“Outlaw Emotions”: Carol Ann Duffy’s “Eurydice”, Dramatic Monologue and Victorian Women Poets

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is twofold: first, to analyse how Carol Ann Duffy appropriates the form of the dramatic monologue in her notable volume The world’s wife (1999), putting “Eurydice”, one poem from the collection, under close scrutiny. Second, the analysis of the poem will seek to link “Eurydice” and The world’s wife to some Victorian women poets who also used the form to explore questions of gender and for the purpose of revisionist mythmaking, rewriting and “recycling” myths, fairy or folk tales, religious stories and clichés, for instance Adah Isaacs Menken’s “Judith” (1868), Augusta Webster’s “Circe” (1870) and “Medea in Athens” (1870), Amy Levy’s “Xantippe” (1881), and Catherine Dawson’s Sappho (1889). Although the paper connects Duffy’s work with her nineteenth century female predecessors, its aim is to discuss differences in their construction of the poetic persona and their experimentation with the genre the tendency of which was usually to question rather than confirm. The paper also seeks to underscore the generic innovations that women poets introduced to the dramatic monologue.