Warming her Pearls (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

This study guide to Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Warming her Pearls’ contains:

• Overview

• Authorial purpose

• Authorial choices and textual features

• Themes

• Connections to other Duffy poems

Overview

• The poem was first published in 1985

• It is set in the Victorian era:

  • This was a period of great class inequality and strict social norms

  • Same-gender relationships were taboo and illegal

• The poem details a lady’s maid’s secret love for her mistress

• The poem is dedicated to Judith Radstone:

  • She told Duffy about the Victorian trend of upper-class women asking their maids to wear their pearls

  • The heat and oils from human skin enhance the pearls’ lustre

Authorial purpose

• Duffy gives a voice to people often unheard or marginalised in society:

  • Here, the speaker is a young, working-class girl

• Duffy writes frequently about love, often without specifying gender:

  • While the speaker’s gender is not explicitly stated here, it is logical to read her as female in the context

  • Thus, the poem details queer love and the necessity to keep it secret

Authorial choices and textual features

Form and Structure

• ‘Warming her Pearls’ is a free verse poem

• It has six, four-line stanzas:

  • In shape, it appears like a traditional ballad

  • But the use of caesura, enjambment and irregular rhyme breaks from the tradition

• The poem is a dramatic monologue to an unnamed listener

• Together, these formal elements reflect the speaker’s calm facade, beneath which are her secret and tumultuous desires

Language

• The pearls are a motif in the poem:

  • They become an extended metaphor for the speaker’s hidden love

• The speaker and the object of her affections are juxtaposed:

  • This emphasises the class difference

  • It also emphasises the speaker’s desire in contrast to her mistress’s ignorance

• Sensory imagery (opens in a new tab)and similes give a sense of the opulent setting and the physical beauty of the mistress

• Asyndeton (opens in a new tab)makes the speaker’s thoughts and emotions feel intimate and unfiltered

• Duffy uses alliteration, sibilance (opens in a new tab)and assonance to create a lyrical, hushed feel to the poem:

  • This is reflective of the theme of forbidden love

Themes

Love knows no boundaries

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 is secret and taboo. The boundaries of class and gender make it forbidden, but the speaker feels it nonetheless. Duffy sets the poem in Victorian Britain, when social norms made intimacy across classes and between the same gender taboo and illegal. However, writing in the 1980s as a queer woman, Duffy reminds us that these taboos are not wholly eradicated. She elevates the taboo love to art and gives voice to a hidden desire.

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.

Representation

Duffy seeks to represent the plurality of the female experience in her work. She is concerned with giving voice to those who may not traditionally have been heard. Duffy frequently aims to represent the truth of the female experience. In giving a working-class, queer girl a voice in a near-ballad, Duffy reminds us of the depth of emotion and intellect that we all have, regardless of status. She represents women in her art to elevate them in ways that challenge the traditional norms of patriarchal society.  

Sources:

‘Warming her Pearls’ by Carol Ann Duffy https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56715/warming-her-pearls (opens in a new tab)