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Widow Woman is a ballad about a woman who has recently lost her husband. In the poem, the woman expresses her grief over her husband’s death and pledges that she will never accept another lover or cease mourning her husband’s loss.
Widow Woman Analysis. Hughes' poems are often described as exceedingly simple. He is celebrated as a realist poet—a designation which leads many to think of Hughes as a literalist poet. The difference, however, is significant. In his poem "The Weary Blues," for example, Hughes portrays a blues pianist playing in Harlem.
Women were identified not by their social status and occupations, but solely by their relations with men: a woman was defined as either a maiden, a spouse, or a widow – capable only of child-bearing, cooking and other "women's work".
- Summary
- Meaning
- The Epigraph
- Themes
- Structure
- Detailed Analysis
- The Bed in ‘Anne Hathaway‘
- Feminism
‘Anne Hathaway’ by Carol Ann Duffy is told from the perceptive of Shakespeare’s wife who discusses their enduring love through the symbolof a bed. The poem begins with the speaker describing her husband’s second-best bed as a place of wonder. It was filled with wonderful things like “torchlight” and “clifftops.”Anne clearly feels very attached to t...
‘Anne Hathaway’ by Carol Ann Duffy is simplistic in meaning but deep in thoughts that can be captured by a heart who loves. The reference to Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare’s wife, is interesting. In the epigraphsection, the poet quotes, “Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…” from Shakespeare’s will. Likewise, the poet talks about the be...
Before reading this piece it is important to take note of the epigraph that Duffy included at the beginning of the poem. An epigraph is a phrase, quote, or piece of information that gives the poem additional context. In this case, she chose to use a quote from William Shakespeare’s will. It reads, ‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed…’ Or m...
‘Anne Hathaway’ by Carol Ann Duffy contains several important themes. The foremost theme that constitutes the essence of the poem, is love. Here, the poet refers to the love between two genuine hearts. This love is glorifying in nature and contains a world in itself. For this reason, the simple bed becomes a new dimension of the lovers as it is a p...
‘Anne Hathaway’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a fourteen-line sonnet that does not follow a specific pattern of rhyme. As is common within many of Duffy’s poems, this text is in the form of a dramatic monologue. This means that there is one speaker who is talking directly to the reader, or a particular listener, without interruption. Unlike Shakespearean a...
Lines 1-4
In the first lines of ‘Anne Hathaway,’ the speaker immediately discusses the bed referenced in the epigraph. It was not a bad place, although it was referred to as “second best” by Shakespeare himself. The speaker, Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife, refers to the bed as “a spinning world”. It is a place that is always moving, and is filled with wonderful things like “torchlight” and “clifftops”. These are magical images that could come straight from Shakespeare’s plays. The bed is also said t...
Lines 5-8
In the next four lines, the speaker discusses how the two were in bed together. They mimicked and mirrored one another. She was the “softer rhyme” to his harder. They were assonance and consonance. These elements of poetry are perfectly placed and speak to the presence of literature in the life of husband and wife. Duffy was clearly interested in the deeper love the two might’ve had, and in attempting to recreate that love, chose to consider Shakespeare’s writing as an integral part of it. In...
Lines 9-14
The bed that Anne has been referring to though the text was the one that Shakespeare called “second best”. The reasoning for this comes into play in line eleven. Duffy decided to interpret the line differently than most scholars do. Rather than making the willing of his second-best bed a spiteful gesture towards Anne, it was an expression of his deepest love. Anne states that it was in this bed that they slept when there were guests. They chose to give visitors their “best bed” and they took...
One of the most important images of this piece is the bed itself. It is the one item included in the epigraph and is, in fact, the only item that he directly left to his wife. It is commonly thought that this was done in spite, showing that the poet held his wife in contempt. Duffy takes a very different perspective. In the poem, the bed comes to r...
‘Anne Hathaway’ by Carol Ann Duffy neither follows the conventional “phallocentric” diction nor it steps into the shoes of an orthodox sonneteer. It is a pure “gynotext” that flows like the rhythm inside a woman. The poem voices the expression of love that purely a woman captures with her heart. However, it also illustrates how a woman reacts to th...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
Jun 10, 2017 · Hardy’s ‘A Wife in London’ reveals the irony of war, as a widow receives her fallen husband’s hopeful letter after his death. Read Poem.
‘Penelope’ is one of many popular poems published in Duffy’s well-loved volume, The World’s Wife. It was her fifth collection of poetry, published in 1999 by Anvil Press Poetry. All the poems focus on women from history or mythology and present their stories through a new, feminist lens.
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“He – has fallen” is a euphemism to shield the widow from the harsh truth but the dashes represent her grief and inability to process the news of her husband’s death. Pathetic fallacy of the “fog hangs thicker” shows her grief is settling in.
