As I read The World’s Wife I got the sense that Duffy was trying to paint a picture of woman’s relationship with essentially the rest of society. There’s comparisons set up by taking a famous or renowned male figure and putting words together to formulate what this figure’s female counterpart might say and think. Drawing this mental scenario sort of helps us get inside the mind of those who might feel like a lesser half in their marriage, courtship, or general relationship with others. It made me ask the question, what would life be like to be this person’s spouse when I read each of the poems structured like this. Which brought me back to the book’s title, The World’s Wife. It almost makes me feel like the theme that is being portrayed is that women, in general, are usually take a backseat to many things of the world. Society has for many years pushed women out of important roles and positions and has just made them “wife”.

The climax of these comparisons, in my eyes, was the poem The Devil’s Wife. The line in particular “I was left to rot. I was locked up, double locked,” stood out to me. Abandonment and abuse seem to be the theme of this poem, and I think that Duffy describing this as the espousal to the Devil shows how harshly she is trying to condemn the mistreatment of women. Ultimately, I think Duffy could have rewritten the title or added to it something to this affect: “The World’s Wife: What it’s like being Married to the Devil.” The painting I see portrayed is that the world is full of evil and ignorance, and womankind is unfortunately married to all of it.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi4-Jrdp_3WAhXIh1QKHUulD6kQjhwIBQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jw.org%2Fen%2Fbible-teachings%2Fquestions%2Fcause-of-suffering%2F&psig=AOvVaw15fRGjOpM3jzqbd6AHdGfb&ust=1508523928430055

video courtesy of YouTube, mostly to be funny, but also one man’s commentary on a relationship with “the beast”