How and to what effect are outcasts presented in Duffy’s poems.

Duffy presents a number of female perspectives in her poetry. Notably, the use of outcast personas as the subject of or as speakers in her poetry serve to highlight the various ways in which women in general are marginalised by society. Furthermore, the presentation of outcasts through the use of language, contrasting imagery and emotive tone, all serve to amplify the superficial and unreasonable nature of their social rejection, rendering them the ultimate tool for social critique.

 In Big Sue and Now, Voyager, the superficial nature of the reason for her status as an outcast as well as the childish name calling that represents the method of society’s rejection are made clear through the use of adjectives which highlight the contrast between the focal persona, Sue, and the other women in society: Sue is ‘big’, a ‘cow’ in comparison to the other ‘slender women’. Feminine beauty and sexual appeal is epitomised in the image of Bette Davis in the movie Now, Voyager, and the particular poignancy in this poem emerges from the precise juxtaposition of Big Sue and her impossible escapist dream of filling the role played by Bette Davis. In this poem, the use of the third person narrative and its focus on Sue is significant in the presentation of how the Sue, as a social outcast, responds to social rejection by withdrawing firstly behind the curtains of her abode – signifying a counter rejection of the world outside – and secondly into the extreme and excessive escapism into endless reruns of the same romantic movie. This combination enables the presentation of how Sue perceives the world outside to be an extension of the unattainable ideal. The third person narration, in describing objectively Sue’s actions makes clear that while society itself has been harsh, cruel and superficial in its rejection of Sue, her own response is self-defeatist, reinforcing the reason for her rejection through the consumption of ‘Mars bars’ and ‘chocolate sticks’. The emotional agony of the persona, while moving in the degree of clarity attained regarding the nature of the unachievable dream – represented by ‘the moon’ – is also cynical in its presentation of the outcast herself, making it clear that the woman herself holds significant keys to ending her own misery and outcast state.

 By contrast, Virgin Punishing the Infant, the use of the third person narrative serves to create the impression of great irony surrounding the outcast nature of the central female subject. Mother Mary, otherwise known to the world as a female authority figure in her role as the mother of Jesus Christ and therefore the recipient of much esteem, is here presented contrary to contemporary expectations in various forms of vulnerability and inadequacy as a young, first-time mother struggling to come to terms with the extent of her son’s uniqueness. Again, the superficiality of society’s standards and judgements comes to the fore. Unlike the omniscient third person narration in Big Sue and Now, Voyager, the narrator here is clearly from within the society that is actively ostracizing young Mary through their gossiping about her child, and is therefore culpable in her isolation and suffering. The isolation of the young mother is further amplified through the depiction of her as having been abandoned by her sole male protector, Joseph, as well as the God who tasked her with the responsibility of bearing his only son. The other male authority figure in her life, her son, is no less responsible for his indifference to his mother’s suffering in his focus on his cause. The end of the poem is particularly significant in the layering of complex confusion. The neighbour’s confusion and lack of comprehension signifies the inability of society to see it’s own responsibility for the suffering of others, as well as highlighting the displacement of female suffering from access to compassion and understanding. In addition, the suffering of Mary and her perplexity at her circumstance is layered symbolically at the end through her resorting to the masculine form of expression through violence in the punishing of the child, followed by a feminine form of expression through her resultant tears. The net result of the mother in tears and the dry-eyed child culminates in the impression that women, in having to juggle multiple roles and expectations, are the ultimate victim, subject even to their scrutiny and discompassion of those whom they are supposedly authorities over.

Finally, a third outcast depicted in Standing Female Nude brings an interesting angle for the consideration of who has the true power to outcast any single individual. The first person narrative of this persona makes it clear that she is well aware of her own status as a social outcast due to her profession as a riverside whore while also emphasizing that her image of herself does not suffer simply because society judges her harshly for what she has to resort to in order to survive. Instead, Duffy skilfully employs dramatic monologue to depict an outcast who quite capably rises out of her own circumstances to present an image of herself as one who is empowered and worthy of the admiration of even the highest in the land / ‘the queen’. Indeed, the speaker’s attitude towards the male authority in this poem – the painter – emphasizes the notion that no single individual, no matter how low their circumstance, can be effectively rendered an outcast unless they have given up valuing themselves and their own qualities/strengths. She refers to him as a ‘little man’, belittling his status and perhaps his manhood, and scoffs how he ‘cannot afford’ the arts she has to sell, irregardless of the fact that she is posing for him for ‘a few francs’. Her flight of fancy and the outcome she imagines for the painting she is posing for challenges notions of separation by status, suggesting that she has qualities – beauty, perhaps – which transcend her lack of social status and her erstwhile occupation. The lack of distinction of speech through the employment of punctuation serves to emphasize the extent of her self-assuredness and power: that the words of others are subsumed into her voice and narration of the event. In addition, her final rejection of the painter’s depiction of her – ‘it does not look like me’ – serves to emphasize her refusal to be defined or judged by anyone other than herself, or to have any identity imposed upon herself that she does not first allow. As an woman who is otherwise a social outcast, the persona in Standing Female Nude presents an image of a woman who is strong and self-assured, perhaps becoming the image of what can ultimately enable women to rise above whatever strictures bind or marginalise them in the world.

In sum, Duffy presents outcasts in such a way as to enable us to gain deeper insight into the qualities that the women possess which predispose them to becoming outcasts, while also casting a light on the darkness of human nature that renders our societies and social expectations prone to excluding and even tormenting those who are considered to be ‘different’ or ‘inadequate’. Yet, Duffy also makes an effort to extenuate that the tools for female liberation from oppression and ostracism lie within the women themselves, hence creating a picture of hopefulness for the alleviation of their outcast state.

Head of English

After this long sabbatical from looking at the poems, I feel like I have gained some fresh perspective. Perhaps it was what I needed, to go away and to do something else, teach for a while and remind myself what exactly it is that I wanted this blog to do, how I wanted it to fit as a tangent resource for the curriculum, and, of course, of my ultimate target audience. I also took time to write about other things for a change, and I have to say that writing with academia of some sort in mind, no matter how informal it’s meant to or can get away with being, exists in a stress bracket all of its own.

Head of English is a dramatic monologue which depicts a persona type we can all recognise as having encountered at some point in our plodding progress through the education system (in the case of myself, still plodding along and struggling in vain to be free). The satirical presentation is rendered doubly humorous as the persona is clearly lacking in insight about her little faults of a patronizing attitude (‘A real life poet with a published book’ suggests that she views and treats the guest poet as some kind of animal for display; the tone towards the students also seems somewhat condescending in this line, as she’s talking to them in language more suited for younger children) and a tendency to micro-management (issuing instructions about clapping ‘Not too loud’ and decorum ‘sit up straight and listen’).

What I particularly like about this poem is the spaces between the stanzas, which, while containing no text, speak as loudly as the words themselves. For example, the space between stanza 3 and 4, a subtle tell-tale sign of how the persona has lapsed from her original intention to introduce the invited poet. She’s talking about herself and her interests, and is indicating quite clearly that she doesn’t think all that much about the poet and isn’t too impressed; rather, she seems to carry a kind of quiet resentment that her own works and effort (on a daily basis) are not acknowledged. The use of the single-word sentence ‘Right’ directly following this break between the stanzas puts me in mind of someone catching herself from her own digression, to briskly get on with the task at hand: ‘That’s enough from me. On with the Muse.’

The other interesting break is between stanza 4 and 5; it’s all that represents the session given by the invited poet and the students. To have the single-word statements ‘Well. Really.’ as a follow up to ‘Convince us that there’s something we don’t know’ from the previous stanza is a remarkably economical way of expressing how she’s not in the least impressed by what she has seen or heard during the session. Then again, given the use of language prior, her condescending attitude towards the poet is quite clearly communicated. Phrases like ‘After all, we’re paying forty pounds’ reduces the poet to a commercial product whose value must be maximised, and ‘so on and so forth’ in stanza 3 also illustrates her very dismissive attitude. She even seems to issue a challenge to the poet in stanza 1 (‘Perhaps / we’re going to witness verse hot from the press.’), and the dismissal in stanza 5 of the entire content of whatever he / she might have said (‘I’m sure that gave an insight to an outside view’, a statement which sounds like it’s saying a lot while not actually saying anything specific or pin pointing any kind of real usefulness) makes it clear that the speaking persona did not find anything to be impressed about.

The interjections of personal perspective break away from the professional demeanor. Stanza 2′s  ’Remember the lesson on assonance’ is both a professional reminder to the students of content taught, and is also a way for her to assert her authority which is perceivable as being currently under threat by the poet come to speak. The opinion communicated in ‘sadly’, with reference to the absence of rhyme (and therefore some kind of governing law or order of poetry) indicates a self-righteousness snobbery about the persona — it’s very clear in that one word what she considers to be ‘literature’ / ‘poetry’ and what not. This is, of course, reinforced when she mentions that she’s ‘doing Kipling with the Lower Fourth’ in stanza 3, name-dropping a canonical figure in Literature, while the guest poet goes unnamed. The use of ‘Still. Never mind.’ are meant to negate or neutralise the stating of her personal opinion but, in fact, serve to enhance and emphasize it as a kind of false self-deprecation, giving the impression of being a long-suffering loyal to ‘real’ literature. There is, of course, a layer of irony in the face of the fact that the poem itself adheres to no discernibly consistent rhyme scheme.

As a representation of a female authority figure — or at least of a woman who is in a position of authority — what’s interesting is how little contradictions or flippant remarks are weaved in that disempower her by making clear the fact that, no matter what her status is, she’s quite flawed (and hence as fallible and human as the next person) in some of her perspectives. Such as in stanza 4 when she tells the students to ‘Take notes, but don’t write reams’, the detail of the instruction again showing her tendency to micro-manage which we’ve already encountered in stanza 1, but that is contradicted by what follows: ‘Just an essay / on the poet’s themes’, which is probably much more than what the students had intended to write during the presentation. The statement also typifies her as the teacher-figure to takes each opportunity to ensure that ‘learning’ has taken place.

The exit of the persona and the dismissive, superficially polite manner in which she excuses herself ‘Unfortunately / I have to dash’ and the delegation of the task of entertaining the poet to ‘Tracey’ is fantastic. The lack of sincerity is wrapped in the language of politeness, enabling us to classify her as the epitome of the snobbish schoolmarm, who prides herself on her perfect manners but who really couldn’t give you the time of day.

Comprehensive Reprised

It took me a long while to write about Comprehensive and I couldn’t help but feel that the way I was going about it was not helping. I decided to do a bit more reading, and found some useful comments about Duffy’s poetry which I’d picked up on in reading her work but which I had not articulated as such.

In Comprehensive, her ability to use dramatic monologue and to generate such monologues effectively is quite clear. The voices of the seven personas in the poem are quite distinct from one another and do effectively enable readers to get a snapshot of each speaker. The mental image I get when reading Comprehensive is of a class photograph or snapshots of the profiles of students in a class — as the camera pans over the faces, each face has a distinct voice and experience to communicate.

The clarity of the voices of the speakers is something which I’ve already remarked upon, and I think what makes this poem additionally interesting is the perspective communicated by these voices. The kids are as much affected by racial and political issues as the adults, though they might be perceived as having an ‘easier’ time of things because they are in school instead of facing the complexities of the adult working environment.

What Comprehensive reveals, though, is that the kids are as much affected. They have their hopes and dreams, and they have the awareness of the situation around them, of how they are immigrants, strangers in a strange land without a certainty of who to call ‘friend’, or they are aware that immigrants in their midst affect their chances for their futures. In this poem, there is an interspersing of mundane teenage experiences and perspectives, some phrases being particularly distinct in portraying the persona of the archetype of a teenager. At the same time, there are also very personal encounters or experiences, such as stanza five where the Moslem boy describes being saved from eating a pork sausage, illustrating how being in unfamiliar territory creates possibilities for mistakes, and how one then comes to rely on different aspects of one’s identity to create alliances.

The complexities of the world around them is expressed in much simpler tones, such as in stanza six where the boy says “I’d like to be mates, but they’re different from us”, where the reasons for the segregation are shown to be superficial and petty, and yet, very real. The use of matter-of-fact statements make it clear that what is being described is just the way things are. There need not necessarily be extremes of feeling, and yet the kids simply don’t know how to deal with the differences between the racial groups in a better way. “You can’t help / taking the piss” has no malice in it, no specifically directed racist sentiments, unlike stanza two where the persona has a much more aggressive stance with his engagement in “Paki-bashing”. The violence and the disharmony does affect the kids, as is clear with stanza six’s persona’s awareness that ‘There was murder’. Whether this is connected to the fact that his sister ‘went out with one’ is unclear, though that both statements occur in the same line does seem to suggest a co-relation between the two.

The last stanza I find particularly interesting because the persona presents a very strong family and racial identity through the naming of his family members. The suggestion of a connection to royalty (“the Moghul emperors”) heightens the sense of how the face of each of the speakers hides a multiplicity of others, the sense of a history or a heritage that people encountering them in the every day might not have in their awareness. The reference to the names of the Moghul emperors also then creates a contrast within the stanza with the persona of the child who is comparatively much more powerless and struggling to understand in a new environment, to the extent that what is rightfully his (the milk) he misses out on. The last two lines of this stanza are particularly intriguing: what is the persona referring to with the phrase “Everything I saw was true”? It could be a reference to an experience in the place of origin that was difficult to believe or cope with, or it could represent the difficulty to cope with the change, the transition to the new location.

The sensitivity of the various personas in this poem really enable the reader to spend a few minutes in the shoes of various people who share the same space and to see that their differences are what makes them, strangely, all the same. This fosters the impression that conflicts between individuals or groups is truly pointless, and that those who suffer or who have to live with the offshoots of the conflicts of adults are the children who have their own struggles to deal with in the course of growing up.

Comprehensive

Quite by accident, I stumbled on a link that allowed me to read a preview of an essay written in response to this same poem. I do agree with the comment about how the use of rhythm and rhyme would ‘inhibit the ability’ of the speakers to express themselves in their own voice. More importantly, I think, that what makes this poem special is the way in which the voices – each stanza a different voice – establish themselves quite quickly and firmly as distinct personas with very different perspectives according to their respective experiences. Also,I agree with the writer of that commentary about how the similarity in structure clearly illustrates the equality between the personas regardless of whether they are immigrants or citizen speakers. This, I think, allows for the creation of an interesting balance between the perspectives of the personas, which may be read in opposition or competition with each other for space or cultural dominance — though indirectly as what they say is not directed specifically at any one persona within the poem itself — while at the same time maintaining the neutrality of the ‘interviewer’ or the unseen and unexpressed persona who is piecing together the different views.

I had to do some research to clarify the meanings of some of the terms, though the poem itself does lend to a possible deduction in approximately the right direction for those unfamiliar with these terms. The title term, Comprehensive refers to the Comprehensive schools that they have in the UK, state schools that do not select their intakes on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, and which target specific catchment areas which result in students with a wide range of abilities and inclinations towards the education process. The age of the students who go to such schools ranges from 11 to about 16 or 18. This clarified the impression that personas in the poem were students randomly chosen from a class or a school. Of course, in the poem itself, some of the stanzas (2, 4 and 5) mention names and, in the case of stanza 2, an age of the student being interviewed.

The tone is very conversational with a mix of run-on lines as well as shorter, more staccato statements, some of which sound rather disjointed or abrupt, which is quite effective in creating the impression of teenagers communicating their views. The voices can be very factual, communicating the perception of a world seen in black and white. This is particularly useful when it comes to heightening the contrast between where the speakers originally come from and their adopted country of residence. Short, abrupt statements also help communicate certainty — there is a matter-of-factness about all the speakers, the sense that this is their life and this is how they are coping with it.

It’s of course interesting to dissect the poem stanza-by-stanza to get a better breakdown of how various identity components — racial or locational, gender, age, income group, etc. — are brought to the fore in different combinations for each of the speakers while at the same time creating the sense of the poem as being incredibly cohesive: these various speakers, while they are obviously caught up in their own lives, are all seeking the same thing at the end of the day in the form of a sense of belonging.

The first line of the first stanza begins with a kind of anaphoric structure that creates the impression of a rhythmic child nursery rhyme. The form highlights immediately the comparison between Africa and England through making sense of the new world’s games with what is familiar or similar to the old world. Even the choice of the non-English words, “Tutumantu” and “Kwani-kwani” creates the impression of a child-like innocence. The first line, in other words, presents the crux of the idea carried by the entire poem: there are things which are kind of the same, but they are, at the same time very different. This notion is emphasized by the report of the change in the speaker’s sister and how this difference caused conflict in the relationship. The fighting ‘in bed’ could be taken to symbolise some quintessential conflicts of identity arising within the individual as a result of trying to assimilate to the new identity. The problems of communication arising between the two sisters presents a portent of the racial conflict which we see represented more aggressively in the stanzas to follow. The sense of dislocation is quite keen, particularly given the nostalgic approach of the first speaker who likes ‘Africa better than England’ and who is happy when reminiscing about ‘the things we used to do / in Africa’. The mother figure is an interesting inclusion, and could symbolise a more mature part of the psyche who is aware that there needs to be a sense of belonging, as illustrated by the anticipation of a more positive response to the new land ‘when we get our own house’ or, in other words, when there is a sense of ownership or a stake in the new country.

The second stanza starts with ‘Wayne. Fourteen.’ In two short sentences, we are informed that there is a different persona speaking, and, as additional support for that, the persona declares ‘Games are for kids’, which creates a direct contrast to the child-like voice of the first persona; the second persona seems to feel a need to distinguish himself from ‘kids’, and states very strong and even aggressive preferences. Sisterly squabbles in the privacy of their room turns into racist and sexist aggression with ‘Paki-bashing and pulling girls’ knickers down’, and the persona aligns himself with a known ‘whites only’ racist political group, ‘the National Front’. The ‘other’ awareness is taken from the perspective of the immigrants as competition for jobs because he already anticipates — “I don’t suppose” — not getting a job because “It’s all them coming over here to work.” The stanza ends a bit strangely with the single word sentence ‘Arsenal’, and the meaning of the reference is somewhat ambiguous. While it might simply be a statement about which soccer team he supports or maybe which county in which he resides, it could also be meant to reflect a militaristic aggression towards the immigrants, or the sound of the word could be hissed like an insult.

The next stanza starts of reminiscing about familiar routines, places and habits from the ‘old village’ where there was ‘much more room to play’ than here in London. There’s a kind of contradiction about the views of these kids, as though presumably their parents would have moved them to England / London for a better life, education or opportunities – for a life where ‘everything was easy’, there is a strong sense of nostalgia for where they came from, even if it was less developed — the ‘old village’ stands as quite a stark contrast to the urban landscape suggested by the word ‘London’. The statement ‘It is empty now’ seems to drop with a hollow sound, like a small coin into a large bucket, and seems to comprise much more emotions than what is said: the sense of loss is not illustrated further than the matter-of-fact statement that there is simply nothing left to go back to, that a return would be pointless because the village itself has changed. The move itself is summarised as ‘ We got a plane to Heathrow’, understating and over-simplifying the move, which might suggest that the speaker may not yet have come to terms with the move. The last line of the stanza also suggests a perspective that opposes what ‘people’ wrote about ‘everything’ being ‘easy’ through the use of the absolutely inclusive ‘everything’, while also keeping the judgement in the province of what ‘people wrote’ without detailing a personal opinion.

The speaker of the next stanza presents quite a contrast to the speaker in stanza three because she presents much more defined personal opinions, though hers seems to be a position of teenaged ennui the repetition of the statement ‘it’s boring…. it’s just boring’ to begin and end the stanza.

Comprehensive And Head of English

While I can’t say that I was handsomely pleased with what I wrote for Girl Talking, thinking what I was dissatisfied with did enable me to at least pin down the problem: How can there be a line of directed thought if there is no explicit direction or objective in mind? Doh! While the whole free-to-speak-whichever-willy-nilly-way response has it’s own charms and benefits, for the work to at least look like it’s gathering momentum, having a simple question in mind might at least go some way to help me make more sense than a three sheets to the wind carnival milkmaid.

Today, I take on the challenge of commenting on the next two poems in the collection, Comprehensive and Head of English. The latter I find particularly amusing — talk about coming face to face with the familiar. In comparing the two, I would say that it’s very clear that Duffy is able to create very clear and distinct voices and personas for her poems. Comprehensive seems to comprise of a collection of personas in the one poem alone, all with the common experience of being fish out of water, immigrants in an adopted land. It’s quite interesting how all these voices carry the same message while being so different from each other.

Out of all this, I guess the question for today is: Comment on the use of voice in Duffy’s poems and the way it enhances the message/s of her work.

Sounds ok. I’ll find out soon enough if it’s not, I guess.

Girl Talking

What features of girlhood / womanhood are represented in this painting of a girl?

On a first reading, this poem left me feeling somewhat confused. I surmised that someone (the cousin of the speaker, presumably named Tasleen) had some kind of encounter and died as a result. But the what and the why and the who remain rather oblique. There seems to be a sequence of events, but the link between the events raises questions rather than presenting answers or reasons.

There are some Islamic references in the poem, though these do not necessarily assist with the logical assessment of what happened that resulted in the tragedy of the girl’s death.

Eid day (Eid-al-Adha) refers to the Festival of Sacrifice, and is about the celebrating of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son at God’s command. There is another day also referred to as Eid day, albeit it’s called the ‘smaller Eid’ or Eid ul-Fitr to distinguish it from Eid-al-Adha or the ‘greater Eid’. The death of the girl can then be perceived as some kind of sacrifice on the occasion. It’s particularly interesting as her name, Tasleen, sounds like the word ‘Tasleem’; the Tasleem is the Salutation of Peace. This seems to reinforce the possibility that the death of the girl on Eid day is in keeping with the notion of sacrifice.

At the same time, the reason given for her death by the Holy Man – She went out at noon and the ghost took her heart – adds to the mystery of the death while creating a rather confusing symbolism. The ‘ghost’ which appears at ‘noon’ rather than at midnight as might be expected creates a sense of the presence of a sinister threat which cannot be anticipated. It also seems to be a specific ghost that is being referred to from the choice of the article ‘the’ rather than ‘a’, while at the same time, it doesn’t indicate who or what this specific ghost is. A possible reading might be that the ghost is reference to the devil, who attempted to interfere with Abraham’s sacrifice. This creates a kind of sinister contrast between the incident of this girl dying and the original story from which the festival arises, because there was no intervention from God to save the human sacrifice; in the case of Tasleen, there was no substitution of the human sacrifice with an animal sacrifice — there was no salvation for the girl. Instead, her death becomes a warning to the others, or a way to keep the other girls subservient to the rules, even though the rule stated can be interpreted as being rather vague, or restrictive: one can either interpret ‘this’ in the last stanza as ambiguous or as a reference to ‘went out at noon’, an action which supposedly contributed to Tasleen’s demise. This is effective as seen from the very last sentence of the poem, “We guard our hearts”, emphasizing the compliance of the other girls through the use of assonance to create a sense of finality.

The use of the reversal of the original story is quite clear from the parallel of a father and son (Abraham and his son) with the mother and daughter (Tasleen and her mother) and the way in which the mother ‘held her down’, like one might hold a sacrifice for slaughter down on the altar. The tears of the mother and the event as a negative replay of the original story are brought to our attention by the use of internal rhyme in the first line of the final stanza, a rhyme which also emphasizes the death of Tasleen as the source of her mother’s grief as a reversal of the joy and relief which Abraham felt when he was instructed to sacrifice the ram caught in the bush in place of his only son. The Holy Man is regarded as an unquestionable authority in the poem, emphasizing the influence of religion or religious and superstitious beliefs as sources of information or explanations for mysterious circumstance, even though Tasleen’s problem seemed to have been a physical one (‘She made blood’). The nature of Tasleen’s ailment is deliberately kept ambiguous, though the mention of ‘something burning her stomach’ seems to suggest that the source of the blood might be the abdomen or, more specifically, the womb or the vagina, reinforcing the possibility that Tasleen was raped or that she lost her virginity.

The manner in which the mystery is built up is also interesting: The use of caesura with the short statement in the middle of the second line, ‘Something happened’, begs the question ‘what happened exactly?’ but the answer given to the unspoken question is merely a guess (“We think it was”) that itself concludes on a note of ambiguity, raising more questions, such as “pain” from what and how? The simple act of giving wheat to the miller to be ground seems to take on some sinister overtones, brought out by the repetition of the phrase ‘the miller’ in the same line, even though he seems to have done nothing more than to give her flour. “Afterwards” creates the impression of something having occurred, particularly given the information that ‘it did not hurt’ so that we know then ‘pain’ that happened was gone. By this means, a sexual encounter — Tasleen’s first sexual encounter — is suggested and made to appear as a threat of mysterious origins, indicating a degree of bewilderment and confusion in the speaker regarding what befell her cousin.

The use of the every day activities and events which are definite and clearly stated – ‘made chapatis’, ‘planted melons, spinach, marrow’ – create a contrast for the unstated mysterious event which caused ‘pain’. The bleeding (‘She made blood’, stanza 2), as well as the associated image of the ‘small red fruit’ and ‘hearts’ (last stanza) allows us to postulate that what took place between the miller and Tasleen might have been a sexual encounter resulting in the loss of Tasleen’s virginity, hence the bleeding. This reinforces the effect of the warning to the other girls: the guarding of their hearts could also mean a guarding of their virginity. By extension, the invitation by her friends to ‘come out’ could then also represent the temptation of the girl away from her chores or duties to engage in an activity, ostensibly meant to be fun or enjoyable but turns into something unpleasant because it makes her sick. Hence, it is possible to read that there were two moments of temptation in this poem, once with the miller and once with the friends, and Tasleen’s giving in to the latter is an indication of how she responded to the earlier temptation as well, and by extension, her response to the latter activity is a parallel to whatever took place between her and the miller.

The tone and flow of the poem itself is as the title implies: it’s a girl talking about something that she knows has happened, which probably accounts for the gaps in the information provided. As a ‘girl’, she would probably not be supplied with all the pertinent details, particularly if she is not of an age to be privy to certain information, such as about sexual relations between men and women. This presents quite an interesting perspective regarding the treatment of women, how they can be over-protected (as indicated by the absent ‘gory’ details and the new restrictions on the other girls ensuing from the incident), and how this form of protection perhaps does not really work because the girl is left not really knowing what she is guarding herself against, only that she has to ‘guard (her) heart’.

A bevy of girls

The various actions and activities that the girl describes (‘made chapatis’, planting, painting their hands, visiting, etc.) clearly indicate the kinds of activities or engagements the girls are allowed or perhaps expected to have. The girls / women in the society provide some kind of support system for each other (‘We take each other money.’) but they also seem to be part of the enforcement of restrictions (‘Her mother held her down’) while also being helpless to save each other. No proper help is rendered to the bleeding Tasleen; her friends tasked with finding help do not find her a doctor. In fact they seem to be caught up in more frivolous concerns – ‘We visit. We paint our hands.’ – than in truly rendering aid.

By the end of the poem, the line ‘We guard our hearts’ gives the impression that within their society, ultimately, each of these girls stands alone against an unknown enemy who might ‘steal (their hearts)’, even though it has been made clear through the poem that the girls are not empowered with knowledge in their own defense and are instead restricted to performing domestic, cosmetic or social tasks between women. The speaker’s knowledge of interaction with men is one of servitude in the description of Tasleen carrying water from the well to the Mosque. Men are also not known as potential threats because they merely ‘washed and prayed to God’, which completely neglects the aspect of men as a sexual threat to the young girls.

Girl Talking, an intro

I thought I should get started before I chickened out entirely. Right now it seems like a rather large responsibility that I’ve taken on, to write comments on all the poems. But what’s a project without any challenge?

Challenge #1 so far has been to get the ringing voice of Sylvia Plath out of my head so that I can look at Duffy with less suspicion. Reading The Bell Jar over the Christmas holidays has done very little to aid the needed exorcism. I’m expecting that my views and responses to Girl Talking will be hobbling along a little bit, but I have great hopes of improvement as I proceed on this journey.