{"id":1336,"date":"2022-09-01T20:19:18","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T20:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2024-05-16T19:38:13","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T19:38:13","slug":"mrs-orpheus-duffys-eurydice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/2022\/09\/01\/mrs-orpheus-duffys-eurydice\/","title":{"rendered":"Mrs. Orpheus: Duffy’s “Eurydice”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carol Ann Duffy’s (b. 1955) “Eurydice” appears as the twenty-fourth poem in her collection The World’s Wife<\/em>, sidled between “Salome” and “the Kray Sisters”. Like her sisters in the collection, Duffy’s Eurydice vocalizes a silenced woman from literature and myth.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\"\"
Duffy is a multi-award-winning Scottish poet; cf. http:\/\/www.carolannduffy.co.uk<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 Duffy\u2019s witty feminist critique introduces often unexpected nuance to stories we thought we knew already. Had we been wondering how Frau Freud felt in a household with a phallocentric worldview or what Mrs Rip Van Winkel was doing with the time the long slumber afforded her. What changed with his awakening? And\u00a0what was threatening to change with Orpheus\u2019 bold katabasis. Eurydice\u2019s self-interest had already found voice long before Duffy expressed it in 1999. Her Eurydice is no more decisive than Gluck\u2019s or Ruhl\u2019s. And the narrative nuance is hardly unprecedented, though still sharply original. Eurydice herself effects her return to the languid dead. Remorseless for the separation she made happen by entreating Orpheus\u2019 vanity, Eurydice now delivers from the other side some useful advice to her peers.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Duffy\u2019s Eurydice speaks her entire poem, no narrator intruding. She begins by addressing her audience \u2014 the same group as Duffy\u2019s\u00a0 <\/span>readers: fellow sisters who suffer under male dominion.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Girls, I was dead and down<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0in the Underworld, a shade,<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0a shadow of my former self, nowhen. (Duffy, \u201cEurydice\u201d 1-3)<\/p>\r\n

Eurydice\u2019s voice affects no formality of form nor lofty rhetorical tone. The pace is much like that of a stand-up comic or a participant in a self-help group. No regular rhyme scheme, no regular meter constrains the expressions. The diction is casual. Orpheus she calls \u201cBig O.\u201d She Who must not Be Named \u2014i.e. Persephone or the Dread Queen of the Dead \u2014 is not named, but instead called \u201cThe woman in question\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Eurydice perceives that to live her life with Orpheus once was and would have yet probably remained\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,\"\"\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0elegies, limericks, villanelles,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0histories, myths\u2026 (64-67)<\/p>\r\n

This is the life of a written woman, Puella Scripta<\/i>, the poetic muse. Living\u2019s attraction must be less appealing for the written girls than for it is for their creative artists, especially because, by definition, poetic excellence always enhances and will never surmount the elegiac distance between them. Duffy\u2019s Eurydice had finished mortality shadowed by a prolific and popular poet. And she enriches the irony of the Muse\u2019s toil by her recalling how Orpheus\u2019 fame came by the sweat of her own <\/i>brow.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0For the men, verse-wise, \/ <\/span>\u00a0Big O was the boy. Legendary.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Bollocks. (I\u2019d done all the typing myself, \/\u00a0 \u00a0I should know.)
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And given my time all over again, \/\u00a0 \u00a0 rest assured that I\u2019d rather speak for myself
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess, etc., etc.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In fact, girls, I\u2019d rather be dead.\u00a0 <\/span>(35-36, 45-50)<\/p>\r\n

Duffy\u2019s Eurydice characterizes Orpheus as cavalier and cock-sure. One might have expected the poet\u2019s endeavor into the Great Beyond might have gotten him to shave. (109) Not unlike in Gluck, from Eurydice\u2019s perspective in Duffy\u2019s world, the whole thing might have gone down better had the poet tried to meet his departed wife on her own terms. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0He\u2019d been warned
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0That one look would lose me\u00a0
<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0For ever and ever.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0So we walked, we walked.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Nobody talked. \u00a0 <\/span>(74-78)<\/p>\r\n

Duffy’s own voice is a welcome one in a world where Orpheus’ accomplishment seems still to outshine Eurydice’s longsuffering brilliance.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol Ann Duffy’s (b. 1955) “Eurydice” appears as the twenty-fourth poem in her collection The World’s Wife, sidled between “Salome” and “the Kray Sisters”. Like her sisters in the collection, Duffy’s Eurydice vocalizes a silenced woman from literature and myth.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Duffy\u2019s witty feminist … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,138,117,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-eurydice","category-mythology","category-orpheus-eurydice"],"modified_by":"Roger Macfarlane","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}