The Full Text of “Eurydice”
The Full Text of “Eurydice”
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“Eurydice” Introduction
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"Eurydice" appears in Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife (1999). Through a series of dramatic monologues, Duffy's collection adopts the perspectives of various forgotten or overlooked women, including the wives and partners of famous men from history and myth. This poem takes the perspective of Eurydice, the bride of the legendary poet/musician Orpheus in ancient Greek mythology. Unlike the original character, a loving wife whom Orpheus heroically tries to rescue from the underworld, this version of Eurydice despises Orpheus and has no desire to be rescued. In fact, she takes the initiative to ensure they're separated forever. Through its feminist retelling of a popular tale, "Eurydice" satirizes male arrogance and presumption, especially in the literary realm.
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“Eurydice” Summary
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Ladies, I had died and gone to the underworld (the land of the dead in Greek myth). I was a ghost of my old self, inhabiting no time at all. The underworld was a place where language ended, like a black period, a void where words were forced to stop. And they did stop there; they were all "last words," famous or otherwise. It pleased me thoroughly.
Picture me in that place, inaccessible, beyond the grave. Then imagine my expression in that land of eternal rest—in the one refuge you'd think a woman would have from the type of guy who pursues her, writes poems for her, lingers nearby while she's reading them, claims she's his inspiration, and once pouted for a full 24 hours because she pointed out that he relies on too many vague ideas. Just imagine my expression when I heard him—oh gods!—knocking at the entrance to the underworld.
Orpheus himself: a.k.a. "Big O." Mythical-seeming. With his stringed instrument and a poem to peddle, hoping to win me like an award.
In those days, the culture was different: to men, "Big O" was a legend as far as poetry went. The promotional quote on his book jackets claimed that creatures of all kinds, from aardvarks to zebras, gathered around him when he recited his poems. When they heard his beautiful voice, schools of fish jumped and silent rocks on the ground shed shiny little tears.
What B.S.! (I'd typed up all his poems and blurbs myself, so I ought to know.) And if I got to live over again, believe me, I'd rather tell my own story than be portrayed as a "Dearest," "Beloved," "Dark Lady," "White Goddess," or some other stereotype invented by male writers.
Actually, ladies, I'd rather die than go through that again.
But gods, like publishers, are typically men. And what you've surely heard of my story involves the bargain Orpheus struck with the gods (and/or derives from the book deal he struck with publishers).
He flexed his poetic talent.
The spirits of the underworld started crying. Sisyphus (a mythical king condemned to roll a boulder uphill for all eternity) took a rare break to sit on his boulder. Tantalus (a mythical figure condemned to go hungry and thirsty for all eternity) was allowed to take a beer break. The woman Orpheus's poem was about (me) could barely believe the ridiculous stuff she was hearing.
Whether I wanted to or not, I had to go back to our old life together—me, his wife. I had to appear unwillingly in his figurative language, his different types of poetic stanzas, his various kinds of poems, histories, legends...
Orpheus had been warned that he couldn't turn or glance backward. He had to keep walking—with me following—from the underworld to the upper world that felt like the past to me. He'd been cautioned that if he looked at me once, he'd lose me for all eternity.
So we kept on walking. Both of us were silent.
Ladies, ignore the story you're familiar with. This is how it really happened: I tried everything I could to get Orpheus to turn around (which would send me back to the underworld). What would it take, I wondered, to make him understand that our relationship was over? I was dead, gone, over, resting eternally, expired. I reached my hand out to touch his neck, pleading for him to turn and let me stay in the underworld. But, unfortunately, the purple light of the world up ahead had already grown brighter.
It was a tough uphill trek from death back to life, and the whole way, I tried to will Orpheus to look backward. I was about to steal his poem from his robe when, at last, I had a flash of inspiration. Excited, I stopped walking. He was three feet ahead of me. With a trembling voice, I told him that his poem was masterful and that I wanted to hear him sing it again.
He was wearing a humble smile when he turned around to face me.
Let's see, anything else? I saw he hadn't bothered to shave. I waved goodbye and disappeared.
The wordless dead are such good poets. The living are like people on the shore of a huge lake, under which the dead remain wisely silent.
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“Eurydice” Themes
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Male Arrogance vs. Female Agency
"Eurydice" turns the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a satire on how men’s arrogance can flatten women’s humanity. Unlike the mythical Orpheus—an inspired poet who tragically fails to rescue his bride, Eurydice, from the underworld—Duffy's Orpheus is a terrible poet and husband whose unwanted "rescue" attempt Eurydice thwarts. The poem portrays Orpheus as the epitome of male vanity and entitlement, and Eurydice as thoroughly scornful of his poetry and personality. In fact, Eurydice finally gets rid of him only through a trick that appeals to his ego. By upending the original myth, Duffy's feminist version skewers the kind of misogyny that reduces women to "Muse[s]" for men to flatter and distressed damsels for men to rescue.
The poem reimagines the Orpheus/Eurydice myth as a gender-fueled conflict, with Eurydice as the protagonist and Orpheus as the antagonist. In this retelling, Orpheus isn't a heroic poet who tragically fails to rescue his loving wife from the underworld. He's a "strutt[ing]," pretentious hack whose wife is glad to be rid of him, but who keeps "follow[ing] her" anyway. His desire is all that matters; he refuses to respect or even recognize her wishes. At no point does he see her as an equal; instead, he treats her as an audience, a "prize" to be won, or an unpaid underling (as when she does all his "typing" for him).
Meanwhile, the poem portrays Eurydice as a woman who, through courage and ingenuity, manages to escape a degrading, unfulfilling romantic partnership. Rather than honored and understood, Orpheus's writing makes her feel "trapped" in a set of clichés about women. She even feels physically uncomfortable in his "hover[ing]" presence. His attempt to bring her back from the underworld—whether she "Like[s] it or not"—is controlling and presumptuous, forcing her to wonder how to make her possessive husband "see we were through." Tellingly, when her own "inspiration" strikes, it's in the form of an escape plan, which seems to free her from Orpheus in particular and male domination more broadly.
At every turn, then, Orpheus represents male egotism and sexism at their worst. Clueless, self-absorbed, and lazily entitled, he can't even be bothered to "shave[]" before pursuing his bride! By contrast, Eurydice takes on the hero's role, claiming agency for herself as she outwits male misogyny.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-112
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Misogyny and Literary Culture
"Eurydice" takes aim not only at male arrogance in general but at the misogyny of literary culture in particular. Duffy's version of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth portrays male poets, and the male-dominated literary world, as ridiculously pretentious and misogynistic. In escaping Orpheus, Eurydice symbolically turns her back on this scene and takes control of her own narrative—the one presented in the poem itself.
In Eurydice's view, the culture that worships Orpheus's poetry is deeply biased toward men. She asserts that his legend was created by "Gods" who, "like publishers," are "usually male," and she hints that she had a large and uncredited role in building his reputation (e.g., by doing "all the typing" for him). Her labor, like her voice itself, has been silenced by a culture that doesn't respect women as full, independent human beings. Eurydice also contradicts the ancient legend that Orpheus's poetry charms animals, and she makes clear that it does nothing at all for women! In her telling, his writing appeals only to the damned, and only to damned men at that.
The poem further portrays the larger literary world as oppressive and demeaning to women because it prevents women from speaking for, and thereby defining, themselves. When Orpheus tries to retrieve Eurydice from the underworld, she dreads returning to their life together, imagining herself "trapped" once again in his sexist "images, metaphors," etc.
Eurydice then voices—and acts on—a feminist desire to be the author and protagonist of her own story. She declares that if she had her life to live over, she'd want to "speak for myself" rather than appear as a secondary character in male myths. Short of that, she'd "rather be dead"—remain in the underworld—than experience their misrepresentations all over again.
She manages to get rid of Orpheus only by declaring his poem "a masterpiece," a strategy that turns his vain delusions against him. Her flattery tricks him into turning and facing her—the one thing "the Gods" have forbidden—thus releasing her back into the underworld. Symbolically, this incident suggests that, for men, literary success (meeting the standards of "the Gods") has often depended on not paying attention to women. Meanwhile, for women, creative inspiration often involves withdrawing from sexist men and cultures and establishing separate spaces where they're free to define themselves. In fact, Eurydice is finally "speaking for [her]self" in this poem, suggesting that she's successfully reclaimed her story after all.
By satirizing a specific Greek myth, the poem punctures the larger, cultural myth of the male literary genius, implying that it's rooted in misogyny. The poem also mocks the culture(s) that created the myth in the first place, offering women hope for a better alternative. Eurydice's instruction "Girls, forget what you've read" not only introduces her side of the story but urges women to define themselves through a literary tradition of their own.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 7-24
- Lines 29-66
- Lines 78-81
- Lines 96-109
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The Wisdom and Peace of Silence
The poem's heroine, Eurydice, calls her home in the Underworld "a place where language stopped." Rather than finding this silence frightening or frustrating, she prefers it to the world of words and literature—including the supposedly enchanting poetry of Orpheus. Through her skeptical perspective, the poem embraces the wisdom and restfulness of silence, which it associates with the peace of the afterlife. Conversely, it portrays language and literature as deeply artificial human creations that, like human beings themselves, inevitably fall short of perfection.
The poem calls attention to the falsehood and inadequacy of language while depicting silence as "wise" and desirable. Its villain is Orpheus, a mythical figure often used to represent poets in general. Its hero, meanwhile, is Eurydice, who describes her silent underworld as a place of "Repose" (relaxation) that "suit[s]" her thoroughly.
Eurydice doesn't want to go back to Orpheus's world of poetry and language, and she feels "safe / from" these things where she is. She portrays Orpheus's language as pompous and unconvincing; listening to it, she can "scarcely believe her ears," and not in a good way (line 59). In fact, her long, unwieldy list of Orpheus's creations, from "octaves and sextets" to "myths," hints that there's something excessive and artificial about words and writing in general—especially compared to the simplicity of silence. (Here, it's important to note that "myths" can mean "lies" as well as "traditional stories.")
After the talentless Orpheus is gone, Eurydice remarks that "The dead are so talented" and praises "the wise, drowned silence of the dead." In short, silence is golden; even the most carefully chosen words look foolish and false beside the total restraint of those who can no longer speak.
Thus, the poem portrays not only the male-dominated literary tradition but also human language itself as inherently flawed. It imagines the silence of death as an almost heavenly relief from the problems of language. Orpheus represents not only men in general (by contrast with women) but also the living in general (by contrast with the dead). His failure to charm Eurydice suggests that language and poetry, like life itself, are a doomed struggle. By contrast, silence, like death, is a kind of peaceful perfection. Fittingly, after Eurydice's tribute to the wisdom of silence, the poem breaks off, as if practicing what it preaches.
While the main target of Duffy's satire is male writers and literary culture, the joke is ultimately on all of humanity, including Duffy herself. Arrogant male poets may be especially ludicrous, the poem suggests, but the flaws of language frustrate and humble us all.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 4-10
- Lines 11-24
- Line 59
- Lines 60-66
- Lines 76-77
- Lines 110-112
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Eurydice”
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Lines 1-6
Girls, I was ...
... to an end.Lines 1-6 introduce the poem's speaker: Eurydice, whose name is the poem's title. Eurydice is a well-known character from ancient Greek mythology, a young woman who dies tragically and winds up in the afterlife, or "Underworld" (line 2).
In the original myth, Orpheus, her loving husband, descends to the underworld in a doomed attempt to bring Eurydice back to life. But Carol Ann Duffy's version of this myth is very different from the original. Rather than a romantic tragedy, it's a feminist satire. It's also a dramatic monologue: a poem whose speaker is a character recognizably different than the poet.
In these opening lines, Eurydice narrates her experience as a ghost to an unidentified group of "Girls." Eurydice could be addressing a group of other dead women, or this could be an apostrophe to female readers/listeners in general. Either way, that first word marks the poem's intended audience—or primary audience, at least—as "Girls" and women. This will be a feminist retelling of a myth that traditionally places a man (Orpheus) in the hero's role. The casual tone sets up an intimacy between speaker and audience, as if Eurydice were confiding the real story of her life and death to a gathering of girlfriends.
She describes her post-death "self" as a "shade" or "shadow," following traditional depictions of the afterlife in Greek myth. ("Shade" is a common English translation of the ancient Greek word for spirits in the underworld; it means roughly the same as "ghost.") She also describes the afterlife as a world outside of time: a "nowhen." (Compare the word "nowhere" for place.)
Most importantly, she stresses how silent the afterlife is; she calls it "a place where language stopped." Metaphorically, it's "a black full stop"—a period at the end of life's sentence—or a "black hole" that swallows up "words" entirely. Eerie as these comparisons might sound to the reader, Eurydice soon makes clear that she loves the silence! She especially treasures it in comparison to the rambling poetry of Orpheus.
Alliteration ("dead and down," "a shade, / a shadow," "where the words") and repetition ("a black full stop, a black hole") add spice and emphasis to Eurydice's language. As she tells her story to a group of listeners, real or imagined, these devices help hook the audience's attention.
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Lines 7-10
And end they ...
... to the ground. -
Lines 11-16
So imagine me ...
... would be safe -
Lines 17-24
from the kind of ...
... for abstract nouns. -
Lines 25-28
Just picture my ...
... at Death’s door. -
Lines 29-33
Him. ...
... as the prize. -
Lines 34-36
Things were different ...
... the boy. Legendary. -
Lines 37-44
The blurb on ...
... wee, silver tears. -
Lines 45-50
Bollocks. (I’d done ...
... rather be dead. -
Lines 51-55
But the Gods ...
... strutted his stuff. -
Lines 56-59
The bloodless ghosts ...
... believe her ears. -
Lines 60-66
Like it or ...
... histories, myths… -
Lines 67-72
He’d been told ...
... was the past. -
Lines 73-77
He’d been warned ...
... Nobody talked. -
Lines 78-83
Girls, forget what ...
... we were through? -
Lines 84-91
I was dead. ...
... purple to grey. -
Lines 92-98
It was an ...
... when inspiration finally struck. -
Lines 99-103
I stopped, thrilled. ...
... hear it again… -
Lines 104-109
He was smiling ...
... and was gone. -
Lines 110-112
The dead are ...
... of the dead.
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“Eurydice” Symbols
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The Underworld
The "Underworld" (line 2) serves mainly as the poem's setting, but it also has a symbolic role in the poem. Just as in ancient Greek mythology, the underworld of "Eurydice" is the abode of the dead, a separate, eternal realm located beneath the world of the living. Accordingly, it symbolizes death and the timelessness of eternity (as opposed to the time-bound nature of human life).
This is why, for example, Eurydice refers to the underworld as "nowhen" (line 3)—a timeless state, like the placelessness of nowhere—and calls the trek from the underworld to the upper world "an uphill schlep / from death to life" (lines 92-93).
But in this telling, the underworld also represents the silence and peacefulness of death, especially in contrast with the noisiness of language. For Eurydice, in fact, it's a refuge from language. She stresses how relieved she is to be in this place "where the words had to come to an end."
In her view, the silence of death seems to mock the excesses and artificiality of language—including literature. The poem unfavorably compares Orpheus, an ancient symbol of poetry itself, with the "talented" dead, who are relieved from the burdens of language and know better than to say anything at all.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-10: “Girls, I was dead and down / in the Underworld, a shade, / a shadow of my former self, nowhen. / It was a place where language stopped, / a black full stop, a black hole / Where the words had to come to an end. / And end they did there, / last words, / famous or not. / It suited me down to the ground.”
- Lines 11-19: “So imagine me there, / unavailable, / out of this world, / then picture my face in that place / of Eternal Repose, / in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe / from the kind of a man / who follows her round / writing poems,”
- Lines 26-28: “when I heard— / Ye Gods— / a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door.”
- Lines 67-72: “He’d been told that he mustn’t look back / or turn round, / but walk steadily upwards, / myself right behind him, / out of the Underworld / into the upper air that for me was the past.”
- Line 91: “But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.”
- Lines 92-93: “It was an uphill schlep / from death to life”
- Lines 110-112: “The dead are so talented. / The living walk by the edge of a vast lake / near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.”
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“Eurydice” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
The poem is framed as an extended allusion to the ancient Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. The basic story goes like this:
- Orpheus is a famous poet and musician, whose lyre-playing and singing is so amazing that the natural world moves about in response. He marries Eurydice, but she's bitten by a snake not long after and dies.
- The distraught Orpheus travels to the underworld to bargain with Hades (the king of the underworld) and retrieve his wife. Hades, moved by Orpheus's talent and grief, offers a deal: Orpheus can bring Eurydice back to the land of the living, so long as he doesn't turn around to look at her as they walk out of the underworld.
- The couple almost makes it, but, at the last moment, Orpheus turns around. In some versions of the myth, he turns around because he's lost faith; in others, he's so happy to glimpse the exit that he turns around to celebrate with his wife.
- Either way, Eurydice disappears, lost to him forever.
Duffy's "Eurydice" preserves some broad elements of this myth, but radically changes its details, tone, and emphasis. In Duffy's version, Orpheus is an arrogant, talentless bard (singer/poet). Eurydice has no respect for him and no desire to return to their married life together. She also disdains the male-dictated standards that secured his literary reputation in the first place. During their ascent to the upper world, Orpheus turns back not because he's excited about daylight but because Eurydice tricks him, puffing up his ego so that he'll look at her and separate them forever.
In other words, Duffy's version is a feminist satire. It turns Eurydice—a passive victim in the original myth—into a clever protagonist who laughs off Orpheus's glorious reputation and takes charge of her own fate.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 1-112
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Irony
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Repetition
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Apostrophe
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Alliteration
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Metaphor
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"Eurydice" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- The Underworld
- Shade
- Nowhen
- Full stop
- Black hole
- Down to the ground
- Eternal Repose
- His Muse
- Abstract nouns
- Weakness for
- Ye Gods
- Death's door
- Big O
- Lyre
- Pitch
- Verse-wise
- Blurb
- Shoals
- Sullen
- Bollocks
- Dark Lady
- White Goddess
- Doubtless
- The Deal
- Bloodless ghosts
- Sisyphus
- Tantalus
- Images, metaphors, similes
- Octaves, sextets, quatrains, couplets
- Elegies, limericks, villanelles
- Passé
- Late
- Sell-by date
- Schlep
- Willed
- Filching
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(Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “Girls, I was dead and down / in the Underworld”)
The abode of the dead in Greek mythology. Traditionally imagined as a realm under the earth or at the far edge of the sea.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Eurydice”
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Form
"Eurydice" is a free verse poem containing lines and stanzas of mixed length.
The shortest line in the poem is one syllable: "Him" (line 29). The longest is 21 syllables: "than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess, etc., etc." (line 49; "etc." is pronounced "et cetera"). The stanzas cover a similarly wide range: the shortest are one line apiece (lines 50 and 55), while the longest is 18 lines (lines 11-28).
These variations break the poem's extended narrative into organic-seeming units, arranged according to the flow of the narrative rather than some arbitrary scheme. In other words, these units are more like prose paragraphs than conventional stanzas.
This style suits the casual tone and satirical approach of the poem, which, in many ways, pokes fun at poetry itself. It also reinforces the conceit that Eurydice is telling her story, in a loose and conversational way, to a casual group of listeners.
Although the poem has no meter or rhyme scheme, it does contain occasional rhyme, which adds an extra element of playfulness and surprise to an already funny dramatic monologue. In fact, one four-line stanza (lines 56-59) contains a quadruple rhyme ("tears"/"years"/"beers"/"ears"), even though it doesn't follow any kind of meter. It's no accident that this stanza describes Orpheus's poem. In English-language poetry, rhyme without meter is often considered amateurish and clunky—so Eurydice may be suggesting, here, that Orpheus's supposedly brilliant verse is really a bunch of doggerel.
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Meter
"Eurydice" is a free verse poem, so it doesn't have a meter. Its lack of a regular rhythm or conventional form reflects its skeptical, satirical stance toward traditional poetry. (Especially poetry that has come out of the male-dominated Western tradition.) Readers can hear this skepticism in lines 48-49, for example, as Eurydice rejects male poets' simplistic portrayals of women:
[...] rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself
than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess, etc., etc.Readers can hear it in lines 63-65 as well:
[...] to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,
octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,
elegies, limericks, villanelles [...]For this speaker, traditional poems and poetic forms are a "trap[]" that have historically boxed in women's voices. Finding an original form for her own narrative, and avoiding the strictness of meter, seems to be part of her strategy for escaping that trap.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Eurydice" has no set rhyme scheme. However, it does contain sporadic end rhymes, which add liveliness to the poem's comic narrative. Examples include "life"/"wife" in lines 61-62, "walked"/"talked" in lines 76-77 (a standalone rhymed couplet), "Late"/"date" in lines 85-86, "stay"/"grey" in lines 90-91, "schlep"/"step" in lines 92 and 94, and the light rhyme on "talented"/"dead" in lines 110 and 112 (the poem's final line).
The looseness and casualness of this rhyming reflects the poem's cheeky attitude toward traditional poetry. Eurydice doesn't see herself as a Serious Poet like Orpheus, but it's as if, by turning a rhyme now and then, she's showing that she can use his poetic tools whenever she wants.
The most prominent rhyming comes in lines 56-59, a quatrain in which all four lines rhyme: "tears"/"years"/"beers"/"ears." This stanza follows the line "Orpheus strutted his stuff" (line 55), so it's describing the impact of Orpheus's poetry. The sudden heavy rhyming, combined with the lack of meter, sounds clunky and jarring—so it may be meant to capture the way Orpheus's "stuff" sounds.
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“Eurydice” Speaker
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"Eurydice" is a dramatic monologue, meaning that its speaker is a character separate from the poet. It's voiced by Eurydice, a well-known figure from Greek mythology. However, Duffy's portrayal of this character departs sharply from tradition.
In the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Eurydice dies from a snake bite while fleeing from a god who was lustfully pursuing her. Her husband, the poet/musician Orpheus, descends to the underworld (the abode of the dead) in hopes of bringing her back to the upper world of the living. The king and queen of the underworld grant his wish, on the condition that he walk ahead of Eurydice and not look back at her till both are safely in the upper world. But at the last minute, Orpheus doubts that she's really behind him, glances back, and dooms her to return to the land of the dead.
In Duffy's feminist version, Eurydice is very happy in the silence of the underworld ("It suited me down to the ground"). She's especially glad to be rid of Orpheus, whose arrogant personality and pompous poetry she hates. She has no desire to return to the upper world with him, and at the last minute, she tricks him into glancing backward so that she can stay behind (lines 96-109). She's now telling her story, on her terms, to an audience of unidentified "Girls."
At the same time, she's deflating the legend surrounding Orpheus (whom she mockingly calls "Big O"), and rejecting the female stereotypes ("Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady," etc.) that populate the male-dominated literary tradition. Rather than letting men define her, she's taken control of her own narrative, along with her own life (or death).
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“Eurydice” Setting
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The setting of the poem is "the Underworld" (line 2) of Greek mythology. Generally, the ancient Greeks imagined the underworld as an invisible realm beneath the earth, where the "shade[s]," or ghosts, of the dead congregate in the afterlife. This realm was also called Hades, after the god who ruled over it. In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus descends to the underworld while he's still alive, on a failed quest to rescue his dead wife, Eurydice.
Duffy's depiction of this setting has some traditional elements, including dim lighting (the "purple" mentioned in line 91) and the presence of "bloodless ghosts" (line 56). It particularly emphasizes the silence of the dead (lines 4-10):
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full stop, a black hole
Where the words had to come to an end.
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.However, just as the poem features unorthodox portrayals of Orpheus and Eurydice, it also puts its own spin on the underworld. For example, it invents a moment of relief for two famous underworld figures from Greek myth. One is Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder eternally up a hill; the other is Tantalus, condemned to go hungry and thirsty while food and water remained just out of his reach. In lines 57-58, Orpheus's song interrupts their torment:
Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years.
Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers.The fact that Eurydice has to describe this underworld to her listeners, in the past tense (see line 1), suggests that she may not be there anymore. But it's not clear who her listeners are, and it's not clear where else she (or her ghost) might be.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Eurydice”
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Literary Context
The Scottish-born Carol Ann Duffy (1955-present) is the first (and so far, the only) woman to serve as Poet Laureate of the UK. A working-class writer and an out lesbian, she brought fresh air and new perspectives to a laureateship historically dominated by (mostly) straight, white, middle-class men.
"Eurydice" is one of many poems in her collection The World's Wife (1999) that reflects on the joys and difficulties of being a woman in a sexist world. The poems in The World's Wife are monologues in the voices of mythological and historical women from Medusa to Frau Freud to Mrs. Midas. By giving these largely silent figures their own say, Duffy offers feminist critiques of myth, history, and literature.
"Eurydice" critiques the sexism of the literary world, and Western literature, in particular. It reflects on an age ("back then," line 34) when "publishers" (lines 51-52) tended to elevate male poets above their equally talented female peers, and when male writers often reduced the women in their professional orbits to sexualized "Muse[s]" (line 22) or unpaid assistants (see line 45: "I'd done all the typing myself"). At the same time, it depicts a female hero (Eurydice) thwarting the misogyny around her and taking control of her own story.
In her fondness for dramatic monologues, Duffy follows in the footsteps of writers like Robert Browning, but she also fits into the contemporary poetry scene around her. Margaret Atwood, for example, has used the form for similar feminist purposes. Duffy is also one of many 20th-century poets to embrace free verse (including in "Eurydice," though this poem playfully sprinkles in some end rhyme). She sees herself as a descendent both of more recent free verse poets like Sylvia Plath and of Romantics like John Keats. In turn, she has influenced (and championed) writers like Alice Oswald, Kate Clanchy, and Jeanette Winterson.
Historical Context
Carol Ann Duffy's poetic career took off during the age of Margaret Thatcher, whose long tenure as Prime Minister of the UK was marked by class struggle, poverty, and the dismantling of post-war welfare institutions. Thatcher rose to power in the aftermath of the turbulent 1970s, and her libertarian economics and conservative social policies (as well as her prominent role as the first woman Prime Minister of the UK) made her a divisive and much-reviled figure. Many working-class people took a particular dislike to Thatcher for her union-busting and her failure to support impoverished families in industrial fields like coal mining.
Perhaps in response to a growing social conservatism, the '70s and '80s in England were also marked by a rise in feminist consciousness. Books like Susan Faludi's Backlash examined the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which society was reacting against the women's movement, and third-wave feminism, focused on identity and political power, began to emerge out of the second-wave feminism of the '60s.
Duffy's work, with its interest in women's inner lives and areas of female experience often neglected by the literary world, reflects the tumultuous political world in which she came of age.
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More “Eurydice” Resources
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External Resources
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Hadestown — Clips from the award-winning Broadway musical "Hadestown," a reimagining of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
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The Poem Aloud — A reading/adaptation of "Eurydice."
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Orpheus and Eurydice — A summary of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
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The Poet's Life and Work — Read a short biography of Carol Ann Duffy at the Poetry Foundation.
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An Interview with the Poet — An interview with Duffy after her appointment as Poet Laureate of the UK.
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Duffy on Writing — Carol Ann Duffy discusses her creative process and advice for writers.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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