Litany Flashcards
(13 cards)
Themes:
fragility, nostalgia, control, conformity, 1960s society, memory, time, materialism
‘Candlewick bedspread three piece suite display cabinet’
-the items set the scene in a specific time (1960s) when they first appeared in the market and became popular
-subtle hint of satire in the criticism in the ‘display cabinet’
-displaying and showing off newly acquired possessions were important to many women
-lacks punctuation so the goods merge into each other meaninglessly
-status and symbols that need to be shown by middle class
-‘cabinet’ with value and the need to display their wealth
-asyndetic list showing the insignificance of the material possessions the women see as being so important
‘The lounge would seem to bristle with eyes, hard as the bright stones in engagement rings’
-the brittleness of women is conveyed through a semantic field of related words (‘bristle’,’hard’,’stones’,’sharp’)
-the hard plosives of (‘bright’,’bristle’,’sharp’,’poised’) reinforce this
-the hard consonants create a fragile, precarious scene which, of course, will collapse
-status
-abrasive, brittle
‘Language embarrassed them’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barr, Mrs Hunt, Mrs Emery, sorry, Mrs Raine’
-listing the names, of the very ordinary married women, brings the dramatic climax down again to the manufactured politeness
-ironically another litany
-women aren’t referred to by their first names, indicative of a formalised culture (gone now)
-groups the role of the women to WIFE
-true embarrassment with the shame
-authority and command the women hold over the child
Summary:
The poem is about a child pretending to read whilst listening to her mother and her married friends gossiping about middle-class suburban life in the 1960s in code, to protect the young child. However, the young child is smarter than the ladies realise and decodes their speech.
‘Stiff-haired wives balances their red smiles’
-1960s hairspray was very common in women’s hairstyles
-was used to set hair in places resulting in stiff, sticky and formal styles making it impossible for a lover to run their fingers through a woman’s hair hinting at sexual inhibition
-the ‘red smiles’ conflates the colour of the lipstick with the smiling lips suggesting an insincerity to the smiles being shown
-the verb ‘balances’ was much like the behaviour shown outwardly by the women, conducting themselves formally and carefully, never being relaxes and never truly open and honest
-measured, rigid
‘The terrible marriages crackled, cellophane round polyester shirts’
-in the 1960s divorce was rare and couples endured miserable marriages for the sake of appearances
-the comparison with crackly cellophane wrapping round polyester is imaginative and appropriate. The inferences that their private lives (including sexual) were as artificial and synthetic as their public persona
-man made objects
-groups them collectively and a void of independent personalities (they are the same)
‘Where no one had cancer, or sex, or debt and certainly not leukaemia’
-the denial of realities, of real, characterise the women
-for present day readers this change in culture comes as a shock, given cancer is an everyday experience for an increasing number of the population
-the pathos is that women would spell out ‘shocking’ words- the terrible leukaemia- rather than say them—> could not spell them
-Duffy’s humour is mixed with pathos; the narrow mindedness would have been reinforced by their limited education and would have stunned their ability to seek comfort or help
-lack of engagement
-don’t acknowledge the joy + pain of life
Structure:
-The regularity of the poem with 6 stanzas suggests the everyday and mundane life that the women lead.
-free verse reflecting the lucidity of memory and a lack of imposed order
-enjambed to speed up the narrative flow/ mimics train of thought and a stream of consciousness
-fragmented sentences create an atmosphere of tension, repression and hesitance + language is struggling to express something painful
‘the soundtrack then was a litany’
-juxtaposition between ‘soundtrack’ and ‘litany’ + litany’s are typically long and restrictive and sondtracks/songs are often viewed in the opposite sense
Critic: Elizabeth Reilly praises how Duffy ‘incorporates humour…
…with insights of social commentary’ as she seems to mock these women whilst implying a sense of pathos
Context:
-about someone looking back at childhood memories
-set in the 1960s (time of significant social and cultural changes + evolving gender roles and rise of middle classes)
-the poem uses taboos and coded language by the women which reflects a desire to maintain a facade of propriety and avoid discussing any sensitive topics
-‘litany’ is a repetitive or ritualistic recitation + in the poem mirror the repetitive and coded nature of the women’s conversations
