As Duffy argues, marriage has turned to be “a ring, a nothing, nowt to gold” given by “some wincing Prince” who takes the woman’s “name away” (67), that is, a Prince who arguably changes who she is. It can be argued that Duffy draws focus towards the problem of the female oppression, and makes it possible for the readers to realize it, and in this way indirectly urges for a redefinition of religion. Duffy longs for a religion where “our sleeping girls” (95), that is the women, will be safe from “the hooves of terrible horses” that “thunder and drum” (98-99), that is men. In “Queen Herod” the love of a mother meets no constraints. Moreover, males are argued to oppress females, and only a redefinition of religion that will encompass female experience qualifies as the solution.

Through her poems, Duffy attempts to alter the distorting image of women as they are implicitly presented in the Bible. She insinuates that the Bible, as any historical text, must be looked upon with a critical eye, and exposes in “Queen Herod” that the conventional image of women has facilitated their oppression. But instead of rejecting Christianity, she declares her faith, by moving within the limits of religion, not changing the core of it, like other contemporary feminist theologians. She only proposes a more fair revision that embraces the human experience of both sexes.

Duffy’s attempt to draw “on images of the Apocalypse for its effect” (Michelis & Rowland 112) intensifies the dramatic effect. The “hooves of terrible horses thunder and drum” allude to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Revelations 6, 1-8), linking the danger of “our sleeping daughters” (95) to the arrival of the four horsemen and the beginning of the end of the world. Since the advent of the four horsemen is considered devil’s work, and will result in destruction, Duffy relates the oppression that “our sleeping daughters” (95) are facing to a sin that will draw the advent of the horsemen. This equates oppressive male behavior with sin, and the advent of the end of the world. Moreover, the version of Queen Herod’s female experience is justified. She is led to this terrible act by the love for her daughter, and through feelings of altruism, the strong feelings that all parents feel for their children. She is also led by her obligation to protect the weak, from the oppression of the strong, and to save her daughter’s life. Queen Herod can in this way be viewed as a strong mother who will act, and will do everything to protect her child, contrary to the major symbol of motherhood in Christianity, Mary, with Duffy complying perfectly with Saiving’s exhortation of the way a mother should behave. In contrast to Mary, she is not willing to sacrifice her child for others. Queen Herod thus displays more earthly feelings, and does not wait patiently for things to happen, but takes control over her own and her beloved ones’ life.

      ...