This Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poems ‘the world’s wife’ focuses on women

empowerment and challenges social norms such as male patriarchy. One of the poems,
“Mrs Aesop” is written in the perspective of the Mrs Aesop and speaks of the wife conveying
her negative thoughts regarding her husband and her marriage. Through the usage of
figurative devices, structure and humorous allusions, Carol Ann Duffy illustrates Mrs Aesop’s
resentful attitude to show her discontent in the marriage and her dissatisfaction towards her
husband. In this analysis, I will be taking the thematic approach by first talking about the
usage of figurative devices and structure then the usage of humorous allusions.

Firstly, I’ll talk about how Carol Ann Duffy uses language and structure to show her
discontent in the marriage and the dissatisfaction towards Mr Aesop. In the 2nd line, “He was
small, didn’t prepossess. So he tried to impress” shows that Mrs Aesop does not find her
husband attractive and so he tried to impress her using his didactic stories. This is ironic as
throughout the poem it is revealed that Mrs Aesop actually finds his stories boring and
unsubstantial. In the 2nd stanza lines 2 to 4 and in the 4th stanza lines 1 to 2, Carol Ann
Duffy also uses parallelism to produce a monotonous tone in order to reflect how discontent
and boring her marriage is. The usage of simile in the line “Slow as marriage” in stanza 3
directly compares her marriage with the tortoise in the fable. She is using Aesop’s
preachings against him and this is a way that Carol Ann Duffy uses to mock Mr Aesop by
taking away the one thing that he is well-known for. The usage of personification in the line
“story droned on” in stanza 4 reflects how her marriage is also droning on, and further
emphasizes on how boring her marriage is. The usage of the word “asshole” in the 3rd
stanza is a curse word and this links back to the first line when she curses and says “By
Christ”, this repetition of the concept of cursing shows the extent of her resentfulness
towards Mr Aesop. The use of colloquial terms also create a conversational tone and allows
the reader to empathise with the speaker of the poem, who in the case is Mrs Aesop. Carol
Ann Duffy also removes Mr Aesop’s masculinity through the metaphor “Sex was diabolical”,
thus mocking Mr Aesop’s lack of sexual ability and this further emphasizes on Mrs Aesop’s
dissatisfaction towards her husband. in regards to the structure, the usage of enjambment
creates a tone of conversational rants and ties back with the point I mentioned previously
about allowing the reader to empathise with the suffering Mrs Aesop has to go through. The
short and simple sentence in stanza 2 “according to him” creates a sneering tone towards
her husband and shows how she does not believe in his stories and thinks that they are
unsubstantial.

Moving on, humorous allusions are also used to mock Mr Aesop to show Mrs Aesop’s
discontent in the marriage. In the first stanza, Mrs Aesop says that the bird in his hand shat
on his sleeve, this adds a humorous touch to the actual saying due to the diction of “shat”.
Thus showing that she’s mocking Mr Aesop’s story and not taking it seriously in order to
make it more interesting for herself. Many of Aesop’s fables were all shortened into a
question form in stanza 4 lines 1 to 2 to show how unimportant she believed the fables to be
and questioning his preachings as she does not believe that they’re substantial or of any
importance. The fables is a way of Mr Aesop showing control thus by reversing the roles in
the last stanza it shows her need to take control of the marriage and end his preaching and
this emphasizes on her discontent towards the marriage. Her fable talks of a little cock that
wouldn’t crow, this is her poking fun at Mr Aesop’s lack of sexual ability. She continues the
fable saying that the axe will cut off the cock’s tail in order to save its face. This is actually
her threatening to cut off Mr Aesop’s fallace in order to free herself and save her dignity. Not
only that, all the fables throughout the poem actually represent their thoughts towards one
another. For example when Mr Aesop says slow but certain Mrs Aesop, wins the race, he’s
telling Mrs Aesop that she has to stop rushing things in the marriage and a steady but
possibly slower marriage is better than an exhilarating one which she wants, but he cannot
provide. As fables are generally used to teach someone a lesson, the fact that he preaches
directly to her, and proven by the fact that he says “Mrs Aesop” in a formal way, shows that
all the fables and morals he preaches is directed to her. Thus, indirectly taking control of the
marriage. Hence, the fact that Mrs Aesop ends the poem with a fable threatening Mr Aesop it
shows how she has had enough of his preaching and tries to take control of the marriage
due to her discontent.

In conclusion, through the usage of language, structure and humorous allusions, Carol Ann
Duffy illustrates Mrs Aesop’s resentful attitude to show her discontent in the marriage and
her dissatisfaction towards her husband.