Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife Review

Overall Rating

This work is perfect for literature students at A-level. The text is overtly sexualised yes, but the history of mankind is overtly sexualised; all Duffy does is be stark and frank about the nature of womankind. The text can act as a doorway to future study in English Literature. As an opener its greatest gift is to bring about the realisation that coarseness as well as the inherently poignant gift of motherhood are just small facets of existence.

Overall Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife collection is a gambit of human experience. As much as it relates most closely to women its points about humanity resonate for both sexes. The brutality and the touching sentiment of people are fused. The fall of innocence is sublimely illustrated while Duffy, seemingly without political malice or great vitriol, paints a portrait of women, not as dominant, but equal. In my opinion The World's Wife is a text that balances the scales between the sexes by showing women at their very best and very worst; by making women equal in strength, valour and intelligence, but also in perversion, corruptibility and anger.