Voicing the Invisible Women in Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife

This study intends to examine that by means of a Feminist reading how Carol Ann Duffy gives a voice to the invisible female characters in her poetry collection, The world’s wife (1999) which is an anthology entirely devoted to presenting the neglected female perspective by historical and mythical narratives. As the first female poet laureate of the United Kingdom, Duffy depicts extreme feminist tendencies. In this book, Duffy represents male dominated accounts with humor and parody. The use of the dramatic monologue speaks both to and for women, By narrating from a female perspective, Duffy contrives to give women of the past a voice, thus reinserting them and their lost stories into history, an arena that has traditionally been reserved for men, causing women to be marginalized. In this collection Duffy represents gender and challenges traditional binary definitions. Just like an autobiographical journey, the poet, from the beginning, deals with a girl who symbolically goes to shape her independent identity and deals with different shortcoming of the males by showing anger, hatred and grief till the end of collection. In the meantime, she has become a strong mature woman that has ultimate power in her life and relationship with no need in men. As result it can be said that, by reversing the gender roles in her poems, far from misandry or oppressive masculine dominance and by appreciating the value of love, Duffy is seeking for a fair equality in relationship between menn and women.