Mrs Faust Poem by Carol Ann Duffy: Analysis

This essay sample on Mrs Faust Poem provides all necessary basic info on this matter, including the most common “for and against” arguments. Below are the introduction, body and conclusion parts of this essay.

Mrs. Faust and how do these coincide with other poems in The World’s Wife? Carol Ann Duffy provides a voice to characters from history and myth that have never previously been featured. In Mrs. Faust she provides the point of view of the wife when In the original stories the story was always told from Faustus viewpoint.

All the poems in the Worlds Wife are similar in this way, for example the poem little Red Cap’ is a dark twist on the original fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood which provides different voice to the innocent girl as a predator to the wolf who is possibly portrayed as a naive man that she takes advantage of. Materialism is a common theme in the Worlds Wife collection, but especially explored through the point of view of Mrs.

Faust.

In the first stanza of Mrs. Faust we are Introduced with this Idea of materialism In the second and sixth lines – the word ‘Faust’ rhymes with house’ and imply that Faust is as much an object as the house, meaning he has no soul. The list of achievements: ‘BAA. MA. Ph D. ‘ is finished off with ‘No Kids’ showing that they only are for qualifications and money and not their family life. This coincides with Mrs. Midas, the very last stanza of this poem starts off with What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for me’ showing that the man In this poem only cared for money and not his wife.

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Mrs Midas Duffy

Mrs. Faust Is a very fast paced poem; this Is due to the list like structure. This structure symbolizes her life of doing all sorts of activities that ‘normal’ people would not have access to and the idea that she has had all these opportunities and is completely emotionless towards them. This link to when Faust is explaining to his Mrs., throughout his speech he shows no signs of remorse and so he does not regret selling his soul for materialistic values.

This links to Little red cap because she takes advantage of the wolf and then leaves seemingly without any regrets, ‘Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. This Is unlike Mrs. Midas however, who although she does take and sell all the gold that her husband had created, she was regretful and remorseful. In the third stanza of Mrs. Faust she says ‘l grew to love the lifestyle, not the life. He grew to love the Kudos, not the wife. ‘ This shows that she grew to love the money and the expensive experiences and not the actual life she wanted.

He grew to love the Kudos, not the wife shows us that he used his wealth to buy his pleasure from other sources and that he did not care for his wife or how she felt towards his behavior because he is essentially cheating on her with his money. This links to fourth stanza when he talks about going to Soho, the centre of the sex trade at the time Then take his lust to Soho in a cab’ , this links cause he uses his money to buy pleasure from other sources (prostitution). In the ninth stanza of Mrs. Faust she says she ‘spun gold from hay, had a facilitate, had my breasts enlarged, my buttocks tightened. This Is showing more materialistic values Decease seen uses all near money not Tort good or to Nell anyone In need out to simply make herself look and feel better. Then in the penultimate stanza she shows us Just how much material wealth she and Faust had between them the yacht, the several homes, the Lear Jet, the helipad, the loot et get. This links the two points together in that the Faustus had so much material wealth and yet some people in this world cannot afford a loaf of bread.

Therefore, Duffy is showing us that the couple did not care about the consequences if it made them obscenely rich. In the thirteenth stanza she is describing to the reader how the devil came to take Faust away, ‘At this I heard a serpent’s hiss, tasted evil, knew its smell, as scaly devil hands poked up right through the terracotta tiles at Faustus bare feet. ‘ She was describing how the devil, a preternatural being, was taking her love away and the only thing she could think about was the damage that might be caused to her terracotta tiles.

I think this portrays how much she cared about Faust compared to her Materialistic wealth because instead of talking about her love being taken by the devil she instead comments on her terracotta tiles (material wealth) being damaged by the devil. In the Final Stanza she talks about when she got ill, When I got Ill, it hurt like hell. I bought a kidney with my credit card, and then I got well. ‘ Faust is in hell and there are people wing with no hope of getting an organ transplant and Mrs. Faust simply bought a spare organ with her Credit Card.

This shows us that she takes for granted being rich and does not care that in order for her to live in such luxury she had to give up her husband’s life. To conclude, Mrs. Faust does not care at all for her husband’s life if it makes her rich and these values also occur in Mrs. Midas because Mrs. Midas in the end did not care for her Husband but was simply angry at him for being emotionless towards her. She then took all the gold from the house anyway and used it to make her own life better.