{"id":357,"date":"2017-10-16T12:38:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T18:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2017-10-16T12:38:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T18:38:16","slug":"queen-herods-power-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/student-posts\/queen-herods-power-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Herod\u2019s Power Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noticed three types of women in Duffy\u2019s collection The World\u2019s Wife<\/i>. First, the preexisting heroines given a new voice, like \u201cLittle Red-Cap,\u201d \u201cThetis,\u201d \u201cPilate\u2019s Wife\u201d (Matthew 27:17-19<\/a>) and others. Second, the apocryphal wives of famous male characters, as in \u201cMrs Midas\u201d or \u201cMrs Quasimodo.\u201d The third category is most intriguing to me: the original heroes are re-imagined as women. I think \u201cQueen Kong\u201d and \u201cQueen Herod\u201d belong here. (I\u2019m using the terms heroine and hero somewhat loosely. It\u2019s a matter of perspective. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, right?)<\/p>\n

The speaker of \u201cQueen Herod\u201d styles herself \u201cthe King and Queen of here\u2014Herod, me.\u201d She is probably pointing to Herod, then herself. Two. But I also read this as \u201cI am Herod. I am both King and Queen, the one and absolute ruler.\u201d The use of a comma in \u201cHerod, me\u201d makes that just ambiguous enough for that unusual interpretation. Herod is a character in the poem, separate from his queen, but he\u2019s barely relevant. Queen Herod, not her husband, orders her Chief of Staff to kill \u201ceach mother\u2019s son.\u201d Contrary to the familiar narrative, she is the dominant figure, eclipsing the supposed king.<\/p>\n

Wise men are instead \u201cThree Queens at the Palace gates,\u201d also called \u201cwise,\u201d following a star, looking for a baby boy, riding camels. All the signs are there, but here too the gender is inverted. I didn\u2019t catch this the first time, but they tell Queen Herod to watch for a \u201cstar in the East.\u201d They\u2019re from the East (Matthew 2:1-2<\/a>). They followed the star west<\/i> to Judea. So are they talking about a different new star?<\/p>\n

One more thing: Herod seems to rape the \u201cblack Queen\u201d of the three and after this, Queen Herod sends her force of destruction East. This seems like a reenactment of history, where colonial powers from the so-called West effectively rape the cultures distant from them. I don\u2019t think Duffy wants us to sympathize with the brutality of the colonial power.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

Duffy, Carol Ann.\u00a0The World’s Wife.<\/em> Faber and Faber, 2000.<\/p>\n

“Queen Herod” pp. 7-10.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: La Farge, John. “The Wise Men out of the East.” 1868. Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t find any version of “The Wise Women from the East,” but we might at least imagine that the figure on the black horse is Queen Herod, perhaps talking to her Chief of Staff, “a mountain man.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noticed three types of women in Duffy’s collection The World’s Wife. First, the preexisting heroines given a new voice, like “Little Red-Cap,” “Thetis,” “Pilate’s Wife” (Matthew 27:17-19) and others. Second, the apocryphal wives of famous male characters, as in “Mrs Midas” or “Mrs Quasimodo.” The third category is most intriguing to me: the original …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9aQyB-5L","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1254,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/1254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}