2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

Anne Hathaway

‘Anne Hathaway’ is another poem from Duffy’s ‘The Worlds’ Wife’. As the penultimate poem chosen, ‘Anne Hathaway’ takes a middle ground between Duffy’s writing on ‘Little Red Cap’ and ‘Tea’, resembling John Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’. This poem uses both the obvious implications of sex, as well as love. The poem starts with the excerpt from William Shakespeare’s will ‘item I gyve unto my wife my second-best bed…’. Duffy takes the interpretation of this excerpt that the second-best bed refers to the couple’s own marital bed, and that the best bed is perhaps saved for guests, bringing a more romantic feel towards the, at first glance, rude request. The form of this poem is also quite substantial, with fourteen lines and ending with a rhyming couplet, becoming an ode to Shakespeare from Anne. This poem begins by, expressing sentiments of sexual and emotion love and through literary devices such as rhyme, assonance and writing the poem as a sonnet, it creates a tribute to Shakespeare, as is also done in ‘The Good Morrow’. The poem takes a similar tone as Donne’s ideas in ‘The Sun Rising’ due to Anne Hathaway seemingly portraying herself as a passive figure within this poem, and as such, in her marriage. Yet Anne Hathaway also shows that she wishes for a less passive life, constantly dreaming of being the subject of her husband’s work, leading into Duffy’s more feministic views on wishing more for females and eradicating that gender difference and dominance. A dream of wishing to be the subject of Shakespeare’s work could also be a reference to the rules against women in theatre, which would link back to ‘the Flea’ in continued criticism towards society, however, this poem heavily relates to ‘The Sun Rising’, and ‘Tea’ full of sentimental imagery and items for the relations they have with the narrator’s lover.

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