Mrs Tiresias, by Carol Ann Duffy
Tiresias, according to one legend, hit two copulating snakes with a stick
and was turned into a woman by Hera. (Why are snakes always baddies
in literature?)
Seven years later he encounters another pair of copulating snakes. He
hits them with a stick and is turned back into a man.
The Roman god and goddess Jupiter (Zeus) and Juno (Hera) are married
and have a row about love-making.
In short, Jupiter is unhappy with the quantity and Juno is unhappy with
the quality.
They want to know whether a man or a woman receives the most
pleasure from sex.
Being the only one who could speak from experience, Tiresias was
brought in to answer. He said the female, and Juno, enraged, made him
blind.
He then became a soothsayer and told Oedipus that he'd killed his
father and married his mother, but that's not important to the point; nor
to this lesson.
Two copulating snakes turn Tiresias
into a woman
And years
later Tiresias
meets two
copulating
snakes and is
turned back
into a man
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy is a poet whose work
is often used for coursework and in
exams at GCSE.
Carol Ann Duffy is our Poet Laureate.
That means that she is the official poet
for the nation. She writes poems for
important national events. In return
she receives a crate of sherry every
year.
Carol Ann Duffy comes from an Irish
background and grew up in Glasgow.
She is the first woman Poet Laureate.
She is also the first lesbian Poet
Laureate.
The most important thing to
remember about poetry is that it
makes us see things through
somebody else’s eyes.
Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Who do you think is speaking?
What kind of picture do we get of
this man?
Would these be considered
typical male behaviours?
Why do you think she lied about
hearing the cuckoo before he did?
The Poem:
All I know is this:
he went out for his walk a man
and came home female.
Out the back gate with his stick,
the dog;
wearing his garden kecks,
an open-necked shirt,
and a jacket in Harris tweed I’d patched at the
elbows myself.
Whistling.
He liked to hear
the first cuckoo of Spring
then write to the Times.
I’d usually heard it days before him
but I never let on.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
What indications do we have that
something ‘magical’ has taken
place?
The “sneer of thunder”. What
figure of speech is this?
Why do you think the thunder
‘sneered’?
I’d heard one that morning
while he was asleep;
just as I heard
at about 6pm,
a faint sneer of thunder up in
the woods
and felt
a sudden heat at the back of
my knees.
He was late getting back.
Questions
1.
2.
He walks the dog in tweeds and
she has a bath and brushes her
hair. She faints when he speaks.
What stereotypes are being
played out here?
Why is the V of the shirt now
shocking?
I was brushing my hair in the
mirror
and running a bath
when a face
swam into view
next to my own.
The eyes were the same.
But in the shocking V of the
shirt were breasts.
When he uttered my name in a
woman’s voice I passed out.
Life has to go on.
Questions
1.
2.
What do you think of her
response to the situation: “Life
has to go on”?
Why does she lie about their new
situation? What might she be
frightened of people thinking?
I put it about that he was a
twin
and this was his sister
came down to live while he
himself
was working abroad.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
How does she describe their
relationship?
Why do you think she still refers
to her as ‘he’ and ‘him’?
At the beginning the narrator said
he came back female. Do you
think the narrator believes there
is a difference between being
female and being a woman?
And at first I tried to be kind;
blow drying his hair till he
learnt to do it himself,
lending him clothes till he
started to shop for his own,
sisterly, holding his soft new
shape in my arms all night.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
How does ‘he’ react to the
period?
The female menstrual cycle is
often associated with the moon
and, in turn, the tides. How is this
demonstrated here?
Was this alluded to before? How
did ‘he’ first appear to her as a
woman?
Why, do you think, he is ‘selfish’?
N.B. The narrator is mocking the
apparent inability of man to bear
pain, but the letter to the
“powers-that-be” indicates that
she feels men have more political
and strategic power in our society
than women.
Then he started his period.
one week in bed.
two doctors in.
three painkillers four times a day.
And later
a letter
to the powers-that-be
demanding full-paid menstrual
leave twelve weeks a year.
I see him now,
his selfish pale face peering at the
moon
through the bathroom window.
The curse, he said, the curse
Questions
1.
2.
3.
What, do you think, is ‘the curse’?
What might ‘the wrong idea’ be?
How might it get “worse”?
Don’t kiss me in public,
he snapped the next day,
I don’t want people getting
the wrong idea
It got worse.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
What has happened to their
relationship?
How does the narrator convey
that he is not a ‘real’ woman but
is role-playing?
He/she is now going out with
men, but is celibate. Why do you
think that might be?
After he left, I would glimpse him
out and about,
entering glitzy restaurants
on the arms of powerful menthough I knew for sure
there’d be nothing of that
going on
if he had his wayor on TV
telling the women out there
how, as a woman himself,
he knew how we felt.
His flirt’s smile.
Questions
1.
2.
What does the metaphor “a cling
peach slithering out of its tin”
suggest about the voice?
Why might she ‘grit’ her ‘teeth’?
How does she feel about her
husband now?
The one thing he never got
right
Was the voice.
A cling-peach slithering out
of its tin
I gritted my teeth
Back to the myth
Remember the myth?
The whole point is that Tiresias has
been turned into a woman by the
gods so s/he can find out whether
men enjoy sexual intimacy more than
women, or the other way around.
There hasn’t been any intimacy yet.
Oh, wait a minute.
There’s a twist in the tale
And this is my lover, I said,
the one time we met,
at a glittering ball,
under the lights,
among tinkling glass,
and watched the way he stared
at her violet eyes
at the blaze of her skin,
at the slow caress of her hand on the back of my
neck;
It’s all rather clever
So Mrs Tiresias, whose husband is now female
and has left her, now has a woman as a lover.
Meanwhile, her husband, as a female, flirts
with men but appears to be celibate, thus
denying the gods their answer.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
How does the narrator convey
that Tiresias might be jealous?
Why does she describe her lips as
‘fruit’?
How does Tiresias greet the
narrator’s lover?
What might ‘clash’ between
them?
and saw him picture
her bite,
her bite at the fruit of my lips,
and hear
my red wet cry in the night
as she shook his hand
saying How do you do;
and I noticed then his hands,
her hands,
the clash of their sparkling rings
and their painted nails.
Now let’s go back to this myth.
•Juno was a goddess and Jupiter was a god.
•They had a bedroom problem
•They were a ‘straight’ heterosexual couple
•Tiresias was their ‘Agony Aunt’
•When Juno didn’t get the answer she wanted from Tiresias, she blinded him in
revenge.
It’s hardly fair, is it?
Can you think of 2 things Carol Duffy might be trying to tell Juno and Jupiter?
1.________________________________________________
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2.________________________________________________
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