English Literature

Women throughout the ages have been a playing a pivotal role in the societys social structure. Various writers have emphasized on the position of women in the society. It is an established fact that the female strata of the society is greatly undermined and discriminated on the basis of their physical and emotional dependency. Men consider their right as the wage earner of the family and as the physically strong one to impose their thoughts and orders upon the women. There are various writers present today as well as those present in the past who have written widely on female emancipation. The mill on the floss is one such exemplar where Maggie, the protagonist yearns to make her space in the male oriented society, where artificial restrictions hinder her growth and her freedom. Similarly, the novel Wise Children by Angela Carter and The Worlds Wife by Carol Ann Duffy outlines this very struggle of the females living in a male subjugated community. The subject matter of female liberation runs strongly throughout both the novels.

The authors have outlined how the women in their novels struggle against the constrictions placed up on them by the society. Along with the constrictions that the women have to struggle against owing to the basis of their gender, the other societal constrictions revolving around various other social tribulations have also been targeted as a major theme underlying the novel as well as the collection of poetry.

Wise Children was the final narrative composed by Angela Carter. The novel was composed right after Carter learned that she was suffering from cancer and had a short life left to be spent in this world. The novel therefore has a prime focus on the beauty of life as noted in the quote, What a joy it is to dance and sing . Just like the novel, the anthology of Duffy on The Worlds Wife has strong themes of womanhood and discrimination of men as well as how they obscured the capabilities of women. The anthology focuses on the events in a controversial and eccentric manner in a feminist perspective. There is an element of biography present in almost all of Duffys work.

Wise Children is a novel that has strong allusions to Shakespeare and his work which makes the meaning of the authors work all the richer. Dora, the raconteur of the novel is representative of the female population brought up under the social title of being illegitimate. The novel is in a nutshell, a recollection of the memoirs of Dora over the preceding seventy five years of her personal and professional life. Dora and Nora, both twins are the illegitimate daughters of the famous and affable, Mr. Melchoir Hazard who refuses to acknowledge their birth. The narrative rotates around the story of the Hazard family including the twins and the wives.

Right in the opening paragraph of this novel that makes use of narrative flashback method engages the interest of the reader and establishes the theme of societal restrictions when Dora terms her neighbourhood as the bastard side of Old Father Thames, showing the Chance sisters opposition to the dominant status quo. She is stringently against the customs and ethics of the society that she lives in. In fact, her hostility has been manifested throughout the novel which covers the course of her life. She does not let the fact, that her father does not acknowledge her presence become a hindrance to her growth as an individual or as member of the society. In fact, she rebels through these constrictions and makes a place for her own self who is free from the prejudices of her father and his sins.

There is a prevalent comparison amid the lawful and illicit culture. As mentioned earlier, the work has strong allusions to the work of Shakespeare. Just like in Shakespeares drama such as King Lear the theme is illegitimacy is a strong original subject matter along with the theme of power and prestige, similarly in wise children the author has delineated how the lawful and illicit cultures clash. While Dora and Nora are the representation of the illegitimate stratas of the society, yet their customs as well as their values and behaviour signify a much more legitimate culture. The distinction between the high and low culture is represented physically through the partition of the river Thames and also through the divisions and sectors of the Hazard family. In fact, as mentioned by Connor, Wise Children basically establishes a parallel between family lineage and culture, and embraces and celebrates the undersides of official culture just as it prefers the condition of uncertain or illegitimate parentage .

The first person narrative style of the author immediately creates a strong link amid the person who reads and the author and the dialogic language therefore establishes a strong sense of intimacy between the reader and the writer, rather the listener. Apart from the character of Nora and Dora, the author has also outlined the characters of Hazards wives that include Lady Atalanta Hazard and also Lady Margarine. Even though both these women are high profile and publicly acceptable the author draws a fine line between their affability and character by providing the reader the character sketch of Grandma Chance, who has brought up Nora and Dora. In fact, the author has satirized the upper strata by this comparison as Saskia Hazard Melchoirs legitimate daughter is in fact entrenched more in illicit crimes of incest by being in a liaison with her half brother as opposed to Nora and Dora who happily look after Lady Atalanta who has been impaired due to being pushed down the stairs.

Similarly, Duffys anthology of The Worlds Wife has also focused up on the same theme of female emancipation, similar to Carters but in a much more controversial and hard to fathom context. For Duffy, it is important for people to realize the importance of the woman behind the story of the successful and pompous young man. This is Duffys first themed collection of poems in which each story is viewed through the female lens. In fact in the eyes of many, Duffys contribution has been considered to be highly antagonistic towards the male, even to an extent that Duffy has been regarded as anti-male at some instances.

The poems however are more or less a reflection of Duffys life and her understanding of the female character. It has been argued by various fictional critics that the poem the Little Red Cap  is reflective of Duffys relationship with Henri, the famous poet. The underlying theme of Red Cap is how the character learns from her mistakes and makes amends, outlining the understanding nature of women and also showing how they are not rigid as to ignore their mistakes. The Wolf in this particular work represents the evil male society and the demonic male mind as also substantiated by this quote, Away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place the place being significant of nothing innocent, but all evil.
However, the collection on Worlds wife has not only focused upon the evil side of men but also the devilish side of the women. The Devils wife is the perfect example of Duffys characterization of the evil side of the females. This delineation of the evil female is basically a ploy to increase the role of feminine characters in literature, a backlash to the male dominated literature which was overflowing.
Duffys delineation of women in her anthology provides a holistic view of the females in the society from a historic, cultural, political as well as social viewpoint. She has given strong allusions not only to the historical literary figures such as in Mrs. Faustus, she has alluded to the work on Dr. Faustes but also on retro musicians, such as Nancy Sinatra and not Frank Sinatra as many would have anticipated. Such twists in the poems as those present in the name of Sinatra and also poems that are viewed through the female lens particularly in the example of Mrs. Aesop to the poem being ultimately centred on women as in the example of the Kray Sisters.

Throughout her work in this series, Duffy has used vivid and exciting metaphors that instantaneously detain the attention of the reader, while at the same time keeping the language engaging and close to reality rather than indulging the reader in the synthetic language of poetry that was so emphatically used by the poets of the Augustan Ages. The structure of the poems again does not follow a strict arithmetical structure which shows the emancipation of women and their freedom by the use of free verse which is not bound under any laws or regulations, symbolically standing for women being free from artificial prejudices and laws.

In short, the Worlds Wife, as the name implies as well is more or less the authentic portrayal of the different roles that women play in the society, in the twentieth century. Both Carter and Duffy have worked hard to ensure that literature in the present age does not become centered on men just like the society around the globe is more patriarchal rather than matriarchal. Wise Children and Worlds Wife is therefore a plausible effort that ought to be acknowledged and lauded for the way these two feminists have worked toward making literature more focused on women rather than only on men.