Duffy’s book, The World’s Wife, offers us the opportunity to look at narratives, myths, and historical persons and events through the eyes of the otherwise overlooked. In reading The World’s Wife, one has the opportunity to contemplate the women behind the narratives we tell, whether they are real or accurate. Much of the world’s histories and narratives have been written and told from the perspective of and to the advantage of men. Duffy, however, causes readers to contemplate the role that gender plays in common narratives. For those poems in which Duffy replaces a man with a woman, such as “Queen Herod” or “Queen Kong,” readers may begin to wonder what role gender played in the original narrative. Is it essential that King Herod was a man? Could the command to “kill each mother’s son…spare none” just as well have come from a mother afraid for the well-being of her daughter?

In looking through the lens of wife and mother, readers see things that may have before been hidden from them. The motivations of the men in the narratives we tell are seen in a different light. In “Mrs. Midas” we come to contemplate Midas’ intentions and what he overlooked. In the poem, Mrs. Midas offers a perspective that has likely seldom been thought about before. “What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness.” In pursuing his ambitions for wealth and fortune, Midas forgot about what should have been his greatest treasure.

Despite the lack of accuracy in these accounts of the women behind common narratives, the importance of looking at history and stories through the eyes of a woman cannot be stressed enough. Much can be learned by abandoning the masculine and balancing it with the perspective of the other half of the population. If nothing else, Duffy encourages readers to consider the lessons that lie beneath what we told and search for the meaning that lies just behind another lens.

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