Mrs Tiresias, by Carol Ann Duffy

1
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.

2
Two copulating snakes turn Tiresias into a woman
3
And years later Tiresias meets two copulating
snakes and is turned back into a man
4
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
  elses eyes.

5
Questions

• 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 Id patched at the
  elbows myself.
•  
• Whistling.
•  
• He liked to hear
• the first cuckoo of Spring
• then write to the Times.
• Id usually heard it days before him
• but I never let on.

1. Who do you think is speaking?
2. What kind of picture do we get of this man?
3. Would these be considered typical male
   behaviours?
4. Why do you think she lied about hearing the
   cuckoo before he did?

6
Questions

• Id 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.
•  

1. What indications do we have that something
   magical has taken place?
2. The sneer of thunder. What figure of speech is
   this?
3. Why do you think the thunder sneered?

7
Questions

• 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 womans voice I
  passed out.

1. 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?
2. Why is the V of the shirt now shocking?

8
Questions

• Life has to go on.
•  
• I put it about that he was a twin
• and this was his sister
• came down to live while he himself
• was working abroad.

1. What do you think of her response to the
   situation Life has to go on?
2. Why does she lie about their new situation? What
   might she be frightened of people thinking?

9
Questions

• 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.

1. How does she describe their relationship?
2. Why do you think she still refers to her as he
   and him?
3. 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?

10
Questions

• 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.

• 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.

11
Questions

• The curse, he said, the curse
•  
• Dont kiss me in public,
• he snapped the next day,
• I dont want people getting the wrong idea
•  
• It got worse.
•  

1. What, do you think, is the curse?
2. What might the wrong idea be?
3. How might it get worse?

12
Questions

• After he left, I would glimpse him
• out and about,
• entering glitzy restaurants
• on the arms of powerful men-
• though I knew for sure
• thered be nothing of that
• going on
• if he had his way-
• or on TV
• telling the women out there
• how, as a woman himself,
• he knew how we felt.
•  
• His flirts smile.

1. What has happened to their relationship?
2. How does the narrator convey that he is not a
   real woman but is role-playing?
3. He/she is now going out with men, but is
   celibate. Why do you think that might be?

13
Questions

• The one thing he never got right
• Was the voice.
• A cling-peach slithering out of its tin
•  
• I gritted my teeth

1. What does the metaphor a cling peach slithering
   out of its tin suggest about the voice?
2. Why might she grit her teeth? How does she
   feel about her husband now?

14
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 hasnt been any intimacy yet.

15
Oh, wait a minute.
16
Theres 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

17
Its 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.

18
Questions

• 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.

1. How does the narrator convey that Tiresias might
   be jealous?
2. Why does she describe her lips as fruit?
3. How does Tiresias greet the narrators lover?
4. What might clash between them?

19

• Now lets 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 didnt get the answer she wanted from
  Tiresias, she blinded him in revenge.
• Its hardly fair, is it?
• Can you think of 2 things Carol Duffy might be
  trying to tell Juno and Jupiter?

1.________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
2.______________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__