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:

The Poem:All I know is this:he went out for his walk a manand 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 Springthen write to the Times.I’d usually heard it days before himbut 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?

Questions

I’d heard one that morning while he was asleep;just as I heardat about 6pm,a faint sneer of thunder up in

the woodsand felta 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’?

Questions

I was brushing my hair in the mirror

and running a bathwhen a faceswam 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.

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?

Questions

Life has to go on. I put it about that he was a

twinand this was his sistercame down to live while he

himselfwas 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?

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?

Questions

Then he started his period.one week in bed.two doctors in.three painkillers four times a day. And latera letterto the powers-that-bedemanding full-paid menstrual

leave twelve weeks a year.I see him now,his selfish pale face peering at the

moonthrough the bathroom window.

1. How does ‘he’ react to the period?

2. The female menstrual cycle is often associated with the moon and, in turn, the tides. How is this demonstrated here?

3. Was this alluded to before? How did ‘he’ first appear to her as a woman?

4. 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.

Questions

The curse, he said, the curse Don’t kiss me in public,he snapped the next day,I don’t 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”?

Questions

After he left, I would glimpse himout and about,entering glitzy restaurantson the arms of powerful men-though I knew for sure there’d be nothing of thatgoing onif he had his way-or on TVtelling the women out therehow, as a woman himself,he knew how we felt. His flirt’s 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?

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?

Back to the mythRemember 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 eyesat 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

and saw him pictureher bite,her bite at the fruit of my lips,and hearmy red wet cry in the nightas she shook his handsaying 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 narrator’s lover?

4. What might ‘clash’ between them?

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.__________________________________________________________________________________________________

2.__________________________________________________________________________________________________