Carol Ann Duffy’s Retelling of the Medusa

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Carol Ann Duffy’s retelling of the Medusa myth turns the idea of a monstrous woman who can transform all into stone just by one glance into an extended metaphor for how jealousy can convert how an individual sees the world, her lover and ultimately herself. Whereas the mythic Medusa was a threat to all, the Medusa figure in this poem is both powerful yet vulnerable at the same time: the person who is most destroyed by her jealousy is her. The poem is structured into six line stanzas, all save for the first stanza and the last line. The listing technique in the opening line, ‘A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy’ shows how one negative thought unchecked soon grows into something more sinister. The repetition of the ‘a’ draws attention to how the nouns escalate from minor to major emotions. Duffy makes clear these are all internalised, ‘in my mind’, but the effect of the negative emotions immediately transforms how she sees herself as ‘the hairs on my head [turned] to filthy snakes’. Not only does she see herself as a monster now but the pejorative adjective ‘filthy’ shows how her self-esteem is beginning to be eroded. The snake metaphor is extended as Duffy uses sibilance to recreate the vicious sounds of the snake-like thoughts that ‘hissed and spat on my scalp.’ The thoughts are as poisonous as snakes but the poison is directed inwards, towards her ‘scalp’. This word can also mean to gain a victory but the only person here being damaged is herself. In the second stanza Duffy continues using graphic imagery to show the poem’s persona’s self-hatred. The word ‘bride’ generally has positive connotations but here Duffy uses a combination of plosives, sibilant and negative vocabulary to reflect what’s happening in her character’s mind. ‘My bride’s breath soured, stank/In the grey bags of my lungs.’ The choice of lexis with ‘stank’ in particular highlights how she even

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