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The essay consists of a close reading of Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Penelope". In it, she describes Odysseus' wife Penelope as a lonely and emotional woman....

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Angela Rochford Transnational Literature Essay 1 22 Feb. 2019 Close Reading of Duffy’s “Penelope” Carol Ann Duffy’s portrayal of Penelope from The Odyssey can be read on multiple layers in her poem “Penelope”. On the surface of Duffy’s poem, one can see that a big part of Penelope’s life is finding comfort through sewing while waiting for her husband, Odysseus, to return home. However, a close reading of the poem’s scansion and structure show how lonely Penelope is, the strength she gains from sewing, and the true emotional turmoil she experiences because of Odysseus being away. These are all things that a simple surface read cannot show alone. On the surface, Duffy’s word choice and metaphors give the reader clues to how Penelope is affected by her husband’s absence. After waiting for her husband for six months, Penelope decides to turn to sewing to pass the time. Expecting a hobby, she surprisingly “found a lifetime’s industry instead” (11). She refers to the hobby as lasting a lifetime because that is how long she feels she will wait for Odysseus. So much time has passed without her husband that Penelope is basically mourning him. She ends up sewing a scene, with a woman watching a man leaving on a journey. The woman “watched him sail away/ into the loose gold stitching of the sun” (26-27). This sewn together scene is a metaphor for Penelope’s current situation; she is the woman watching Odysseus sail away. This metaphor can also be read as Odysseus sailing away to his death, and that the golden sun is actually heaven. Because of the distress Penelope is under, it is almost like her husband has died, and he will never return.

Penelope’s sorrow and hopelessness is shown again in the last stanza: “Grey threads and brown/ pursued my needle’s leaping fish/ to form a river that would never reach the sea” (36-38). These lines create a metaphor for Penelope’s true outlook on her separation with her husband. Even though she is faithful to him and endlessly “hoping” for his return, Penelope believes that she is the river and Odysseus is the sea; she believes they will never unite again. To really emphasize her hopelessness, Penelope more obviously claims herself in mourning of Odysseus by saying she “wore a widow’s face,…” (31). While this all illustrates Penelope’s sorrow and the long passage of time she experiences, a closer read of the poem uncovers her anger, resentment, and personal growth. The poem begins with a steady iambic meter, as it does often throughout each stanza. Yet, the pattern breaks to emphasize certain words and points. The first stanza starts,”At first, I looked along the road/ hoping to see him saunter home/” (1-2). Because the first line is an iambic tetrameter, it contains a certain flow, almost like a song, but the flow is disrupted with the opposite of an iamb, a trochee. The second line starts with a stress then unstressed word: “hoping”. The sudden disrupt makes the reader focus on the word “hoping”, because this is all Penelope can rely while waiting for Odysseus’ return - hope. The poem continues, “...among the olive trees,/ a whistle for the dog/ who mourned him with his warm head on my knees./” (2-4). The stresses in line three are strategically placed to make a whistle noise- starting strong and then dying out. The whistle is lead to an emphasis on the word “dog”. Duffy does this to grab the reader’s attention and show how desperate Penelope is for companionship; Penelope missed Odysseus so much that the dog’s “warm head on [her] knees” is the most comfort she’s going to get. Duffy repeatedly stresses certain words throughout the poem to point out the long

passage of time Penelope has to suffer through. In lines six and seven, Duffy states: “Six months of this/ and then I noticed that whole days had passed/”. Line six is confined to its own line to single out the specific length of time Penelope waits for her husband. Not only that, but the words “Six months” are the two stressed syllables within the line. This emphasizes the amount of time even more than necessary. Duffy does this to thoroughly make the reader understand how fixated and tortured Penelope is by waiting for so long. Even though she is tormented by waiting for her lover, Penelope utilizes her sewing skills to pass the time. Even the poem’s structure shows how much Penelope integrates her skill into her life. Penelope claims: “I sewed a girl/ under a single star - cross-stitch, silver silk -/” (12-13). “I sewed a girl” is another way of Penelope declaring she is recreating herself; with Odysseus gone, she is using sewing to create a new aspect of herself. Also, placing the quote “cross-stitch, silver silk” between two dashes makes the phrase look like it is being sewn into the poem. Also, to finally stress how important sewing is to Penelope, Duffy places stresses on all of the beginning syllables in line 13. Later in the poem, Penelope expresses her appreciation of the emotional outlet sewing provided her. She claims she “...lost [herself] completely/ in a wild embroidery of love, lust, loss, lessons learnt;/” (24-25). Because of her outlet, Penelope realizes how affected she is by Odysseus’ inconsiderate abandonment. The alliteration of the “L” sounds emphasizes and connects all of the lessons she learned in a sing-song kind of way. To draw even more attention to these words, they are all stressed, creating a spondee pattern. Penelope also uses sewing to her advantage by keeping her suitors at bay. Even though she is miserable waiting for her husband, she continues to be faithful and patient - even cunning. She she suppresses her emotions and claims: “I wore a widow’s face, kept my head down,/ did

my work by day, at night unpicked it./” (31-32). On the surface level, Penelope sewing and untangling her work just to redo it the next day is a perfect metaphor for her everyday life while Odysseus is away. She is forced to painfully hope for Odysseus’ return every day, but is repeatedly heartbroken every morning when she realizes he’s still not there. After a closer read, one can see how Duffy’s use of caesura separates Penelope’s emotions and actions. Not only that, but the commas between sentences act as a way to change the meter. The first half of line 31 starts as iambic trimeter, but after the comma, it turns into a trochaic dimeter. This then continues until the second comma turns the meter back into iambic. The stress changes caused by sudden pauses draw the reader's’ attention to the true things Penelope feels contrasted to the things she is forced to do while waiting for Odysseus. After waiting for so long and using sewing as her only outlet, Penelope creates resentment towards Odysseus. In the last stanza, one can see Penelope’s pent up frustration and feeling of betrayal through the stress of her words. When her husband finally returns home, Penelope hears “a far-too-late familiar tread outside the door./ [she] licked [her] scarlet thread/ and aimed it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more” (43-46). Penelope hints at her frustration through the three stressed syllables in “far-too-late”. Through these syllables one can almost hear her resentful tone. The three syllable spondee is repeated a second time in the last line of the poem; “eye once more” is stressed to point out the amount of times Penelope has threaded her needle so many times before her husband’s return. Also, Penelope specifically decides to use scarlet thread for the woman’s mouth. The color scarlet is oftentimes associated with sin, more specifically prostitution or adultery. This is quite fitting considering multiple occasions where Odysseus proved himself as an unfaithful husband throughout his journey. While there is so much see on the surface of Duffy’s poem “Penelope”, there is even

more to be analyzed with a closer read of the scansion and structure. Identifying which words are stressed makes the reader focus on the true emotional turmoil Penelope goes through while missing, and basically mourning, her husband. Without doing a more in depth read of the poem, the reader risks overlooking the personal growth and anger Penelope experiences, which is such a huge part of her character....