Lilttle Red Cap (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

Theme 

Quotation

Analysis and interpretation

Female agency in the coming of age

‘In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,/ sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink’

• The speaker details the first meeting with the wolf:

  • The colloquial phrasing of ‘I made quite sure he spotted me’ gives the poem a contemporary feel 

  • It immediately sets it apart from the original fairy tale

  • It puts agency in the hands of the female protagonist

‘I crawled in his wake… / but got there’

• The imagery suggests the speaker is pursuing the wolf:

  • Duffy plays with the roles of predator and prey 

‘I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for/what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?’

• The speaker is an active participant in the sexual encounter

• The rhetorical question suggests that the type of attraction is universal

‘As soon as he slept, I crept to the back/ of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books./ Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,/ warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.’

• The rich imagery and symbolism around words, poetry and books reveal the speaker’s true desires:

  • She craves access to the world of art

• The imagery of the sleeping wolf and the creeping speaker suggests she accesses the world without his knowing or full permission:

  • We can infer that the speaker has manipulated the wolf

• The personification, the asyndeton in the adjectives to describe them and the connotation of ‘crimson, gold, aglow’ afford words and books with a kind of magical power:

  • This power seems stronger than the allure of the wolf

  • The speaker is energised by them, and this is what she truly desires

‘I took an axe to the wolf/ as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat,...I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.’

• The speaker calmly describes killing the wolf with simple, one-syllable words:

  • The violent act is presented as a natural course of the narrative and is easy to achieve with ‘one chop’

  • The symbolic significance of ‘scrotum to throat’ is that she kills his sexual and verbal power

  • The imagery of filling ‘his old belly with stones’ alludes to some versions of the original tale

‘Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.’

• The closing image is imbued with joy

• The assonance of the many ‘o’ sounds suggests an openness

• The symbolism of the flowers is in contrast to the dark, tangled woods:

  • We have a sense that the speaker has navigated a complex transition and is in a clearer, happier space

Theme 

Quotation

Analysis and interpretation

Gendered power dynamics

‘At childhood’s end, the houses petered out/

into playing fields, the factory, allotments/

kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,/

the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,/

till you came at last to the edge of the woods.’

• The opening stanza sets up the power dynamics as the speaker uses the settings as an extended metaphor to describe her coming of age:

  • The images of each listed place become increasingly isolated and ominous

  • The places are inhabited by men hiding their behaviours

• Duffy suggests here that a young girl’s journey from childhood to adulthood must traverse dangerous terrain peopled by men with desires

‘He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud/in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,/

red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears/ he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!’

• The extended metaphor of the wolf is that of a powerful, adult man:

  • Throughout the poem, imagery of the wolf focuses on his size, loudness, hairiness, and control of spaces 

‘sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif,’

• The asyndeton here emphasises the speaker’s youth:

  • The words connote naivety as well as youth

  • The juxtaposition with the imagery of the wolf makes the age and strength differentials starkly evident

• However, Duffy does not present a simple version of power dynamics:

  • The speaker is aware that her youth and powerlessness are attractive to the wolf

  • She has a kind of power in her powerlessness

  • The poem explores deeply embedded patriarchal norms and the potential toxicity that ensues from them

‘The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,/ away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place’

• The woods symbolise the complex and dangerous world of adulthood

‘I crawled in his wake,/ my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer/ snagged on twig and branch, murder clues.’

• While the speaker seems to have agency and chooses to follow the wolf, the connotation of ‘crawled’ emphasises her youth and subservience

• The sibilance in stockings, shreds, scraps and snagged paired with the connotation of ripped, shreds, snagged creates a sense of multiple small acts of violence:

  • The colour red and the startling inclusion of the ‘murder clues’ further this

• The specific imagery of a blazer and stockings presents the speaker as a schoolgirl:

  • This reminds the reader of her youth 

‘I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for/ what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?’

• The alliteration between ‘clung’ and ‘crawled’ in the previous note links the speaker’s actions

  • To cling and to crawl connote childlike, subservient actions

• The rhetorical question can be read ironically:

  • The assonance in ‘little girl’ and ‘dearly love’ draws attention to these words and heightens the irony

  • The implied answer is that many little girls do not dearly love wolves

‘Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws/and went in search of a living bird—white dove—// which flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth./ One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,/

licking his chops.’

• The imagery of the wolf is slightly repulsive

• This is emphasised by the juxtaposition of his ‘heavy matted paws’ and ‘licking his chops’ with the ‘white dove’:

  • The white dove symbolises purity, innocence and artistic expression

  • The wolf is animalistic, aggressive and defined by his appetites

  • His mouth and hands become motifs in the poem, suggestive of his appetites

• The enjambment across stanzas speeds us to the graphic and symbolic gobbling of the dove:

  • The symbolism here suggests that the adult man suffocates the young girl’s innocence and her early attempts at poetry

‘I took an axe to the wolf/ as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw/

the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.’

• The killing of the wolf is a symbolic overthrowing of the power dynamics:

  • The cut from the ‘scrotum to throat’ is from the source of sexual and verbal dominance

• The imagery and symbolism of the grandmother’s bones suggest the generational reality of the power dynamics

‘Mrs Midas’

‘Pygmalion’s Bride’

‘Mrs Sisyphus’

• Here, Duffy examines how the speaker takes control of a situation after being ignored previously

• In reclaiming her power, the speaker banishes her husband and the selfish greed he represents

• In this poem, Duffy examines the power of the speaker to manipulate male desire for passivity

• The speaker refuses to be an object

• In overthrowing this role, she reclaims her independence

• The speaker uses sarcasm and disdain to highlight the emptiness of male power

• Her voice centres the narrative on her perspective

• She powerfully overthrows embedded myths around ambition and work ethics