I was really excited to read The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy, mainly due to what I had learned about her view of the book from the letter she had written to her publishing company. She had self-described this collection as something relevant to pop culture. It seemed that she believed that this book would become a real hit. I have often thought of the different things that make a ‘hit’ in any kind of genre or medium, and my conclusion has been that there is always some kind of ‘hook.’
Anyone who knows pop music knows what a hook is – it’s the catchy part of the chorus that gets stuck in your head for hours on end. For me, a ‘hook’ in literature, movies, or any other kind of media is simply an easily palatable concept that, while thought-provoking, can be consumed by masses with little effort. While book series like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter have complex plots with diverse arrays of characters, both of these stories can easily be summarized and explained to a friend. Many of the most financially successful movies of our day contain superheroes that can be easily visualized, or are set in a well-rehearsed historical setting, such as on the Titanic or in the midst of World War II.
I think that The World’s Wife also manages to find it’s ‘hook.’ It seems to be a collection of poems that symbolify feminism for the masses. Most of these poems take well know historical figures or entities and tell them from a woman’s point of view. The woman has as much power as the man, but through nuances and small details, the reader is reassured of the individual speakers’ femininity. Doing this breaks down some of the gender barriers that were even more of a hot topic when this book was released.
I think that this collection of poems also does the reader (and critic) a favor by portraying women in all sorts of positions, as both good and evil, and challenges the usage of female characters as innocent, generally good-hearted bystanders and background characters. The characters in this book, essentially, encompass the character arc found in all of humanity.
Taylor Swift, queen of hooks
source: billboard.com
