IBEnglish Language & LiteratureDPEnglish A: Language and LiteratureHLRevision Notes11. Literary Texts: PoetryCarol Ann DuffyMedusa

Medusa (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

Jenny Brown

Written by: Jenny Brown

Reviewed by: Nick Redgrove

Updated on

This study guide to Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Medusa’ contains:

  • Overview

  • Authorial purpose

  • Authorial choices and textual features

  • Themes

  • Connections to other Duffy poems

Overview

  • The poem was first published in 1999 in the collection The World’s Wife

  • The collection consists of poems from the perspectives of women connected to, or reimagined from, famous men in myth, history, literature, film and popular culture

  • Duffy offers a retelling of their experiences to challenge the dominant male perspective

  • Medusa is a retelling of a Greek Myth:

    • According to the myth (most famously Ovid's Metamorphoses), Medusa was a mortal priestess of Athena who was raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple

    • Athena punished her by transforming her hair into snakes

    • Anyone who looked at her was turned to stone

    • Medusa later became a symbol of female rage

Authorial purpose

  • Duffy’s aim with the collection is to challenge dominant male perspectives and narratives

  • She offers multiple and complex versions of womanhood

  • Medusa examines female anger and jealousy, and how they are often presented as monstrous

  • The poem also alludes to patriarchal norms that determine the limits of feminine beauty

  • Duffy had a long relationship with the poet Adrian Henri that started when she was 16, and he was 39:

    • Henri was not faithful, and aspects of the poem may be inspired by this personal experience 

Authorial choices and textual features

Form 

  • ‘Medusa’ is a free verse poem:

    • The lack of a regular rhyme scheme makes the speaker seem unpredictable

  • It has eight stanzas:

    • The first stanza has five lines, the next six stanzas have six lines, and the last stanza has one line

  • The poem is a dramatic monologue to the speaker’s husband

Structure

  • The title alludes to the figure in Greek mythology:

    • The whole poem could be a retelling of the original Medusa

    • Or it could be a contemporary speaker imagining herself as a Medusa-type monster, enraged by jealousy

  • The tone veers from vulnerable to furious

Language

  • Medusa herself is an extended metaphor for female rage as monstrous

  • The speaker uses imagery and similes to describe herself transformed by jealousy

  • Specific aspects of the monstrous figure symbolise aspects of her emotions:

    • Stone is hard, cold and grey, reflecting her loss of joy

    • Snakes are associated with evil, fear or power and may be venomous which inspires repulsion, reflecting her toxic jealousy

  • Repetition and parallelism combine to build tension 

  • Asyndeton and tricolons work to emphasise the escalation and overwhelming nature of the emotions  

  • Rhetorical questions direct an accusatory tone at the unfaithful husband/reader

  • Duffy uses alliteration, sibilance and assonance to link concepts and create a sinister mood

Themes

The corrupting power of jealousy

Duffy explores a harsh version of love in her poetry. Love is often a cause of suffering rather than comfort. Here, the speaker’s love makes her suspicious and jealous. This jealousy makes her monstrous. However, the reason for her suspicions and jealousy may be her unfaithful husband, so Duffy hints at the corrupting consequences of privileging only young women as beautiful and worthy of love.  

Theme 

Quotation

Analysis and interpretation

Power of jealousy

‘A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy/grew in my mind’

  • The asyndeton and tricolon here combine with the connotation of ‘grew’ to give a sense of emotions taking over, intermingling and escalating 

‘which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes’

  • The metaphor emphasises the power of jealousy to transform the speaker:

    • The connotation of ‘filthy’ and ‘snakes’ suggests jealousy is toxic and dangerous

‘My bride’s breath soured, stank/in the grey bags of my lungs./I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,/yellow fanged.’

  • The juxtaposition between the past and present is hinted at with ‘now’:

    • The plosive alliteration of ‘bride’s breath’ contrasts jarringly with the alliteration of the ‘f’ sound combined with repetition in ‘foul mouthed now, foul tongued, //yellow fanged’

    • The imagery of ‘grey bags’ and ‘yellow’ teeth hints at the speaker’s body corrupted by jealousy, but also changed by age

‘Be terrified./

It’s you I love,’

  • The two short lines link terror and love:

    • The jealous speaker warns that her love has been corrupted by jealousy and is now dangerous

‘perfect man, Greek God, my own;/but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray/

from home./So better by far for me if you were stone.’

  • In an interesting rewrite of the original myth, here Medusa seems to choose the power to turn her husband to stone rather than have him be unfaithful

‘And here you come/with a shield for a heart/and a sword for a tongue/and your girls, your girls.’

  • The metaphors suggest the husband guards his true emotions and is manipulative

  • The repetition of ‘girls’ with its connotation of youth adds a mocking, accusatory tone

‘Wasn’t I beautiful?/Wasn’t I fragrant and young?//Look at me now.’

  • The parallel rhetorical questions ask the husband and the reader to reflect on the unfairness of betraying the speaker only because she has aged

  • The one-line stanza closes the poem abruptly:

    • One could read it as evoking sympathy for how jealousy has corrupted the speaker

Female rage

Duffy imbues Medusa with power that comes from rage. Unapologetic and unflinching, she rages against and threatens an unfaithful husband who chooses youth and surface beauty over loyalty to his wife.  

Theme 

Quotation

Analysis and interpretation

Female rage

‘as though my thoughts

hissed and spat on my scalp.’

  • The sibilance emphasises the snake-like emotions

  • The connotation of ‘hissed’ and ‘spat’ evokes an image of an angry, dangerous animal

‘There are bullet tears in my eyes.’

  • The juxtaposition of ‘bullet tears’ introduces a vaguely threatening tone

  • The speaker’s emotions are linked to weapons 

‘Are you terrified?// Be terrified’

  • The sudden rhetorical question continues this threatening tone

  • The short line to start the next stanza escalates the threat:

    • There is a sense that the speaker’s anger is dangerous and will harm the reader/husband

    • There is no apology or caution; it is a mere statement of fact

‘I glanced at a buzzing bee…in a heap of shit’

  • These two stanzas detail the escalation of the speaker’s anger as the targets and verbs of looking grow in size and intensity:

    • Each object starts energetic/colourful/natural

    • And each one is made dull and lifeless by the speaker’s anger

    • The imagery brings a note of black humour to the poem 

‘I stared at a dragon./

Fire spewed/from the mouth of a mountain.’

  • The imagery here could be the next stage of escalation after the pig in the previous stanza:

    • It could also be a metaphor for how the speaker sees herself in her rage: a dragon becoming a volcano

‘Wasn’t I beautiful?/Wasn’t I fragrant and young?//Look at me now.’

  • We can read the rhetorical questions as a justification for the anger:

    • Here Duffy speaks to a broader rage than one betrayed woman

    • The poem becomes about raging against a society that deems women less valuable/beautiful as they age

  • The closing line stands alone as a demand or order:

    • The anger may be transformative, but it is not diminishing

Connections to other Duffy poems

When studying Duffy’s poetry, it is important to make connections across her work, as many poems explore similar ideas through different speakers and situations.

Change

Postmodernist poetry is interested in fractured selves, plurality and identity that is not fixed. Duffy frequently explores how the self transforms through life experiences. Duffy often compares a complicated present with a more favourable past. The past becomes a place longed for. Frequently, the loss of youth is paired with a loss of beauty, joy or love. However, she complicates this by presenting her changed speakers as more full of knowledge and understanding of themselves; change in Duffy’s poetry is sometimes painful but also empowering. 

‘Originally’

‘The Way My Mother Speaks’

‘Before You Were Mine’

  • Duffy explores how changing her childhood home led to her questioning her identity

  • She explores how place and language are intricately tied to one’s sense of self and belonging:

    • And how changes to these are unsettling

  • Duffy explores a change in location and stage of life

  • She conveys the anxiety and homesickness this causes

  • But she celebrates how a strong sense of home and identity helps one navigate such change

  • The speaker imagines her mother’s life before she was born

  • This reflective and imaginative perspective allows her to consider how motherhood transformed her mother’s identity

Sources:

‘Medusa’ by Carol Ann Duffy https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/medusa/

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Jenny Brown

Author: Jenny Brown

Expertise: Content Writer

Dr. Jenny is an expert English and ToK educator with a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and a Master’s in Education. With 20 years of experience—including 15 years in international secondary schools—she has served as an IB Examiner for both English A and ToK. A published author and professional editor, Jenny specializes in academic writing and curriculum design. She currently creates and reviews expert resources for Save My Exams, leveraging her expertise to help students worldwide master the IBDP curriculum.

Nick Redgrove

Reviewer: Nick Redgrove

Expertise: English Content Creator

Nick is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. He started his career in journalism and publishing, working as an editor on a political magazine and a number of books, before training as an English teacher. After nearly 10 years working in London schools, where he held leadership positions in English departments and within a Sixth Form, he moved on to become an examiner and education consultant. With more than a decade of experience as a tutor, Nick specialises in English, but has also taught Politics, Classical Civilisation and Religious Studies.