Mrs Aesop Ioc 5g6i6o

This Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poems ‘the world’s wife’ focuses on women empowerment and challenges social norms such as male patriarchy. One of the poems, “Mrs Aesop” is written in the perspective of the Mrs Aesop and speaks of the wife conveying her negative thoughts regarding her husband and her marriage. Through the usage of figurative devices, structure and humorous allusions, Carol Ann Duffy illustrates Mrs Aesop’s resentful attitude to show her discontent in the marriage and her dissatisfaction towards her husband. In this analysis, I will be taking the thematic approach by first talking about the usage of figurative devices and structure then the usage of humorous allusions. Firstly, I’ll talk about how Carol Ann Duffy uses language and structure to show her discontent in the marriage and the dissatisfaction towards Mr Aesop. In the 2nd line, “He was small, didn’t prepossess. So he tried to impress” shows that Mrs Aesop does not find her husband attractive and so he tried to impress her using his didactic stories. This is ironic as throughout the poem it is revealed that Mrs Aesop actually finds his stories boring and unsubstantial. In the 2nd stanza lines 2 to 4 and in the 4th stanza lines 1 to 2, Carol Ann Duffy also uses parallelism to produce a monotonous tone in order to reflect how discontent and boring her marriage is. The usage of simile in the line “Slow as marriage” in stanza 3 directly compares her marriage with the tortoise in the fable. She is using Aesop’s preachings against him and this is a way that Carol Ann Duffy uses to mock Mr Aesop by taking away the one thing that he is well-known for. The usage of personification in the line “story droned on” in stanza 4 reflects how her marriage is also droning on, and further emphasizes on how boring her marriage is. The usage of the word “asshole” in the 3rd stanza is a curse word and this links back to the first line when she curses and says “By Christ”, this repetition of the concept of cursing shows the extent of her resentfulness towards Mr Aesop. The use of colloquial also create a conversational tone and allows the reader to empathise with the speaker of the poem, who in the case is Mrs Aesop. Carol Ann Duffy also removes Mr Aesop’s masculinity through the metaphor “Sex was diabolical”, thus mocking Mr Aesop’s lack of sexual ability and this further emphasizes on Mrs Aesop’s dissatisfaction towards her husband. in regards to the structure, the usage of enjambment creates a tone of conversational rants and ties back with the point I mentioned previously about allowing the reader to empathise with the suffering Mrs Aesop has to go through. The short and simple sentence in stanza 2 “according to him” creates a sneering tone towards her husband and shows how she does not believe in his stories and thinks that they are unsubstantial. Moving on, humorous allusions are also used to mock Mr Aesop to show Mrs Aesop’s discontent in the marriage. In the first stanza, Mrs Aesop says that the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve, this adds a humorous touch to the actual saying due to the diction of “shat”. Thus showing that she’s mocking Mr Aesop’s story and not taking it seriously in order to make it more interesting for herself. Many of Aesop’s fables were all shortened into a question form in stanza 4 lines 1 to 2 to show how unimportant she believed the fables to be and questioning his preachings as she does not believe that they’re substantial or of any importance. The fables is a way of Mr Aesop showing control thus by reversing the roles in the last stanza it shows her need to take control of the marriage and end his preaching and this emphasizes on her discontent towards the marriage. Her fable talks of a little cock that wouldn’t crow, this is her poking fun at Mr Aesop’s lack of sexual ability. She continues the fable saying that the axe will cut off the cock’s tail in order to save its face. This is actually her threatening to cut off Mr Aesop’s fallace in order to free herself and save her dignity. Not only that, all the fables throughout the poem actually represent their thoughts towards one another. For example when Mr Aesop says slow but certain Mrs Aesop, wins the race, he’s telling Mrs Aesop that she has to stop rushing things in the marriage and a steady but possibly slower marriage is better than an exhilarating one which she wants, but he cannot provide. As fables are generally used to teach someone a lesson, the fact that he preaches directly to her, and proven by the fact that he says “Mrs Aesop” in a formal way, shows that all the fables and morals he preaches is directed to her. Thus, indirectly taking control of the marriage. Hence, the fact that Mrs Aesop ends the poem with a fable threatening Mr Aesop it

shows how she has had enough of his preaching and tries to take control of the marriage due to her discontent. In conclusion, through the usage of language, structure and humorous allusions, Carol Ann Duffy illustrates Mrs Aesop’s resentful attitude to show her discontent in the marriage and her dissatisfaction towards her husband.