I have to say reading “The World’s Wife” has been an interesting experience for me. I’m usually not a big fan of poetry, but some of these poems in particular have caught my eye, particularly the poem about Anne Hathaway. I enjoyed the twist on what was one of the most infuriatingly confusing and potentially scandalous statements of Shakespeare’s life: Duffy looked at the “second hand bed” not as a lack of care for his wife, but rather as a sort of inside joke between the couple. The quality of the gesture was internal, and was one of love, rather than spite or neglect as it may seem at first glance.

However, one of the main reasons I love this poem (and you’ll see my bold-faced bias here) is that it portrays the man in the relationship in a positive light. In fact, this is one of the only poems in the entire collection to do so. Duffy takes the perspective of the famous unspoken (or nonexistent) women, which is a unique and interesting element of her poems, but in so doing she demonizes almost every non-female character contained within her pages.

Normally this wouldn’t really bother me. There are some pretty shady male characters throughout history, after all. But what really catches my nerve is when Duffy bastardizes historically good and earnest men. The boy Icarus, who in classical mythology is imprisoned and enslaved for his entire life, and in his joy of freedom flies too close to the sun and plummets to an untimely death, is reduced to “a total, absolute, utter, Grade A pillock” (54). The poet Aesop, responsible for many parables and tales that persist to this day, merely a “bore for Purgatory” (19). Darwin is only remnant of a chimpanzee. And obviously most of the men in this book are not of the quality sort: the Devil himself is one poem’s focus, and characters such as Midas and Sisyphus, while not necessarily evil, were far from models of the perfect man. Yet Duffy groups all these men, whose accomplishments and moralities vary, into a singular group, as “the bad guy.” Very few of the poems within “The World’s Wife” are about healthy, stable relationships, and from the perspectives Duffy gives, it is almost always chalked up to be the fault of the man.

But suppose this is stylistic, rather than bias. Suppose Duffy intentionally demonized most (if not all) of the men within her poems simply to narrow her focus: it’s a lot easier to write poems about the totally black or the totally white rather than about the gray. That’s essentially what I have determined, and if you look at this work as a feminist piece, it certainly makes sense, and aids Duffy in her arguments/points.

But what does not aid Duffy’s arguments, and what I see to be a clear show of bias towards women on her part, is the glorification of historic women who are very much bad guys. There are many examples of this, from Medusa to Mrs. Rip Van Winkle. But the one that I was particularly infuriated by was Delilah. Now Delilah, if you didn’t know, is one of the more despicable women in biblical history. As a spy sent by the enemies of Samson, Delilah is instructed to woo the nearly immortal herculean figure and then cut off his hair, which is apparently the source of his power (Old Testament Bible is very weird, but I swear this is actually how it happened). There was no love in the relationship on her side: she is the very definition of manipulation and deceit, and her actions directly resulted in the capture, torture, and murder of Samson, one of God’s most faithful servants. Oddly enough, this makes Delilah very similar to the character Tiresias in Duffy’s poem “Mrs. Tiresias,” although in that poem Tiresias’s actions are seen with scorn and spite, whereas Delilah’s nearly parallel actions are rendered “deliberate, passionate,” and seemingly out of love (28).

For the life of me I can’t understand why Duffy would try to glorify Delilah other than a bias that she must write all the women within her poetry as the heroines. Delilah literally stands for the opposite of what Duffy tries to argue and convey concerning the virtue of women and the fallibility of man. Not to mention that Delilah is evil: like, really really evil. This poem is the equivalent of writing Judas as the good guy in the story of the crucifixion. And arguments that she truly did act out of love are completely moot, because Samson dies because of her actions. It’s not even the case that Delilah played only a small role in the eventual demise of Samson: her actions are the defining and ultimate end to his life. This isn’t love, it’s cold-blooded murder. So why does Duffy portray it any differently? I would argue, because Delilah is a woman, and in her poetry Duffy simply will not allow the female role to contain any damning traits.

This is, of course, only my opinion. And keep in mind, I’m certainly not just up and saying that Duffy flat out hates men, because I don’t think that’s true. But I do feel that there is a heavy bias presented in Duffy’s work that tends to overlook the faults in women and hone in on the faults of man.

Image from http://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-stories/samson-and-delilah.html