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Alison: > Hi Dave - I wasn't saying that it wasn't connected to class at all: I > was saying that to claim the poem is unthinkingly restating class > stereotypes is to ignore the issue of female desire working within > the poem: which is after all what the poem is "about". It seems to > me impossible to talk about that poem without taking that into > account: and yet your analysis scarcely mentions it, except > dismissively as a tawdry fantasy; nor does it explore the > implications of its presence, which is intended to destabilise the > class assumptions implicit in the poem, as well as the hierachies of > language it plays with. For me, this it the problem -- it +may+ be that the poem sets out to do this, but I'm not sure it succeeds. Specifically, as dave pointed out, without a context, it's difficult to read the language other than as simple cliché . (Though signalling a cliché as +intended+ cliché is a generic problem that goes beyond Carol Ann Duffy.) But if the areas at issue are sex/class/language/history, and the interactions thereoff, that would strengthen dave's suggestion that it comes, somehow, out of Larkin's "The Less Deceived", where these issues are also all at play. (I have to say that I find "The Less Deceived" mind-bogglingly nasty, as with another of Larkin 'history' poems, "The Card Players". I don't think CAD's poem is nearly as bad, in moral terms, as those two.) But ... While it may not be fair to judge Carol Ann Duffy against Shakespeare (who +could+ stand that comparison?), how about Hardy? One of my larger grouses against Larkin is that while he +was+ instrumental in (re)creating an audience for Hardy's poetry, what he gave us in his own work, bar a few exceptional poems, was Hardy-and-water -- what could have been the reinstatement of a 'lost' strand in English poetry got stiffled at birth, and then aborted by the Movement. Anyway, I'm wandering -- how about this for what Hardy does with the sex/class/language/history nexus? OK, the issue of female desire isn't there (or maybe it is?) but all the rest is ... Robin The Ruined Maid Thomas Hardy "O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?"-- "O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she. --"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"-- "Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she. --"At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou,' And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'; but now Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!"-- "Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she. --"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek, And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!"-- "We never do work when we're ruined," said she. --"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!"-- "True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. "--I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!"-- "My dear--a raw country girl, such as you be, Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.