| Carol Ann Duffy (1955-) is the first woman poet laureate in British history appointedto the position in2009. Her poetry covers a wide range of social issues like sexism, racism,colonization, child abuse, lesbian existence, immigration, giving voice to all thosemarginalized beings who have been silent and mute in the past. Beginning to write poetryin the1960s, Duffy has been noticed for her achievement in poetry since the1980s and hasbeen influential among a generation of poets. Critics both home and abroad have beendoing research on her poetry from different perspectives, among which feminist study isone of the most important. But till now, there is no thorough study of her poetry from thefeminist perspective in China, yet. So this dissertation endeavors to fulfill this task.Previous scholarship shows that Duffy owes both to the second-generation feminist inthe1970s and post-feminist poetics, though she herself refuses to be stereotyped as“femininity, feminism or women’s poetry”. She pays attention to women’s experience, totheir sufferings and difficulties, and she is able to use the dramatic monologue to explorethose issues and other issues related, like masculinity, identity politics, lesbian existence,lesbian continuum, motherhood, and mother-daughter bond, etc. Besides her concern forwomen’s living condition, Duffy has also shown concern for the “Others” in the societyincluding immigrants, children, lower class people, colored people, who have beenneglected as outsiders of the society from the economic and social perspectives. Herpostmodern writing is found to be dialogic, inter-textual and humorous. Chinese scholarshave translated some of her poems into Chinese in the recent years, and done researches onher use of dramatic monologue to illustrate her feminist point of view. All these provide atheoretical base and support for the present research.Feminists have found male domination as the cause of women’s oppression, and callfor women’s rights and liberation. Radical feminism aims to end man’s power over womanand finally to get rid patriarchy. Feminists in the late20thcentury also pay attention tothemselves: lesbians, mothers, mother-daughter bond, and find them alternative ways tosubvert patriarchy. Eco-feminism, first shaped in the1980s, taking “logic of domination” astheir conceptual framework, argues that anything that helps with the understanding of oppression, subordination, or domination of women is a feminist issue, and tries toeliminate sexual oppression by eliminating all other forms of oppression. These provide atheoretical framework for the dissertation, which chooses over sixty poems from eightcollections of poetry by Duffy to do close reading for feminist study.The main findings include four aspects. Firstly, in her poems about the relationshipbetween men and women, Duffy is able to expose different kinds of oppression womenhave been suffering from the patriarchal society, and try to show subversion of patriarchy indifferent ways, and the complexity of the relationship between men and women. Secondly,Duffy is able to discover the female identity by doing explorations of the relationshipbetween women and women, i.e., lesbians and mothers and daughters, and do self-analysisof the female identity. She finds lesbians and mothers are considered as the “Other” by thepatriarchal system and mother-sister bond is hindered by patriarchy, but at the same timethey are ways to subvert patriarchy and to identify women. Thirdly, seeing from theeco-feminist point of view, Duffy is able to show concern for all kinds of oppression in thesociety, including human being’s oppression of nature and animals. She shows sympathyfor immigrants, for colored people, for the young, for war victims, for the lower classpeople, and for social outsiders. She calls on people to show respect and love for nature, forearth, for the past time when civilization has not destroyed the eco-system and people werein harmony with nature. She calls on people to stop killing and exploiting animals, forwhich to gain liberation. Fourthly, the most important writing features that help Duffyachieve her feminist ends in the writing of poetry are her use of the traditional poetic formdramatic monologue that gives voice to women, and her rewriting of canonized literaryworks to express her feminist view of the world. A functional-stylistic study of one of herpostmodern feminist parody of literary canons shows that Duffy has successfully subvertedthe so-called male grand-narrative to give women independence in the literary world. This,together with her use of common language and inter-textual writing, forms her feministpoetic art. |
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