Oxford Submitted Essay

Compare and contrast the ways in which Atwood and Duffy use language and the narrative voice.

Duffy s anthology The World s Wife and Atwood s novel Alias Grace , both published within two years of each other in the late 1990s, seek to reclaim the voice of the previously silenced woman . Atwood takes the infamous historical figure from mid 19th century Canada, Grace Marks, and rewrites the story from her view point. Similarly, Duffy takes various figures and stories, either from literature or history, where the focus has traditionally been on the man and reworks them to give the voice, to give the power, to the woman. Thus in both texts, the authors present the reader with a strong narrative female voice. Moreover, Duffy and Atwood use language to further challenge the reader s acceptance of both traditional gender roles and of meaning itself. This is seen through their use of language associated with violence and indeed through the satire inherent in the narrative voice of the two texts.

In both texts, Atwood and Duffy create a strong female narrative voice through their suggestions that the female protagonists are, in a sense the author of their own lives. For example, in Alias Grace, Atwood repeats the phrase Grace s story throughout the text and further writes this is what I told Dr Joran, when we came to that part of the story . Here, the repeated use of story when referring to the life of Grace and the possessive Grace s imply that this is her life, told on her terms. Furthermore, Atwood later writes But I do not say any of this to Dr Jordan . The use of the active verbs I told and I do not say not only place Grace in a position of power within the narrative but also suggest that she has the option of editing and thus manipulating her story to suit the way she wishes to present herself. I think that this sense that Atwood is giving the power of the narrative to Grace and reclaiming her previously silenced voice is emphasised through the very structure of the book itself Atwood switches between the use of first person when writing in regards to Grace and third person when writing of Dr Jordan. This thereby suggests that the power of voice belongs to Grace in this text, whilst Dr Jordan, much like the reader, is simply an observer, called to listen and cast judgement accordingly. This sense of giving the power of voice to the woman is also evident in Duffy s poems. For example, in Queen Kong , she writes sometimes, in his silent death, / against my massive, breathing lungs, he hears me roar . The contrasts between death and breathing and silent and roar , emphasised through the alliteration and personal pronoun in the phrase my massive , suggest that in this scenario, Queen Kong is the one left with the ability to make noise in the world, to have her voice heard. Moreover, the very use of the poetic form of the dramatic monologue in this collection of poems suggests that this is the woman s chance to speak and to be uninterrupted and indeed to be heard. Nowhere, I believe, is this more poignant than in the poem Anne Hathaway . In this poem Duffy celebrates the lyricism of the female voice shown through the listing of fantastical imagery such as forests, castles, torchlight, cliff tops, seas and the alliteration of My living laughing love . However, more than this, through adopting the form of the Shakespearian sonnet, Duffy seems to be suggesting that this woman has just as much a voice, just as much a lyrical beauty, as the man by whom she is defined by. Furthermore, the emergence of the female narrative voice is shown when she writes, in the poem Little Red Cap , upon opening the wolf with an axe, she saw/ the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother s bones . Here, the metaphor of my grandmother s bones could be interpreted as the silenced voice of the generations of women who have preceded Little Red Cap and that, by killing the wolf, she has reclaimed this voice and given those women a chance to be heard. I think this is furthered through the last line of the poem when Duffy writes Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone . Metaphorically, the forest can be interpreted in this poem as the liminal space between childhood and adulthood and thus, as she leaves the forest, she leaves childhood and ignorance behind. Moreover, the reference again to voice of singing and the fact that the poem ends on the word alone , emphasised through the alliteration of all , conveys how this is her voice and that she will be heard now in her new found independence, free from the male dominance represented by the wolf .

Furthermore, both authors also use the narrative voice and language, in particular language to do with violence, to challenge the traditionally accepted image of women as pure and innocent. For example, in Alias Grace , Atwood writes that upon seeing her mother s pregnant stomach, Grace envisioned an enormous mouth with teeth and all, eating away at my mother from the inside, and I began to cry because I thought it would kill her . Whilst on one hand this can be seen as simply the naive imagination of an ignorant child running wild, I think that the images to do with violence and consumption of mouth , teeth and eating away at my mother from the inside , as well as the irony that for Grace something that actually signifies life is internalised by her as a sign of death, kill her , shows how violence has haunted her childhood. This haunting violence is seen in the way by which Grace associates every day images with death. One such example is when Atwood describes the carpet in the governor s house as a red, a deep thick red. Thick strangled tongues . The repetition of red and thick , and indeed the repeated order of red thick red thick echo how this violence haunts the mind of Grace, how it repeats itself in her head over and over. Moreover, the distortion of flowers to strangled tongues when Grace is observing the carpet shows how Atwood is challenging this stereotype that women see everything in pure, innocent terms. She does this further when she writes that the women who attended the hanging of James McDermott wanted to breathe death in like a fine perfume . Through the simile of like fine perfume , Atwood again links violence to femininity thereby challenging this perception of the woman as contained and without the baser, human lust for violence. Duffy creates a similar suggestion through her use of language that this idealised view of the woman as pure and innocent is far from the truth when she writes in Little Red Cap ,

I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon

to see it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf

as he slept .

The repetition of I took an axe , connected through the internal rhymes of wept , leapt and slept , convey a sense of liberation that Little Red Cap achieves in revelling in the power the axe provides her. Whilst this is similar to Atwood s use of violent language in the sense that it subverts the traditional perception of women, Duffy uses it show a celebration of the female ability to stand up to male dominance whereas Atwood seemingly uses it show how women feel desire and violent urges. Duffy shows this further when she writes in Salome , I flung back the sticky red sheets and that the man had come like a lamb to the slaughter / to Salome s bed . The image of red sheets can metaphorically be interpreted as the heat of female desire and thus presents Salome as the lustful other . Moreover, the biblical simile of like a lamb and the connection of death, slaughter , being linked to female desire, Salome s bed , further challenges the view of women as contained and innocent, instead presenting Salome as wild and violent in her sexuality.

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