In her poem, Whoever She Was, Duffy describes a woman whose identity has been swallowed up in her duties as a wife, mother, and home-maker. The poem is filled with imagery that communicates to the reader how the subject’s children view her and what they expect of her.
They see me always as a flickering figure on a shilling screen. Not real.
However her children see her, they clearly don’t see her in her entirety. Readers get the sense from Duffy’s words that the subject’s children see an ephemeral and unrealistic reflection of their mother because they don’t see past her motherly duties. Whoever the woman was before her identity became wife and mother is foreign to her. Her days are filled with tasks that have made her forget who she used to be.
A row of paper dollies, cleaning wounds or boiling eggs for soldiers. The chant of magic words repeatedly.
Whether these “magic words” are referring to the proverbial “please” and “thank you” or to the ability mothers seem to have in soothing their children with comforting words, Duffy writes that these words are chanted, that they are mindlessly carried out for the sake of familiarity. The subject has learned to play the part of mother, but it has been ritualized into something that has little meaning to her.
While reading this poem, I was reminded of the song She Used to be Mine, written by Sara Bareilles for the musical, Waitress. In the musical, after the main character, Jenna, becomes pregnant with her abusive husband, she seeks out a better life for herself and her unborn child. After a confrontation with her husband, Jenna reflects on who she used to be and who she is now:
It’s not simple to say
That most days I don’t recognize me,
That these shoes and this apron
That place and its patrons
Have taken more than I gave them.
While the details of each woman’s story is different, the molding influences around them have shaped them in to something different than who they used to be. In addition, each woman can never return to who they used to be, that the transformations they have undergone are permanent. As the subject of Duffy’s poem takes on a different last name and expresses that “[her] maiden name sounds wrong,” she acknowledges the permanence of her situation. Similarly, Bareilles writes, “She is gone, but she used to be mine,” recognizing her inability to go back.
Despite the details and differences between the two women, each must come to terms with the changes that their identities have undergone in assuming the roles of wife and mother. Each hopes that they will become more than they have been and be remembered as more than a supportive wife or a good home-maker.
Source: Youtube
