The Full Text of “Medusa”
The Full Text of “Medusa”
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“Medusa” Introduction
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"Medusa" first appeared in Carol Ann Duffy's 1999 collection The World's Wife. The poem is a dramatic monologue written in the voice of Medusa, a mythical figure with venomous snakes for hair and whose stare turns people to stone. Medusa is both terrifying and sympathetic in the poem, a woman transformed into a monster by her anger over her husband's affairs. The poem points to the destructive potential of jealousy and rage, and to the way that men use women, only to discard them when they're no longer young and beautiful.
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“Medusa” Summary
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As I became more and more suspicious and jealous, my hair transformed into grimy, hissing snakes. It was like my own thoughts were wriggling out of my scalp.
My breath, once as fresh as a bride's, became sour and filled my gray lungs with a terrible stench. Now, my mouth and tongue are nasty and vicious, and my teeth have turned into yellow fangs. My tears are deadly, shooting from my eyes like bullets. Are you afraid of me?
You should be scared of me, because I love you—you perfect man, my very own Greek God. I know that you're going leave me and cheat on me, so as far as I'm concerned, you might as well get turned into stone.
I took a quick look at a buzzing bee and it turned into a lifeless gray pebble that fell out of the sky. I took a quick look at a songbird and it turned into crumbly gravel that sprayed down all around.
When I looked at an orange cat, it turned into a brick and broke the bowl of milk it'd been drinking. I looked at a snorting pig and it turned into a giant stone sitting in a pile of crap.
When I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I saw that our toxic relationship had turned me into a monster. I looked at my reflection and saw a dragon. I saw fire pouring out of a mountain's mouth.
And then you show up, with your hard heart and your fighting words, and all the girls you cheated on me with. Didn't I used to be beautiful? Didn't I used to be a young, sweet-scented girl too?
Now just look at me.
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“Medusa” Themes
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The Destructive Nature of Jealousy and Rage
The poem uses the myth of the Medusa—a fearsome, snake-haired woman from Greek mythology who could turn people to stone simply by looking at them—to illustrate the devastating effects of jealousy and rage. The poem reimagines Medusa as a modern wife who suspects her husband of being unfaithful, and charts her transformation from beautiful young bride into a terrifying, murderous monster. This new self, both pitiable and frightening, reveals the destructive potential of anger, bitterness, and suspicion.
It isn’t clear how well-founded the wife’s jealousy is. What is clear is that she has been completely unraveled by her suspicions. These have “turned the hairs on [her] head to filthy snakes,” and she has become “foul mouthed now, foul tongued, / yellow fanged.” She hasn’t just been transformed into something different, but into something altogether hideous and violent. The speaker isn’t proud of this: her disgusted descriptions of her body suggest she’s starting to repel even herself. It’s thus not always clear whether the reader is meant to pity the speaker or despise her. She is at once relatable in her heartache and a terrifying example of rage left unchecked.
On the one hand, the speaker is clearly suffering. On the other, her grief is dangerous—her tears are like “bullets,” and her question to her husband—“Are you terrified?”—seems half pleading, half rhetorical. Does she want to be assured she is not terrifying, that she is still human and lovable? It seems so, yet then she turns around and says, “Be terrified / It’s you I love.” As much as the speaker hates what she’s become, it seems she hates the person who hurt her even more—and would rather he “were stone” than leave her.
As the speaker turns a wide range of innocent creatures into stone—a bee, a bird, a cat, a pig—it becomes clear that her anger isn’t just directed at the unfaithful husband. She doesn't seem able to turn it off, and so her jealousy becomes a destructive force. Even if someone wanted to comfort her, how could they? They'd only turn to stone under her furious gaze.
By the end of the poem, it becomes clear that the speaker’s fear of being betrayed by the husband has disfigured her. She is no longer recognizable as the person she once was. The speaker looks in the mirror and sees “a Gorgon” (i.e., a hideous woman from Greek myth), “a dragon.” Her fury makes her ugly, powerful, dangerous. The poem then ends with another question that might be interpreted as either pleading or rhetorical: “Wasn’t I beautiful / Wasn’t I fragrant and young?” The speaker again almost seems to want reassurance, to be made to feel human again. Yet these questions are followed by the chilling statement, “Look at me now.” It's too late; the damage is done. The speaker has become unrecognizable to herself.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-42
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Misogyny and Female Suffering
In simply telling this story from Medusa’s perspective, this poem implicitly offers sympathy for a character whose very existence suggests misogynist tropes about women, jealousy, and rage. The speaker is a monster, but if her husband actually betrayed her—and the poem implies that he did—then he's essentially the one who made her that way. In this way, the poem points to how men use and discard women, destroying them in the process, and to the way women often end up paying the price for men’s misdeeds.
Much of the poem can be read as playing into old stereotypes about women who have been spurned in love. Early in the poem, for example, the speaker describes her transformation, saying, “My bride’s breath soured, stank / in the grey bags of my lungs.” The intensity and suddenness of this transformation—from bride to monster—can be read as a subtle criticism of the binaries forced onto women by men. The poem suggests that women are allowed to be either a bride or a monster, a virgin or a whore, good or bad—but nothing more complex than that.
And while the majority of the poem focuses on the hideousness of the speaker, the ending suggests that she isn’t to blame for her monstrousness. After staring at her own ugliness in the mirror, the speaker directs her attention to her husband, who has a shield for a heart, a sword for a tongue, and an entourage of girls. This illuminates the husband’s misdeeds: he refuses to be vulnerable or take responsibility for the ways he has hurt his wife, he is cruel with his words, and he is unfaithful. The speaker then reminds her husband that she too was once “beautiful,” “fragrant,” and “young.” In other words, she implies that her husband will do to the next woman what he has already done to her: use her and discard her, leaving her to suffer the consequences of his misdeeds.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-42
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Medusa”
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Lines 1-2
A suspicion, a ...
... in my mind,The first lines of "Medusa" immerse the reader in a suffering, jealous mind.
The speaker begins with a dramatic, ominous tricolon: "A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy." The asyndeton here, which puts these words in sequence without a conjunction like "and," means that it's not clear whether these three words describe separate threads in the speaker's thoughts, or whether they are just three ways of describing of a single emotion.
This ambiguity unbalances readers right from the start, and leaves them unsure what's going on in this suspicious, doubting, jealous speaker's mind. Does she herself even know whether these feelings are real, or how they connect to each other? The quick movement between these words suggests that she's trapped in swift, painful feelings.
Her use of the word "grew" also feels rather sinister. Her feelings seem to have their own nasty life, and they're only getting bigger.
This introduction, with its pain, confusion, and urgency, prepares the reader for a new take on the Medusa of the poem's title. This will be a poem that pits misogynistic tropes about women against a more complicated and sympathetic portrayal of a famous female monster.
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Lines 3-5
which turned the ...
... on my scalp. -
Lines 6-9
My bride’s breath ...
... yellow fanged. -
Lines 10-12
There are bullet ...
... Be terrified. -
Lines 13-17
It’s you I ...
... you were stone. -
Lines 18-23
I glanced at ...
... spattered down. -
Lines 24-29
I looked at ...
... heap of shit. -
Lines 30-35
I stared in ...
... of a mountain. -
Lines 36-39
And here you ...
... girls, your girls. -
Lines 40-42
Wasn’t I beautiful ...
... at me now.
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“Medusa” Symbols
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Stone
Stone symbolizes the negative consequences of jealousy and rage in the poem—namely, isolation and loneliness. In Greek mythology, Medusa could turn men to stone simply by looking at them. This poem turns that mythology on its head a little, as the speaker's ability to turn everything around her into stone feels less like a superpower and more like a curse. It offers her a chance for revenge, sure, but that revenge turns the world around her into lifeless statues. Her rage is understandable, yet it's not making her feel any better; on the contrary, it literally makes her more alone.
It also makes the speaker herself more hard-hearted. Her tears are bullets, something that can kill whoever stands in its way—and, in doing so, destroy any chance of comfort. Think about it: given that they're a means of expressing pain, tears often elicit sympathy. Yet Medusa's tears are deadly weapons. In essence, then, stone represents the lethal force of the speaker's rage but also the void left by "love gone bad," the way that anger and vengeance hurt the speaker herself as much as anyone else by closing her off from the world and the opportunity for healing.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 10: “There are bullet tears in my eyes”
- Line 17: “So better be for me if you were stone.”
- Lines 18-29: “I glanced at a buzzing bee, / a dull grey pebble fell / to the ground. / I glanced at a singing bird, / a handful of dusty gravel / spattered down. / I looked at a ginger cat, / a housebrick / shattered a bowl of milk. / I looked at a snuffling pig, / a boulder rolled / in a heap of shit.”
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Snakes
Snakes in the poem symbolize the speaker's her suspicions, doubts, and jealousies. These feelings are like snakes in that they're "filthy" and venomous, terrifying and grotesque, capable of lashing out to poison everything around the speaker.
The speaker compares the snakes directly to her thoughts in lines 4-5, when she says that it was "as though [her] thoughts / hissed and spat on [her] scalp." This implies that the speaker is repulsed by her own thoughts—or, more accurately, she imagines her thoughts behind repulsed by the speaker herself. The speaker thus seems fully aware that her jealousy and suspicions are no good for her, that they've transformed her into a repulsive monster. At the same time, the snakes reflect how those thoughts and feelings have taken on a venomous life of their own, ready to strike at and poison whoever dares to come near.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5: “A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy / grew in my mind, / which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes / as though my thoughts / hissed and spat on my scalp.”
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“Medusa” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
The poem contains many direct allusions to the Greek myth of Medusa. For instance, line 3 ("which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes") and lines 18-29 ("I glanced at [...] heap of shit") refer to the most well-known aspects of Medusa: her snaky hair and her stony gaze.
In fact, allusion is so central to the poem that it isn't entirely clear whether the reader is meant to interpret the speaker as a modern Medusa herself, or just as someone who identifies with Medusa. The poem can be read either way (or both ways at once!), but the reader's choice may influence the meaning of other, more subtle allusions.
For instance, the speaker addresses the husband as her own "Greek God." This may allude to a version of the myth by the poet Ovid, in which the god Poseidon seduces (or perhaps rapes) Medusa in Athena's temple. Athena, enraged at the desecration of her temple, punishes Medusa by turning her hair into snakes. This interpretation fits in with the poem's theme of women being forced to pay for men's misdeeds: after all, Poseidon isn't punished, only Medusa is.
However, the line might also be metaphorical. The speaker may be admitting that she worshiped the husband, adored him, which makes his betrayal even worse. Perhaps it's also a little ironic: the speaker may be hinting at the husband's egotistical cruelty, as the Greek gods were known for being arrogant and capricious, punishing mortals for sport.
Near the end of the poem, the speaker looks at herself in the mirror, seeing the monster she has become. The mirror is another important part of Medusa's mythology, as looking at her with a mirror is the only way to see her without being turned to stone. In fact, Medusa is eventually defeated by the hero Perseus when he uses a mirror to sneak up on her and behead her. In this way, the mirror alludes to the mythical Medusa's downfall, and thus to the speaker's as well.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Line 3
- Lines 8-17
- Lines 18-32
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Parallelism
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Repetition
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Metaphor
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Imagery
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Rhetorical Question
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"Medusa" 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.
- Greek God
- Gorgon
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(Location in poem: Lines 13-14: “It’s you I love, / perfect man, Greek God, my own;”)
As the husband in this poem is never named, this might be an allusion to a specific deity from Greek mythology—or just a way of showing that the speaker of the poem worships and adores her husband.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Medusa”
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Form
"Medusa" is broken into eight stanzas. The second through seventh are sestets (stanzas comprised of six lines), while the first is a quintet and the eighth is a single line. The poem is a dramatic monologue, meaning that the speaker is addressing someone specific. In this case, she's speaking to the husband who has betrayed her.
The poem doesn't use any conventional forms (for example, it's not a sonnet or villanelle), but develops organically, with a mixture of line lengths. The last, single-line stanza is comprised of only four words, providing a dramatic punch to its double-meaning ending.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse, so it doesn't stick to any patterns of meter or rhyme. This keeps the poem feeling casual and unpredictable—perhaps placing the listener on edge, unsure what this dangerous speaker will say next.
While the poem doesn't use meter in any conventional sense, there are subtle moments where syllable counts affect the rhythm. For example, lines 37-39:
with a shield | for a heart
and a sword | for a tongue
and your girls, | your girls."It's subtle, but lines 37 and 38 set up an expectation with the use of parallelism (the use of similar grammatical structures). Both lines are six syllables long, and both lines contain two stressed syllables in the same places in the line (the third and sixth syllables); technically speaking, the lines are made up of two anapests (poetic feet that go da-da-DUM).
However, line 39 disrupts the pattern; it only has five syllables, so the second stress falls a beat earlier (the first foot is again an anapest, but the second is an iamb: da-DUM). The effect is that this line has more of an impact than the two which came before it. It seems that the husband's "girls" are a more painful blow to the speaker than his "shield" of a heart or his swordlike tongue.
Similarly, in the last three lines of the poem, lines 40-41 ("Wasn't I beautiful [...] fragrant and young?") are all either six or seven syllables long, and are also linked by parallelism and by the fact that they are questions. This allows line 42, the final line of the poem, to land with even more punch, as it deviates from the pattern established by the prior lines. It is shorter, it doesn't have a parallel grammatical structure. And it isn't a question, but a bare, grim statement—or a command.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Medusa" has no rhyme scheme, and only uses rhyme sporadically. Almost all of its rhymes are slant or near rhymes, meaning that they don't have identical sounds, but simply similar ones. For example, in lines 8-9 ("I'm foul mouthed [...] yellow fanged."), there is an end rhyme between "tongued" and "fanged." This rhyme isn't perfect because the vowel sounds in the middle of the words don't match (a perfect rhyme with "fanged," for instance, would be "hanged"). However, because of the /g/ and /d/ consonance, the endings are similar enough that the reader feels an echo between the two words.
Other examples of slant end rhymes in the poem are "eyes" and "terrified" in lines 10 and 11, "own," "home," and "stone" in lines 14, 16, and 17, "ground" and "down" in lines 20 and 23, and "Gorgon" and "dragon" in lines 32-33.
These moments of almost-but-not-quite rhyme might reflect the speaker's feelings of alienation from her former self. Perhaps she no longer "rhymes" with her husband, or with the young bride she once was; her life has fallen out of joint.
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“Medusa” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem can be read either as a modern version of Medusa herself, or as a married woman who identifies with Medusa's situation as a hated and hateful monster. Either way, she is someone whose husband has betrayed her.
This betrayal has brought out the worst in her, leaving her full of rage and eager to turn her husband to stone. But at the same time, there is still a part of her that wants to be reassured that there's still a chance for her, that she hasn't really been discarded and turned into this awful creature. Despite her rage, the speaker is sympathetic—mostly because her rage is justified! The indifference of the husband in the face of her pain is also monstrous, yet he is not hated for it. She is the one who must pay the price for his misdeeds.
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“Medusa” Setting
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The setting for this poem is largely in the speaker's mind (and the speaker's mirror). The poem focuses on the mental state of the speaker, who is both bereft and furious. All of the things that might be read as physical descriptions in the poem—hair turning to snakes, the buzzing bee and singing bird, the ginger cat and the snuffling pig—can all be equally interpreted as metaphor.
In other words: the speaker could very well be a modern Medusa looking at her surroundings and turning things to stone. But she could also just be a woman whose thoughts are so soured that it feels like everything has turned to stone. She doesn't see a pig but "a boulder rolled / in a heap of shit." She doesn't see herself in the mirror, but rather "a Gorgon," "a dragon." In other words, she doesn't feel like herself anymore; her lover's betrayal has completely stripped her of her former sense of identity. With her loss of identity comes a loss of the world as she knew it. The newly stony landscape around her reflects this inner tragedy.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Medusa”
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Literary Context
“Medusa” was published in Carol Ann Duffy's fifth poetry collection, The World’s Wife (1999). In this collection, Duffy writes from the viewpoints of the wives, sisters, and female contemporaries of famous and infamous men. Some of her characters include Mrs. Pilate, Queen Kong, Mrs. Sisyphus, Frau Freud, Circe, Elvis’s Twin Sister, and Pygmalion’s Bride. In witty, conversational language, The World’s Wife subverts the traditional male perspective, examining instead the ways that women have been denied the full breadth of their humanity.
Duffy was deeply influenced by Sylvia Plath, whose Collected Works she received for her 25th birthday. She would go on to edit an edition of Plath’s poems, and to write a piece for The Guardian about how Plath's work, with its revolutionary interest in women's internal lives, blazed a trail Duffy would follow in her own poetry.
This poem in particular, of course, also draws from the Greek myth of Medusa, which has seen countless iterations and interpretations throughout history. In early depictions, Medusa was a beautiful woman with flowing hair that attracted the lustful attention of men; other times she was depicted as a hideous monster with snaky hair and eyes that could turn men to stone. She has been portrayed as both mortal and immortal, victim and villain. In some tellings, she was seduced by the god Poseidon in the temple of the goddess Athena; in others, she was taken by force. Either way, Medusa was punished for defiling the temple by being turned into a monster whom men would come to fear. Perhaps the most well-known aspect of her story is her defeat, when the famous Greek hero Perseus used a mirror to sneak up on her and decapitate her, thus securing his own place in history.
It wasn't until the 20th century and the rise of feminist theory that Medusa became subject to a more critical lens. Since then, she has become a common symbol of female rage and power, and it is through this lens that Duffy wrote this poem.
Historical Context
Duffy was born in Scotland in 1955 and came of age during second-wave feminism. While early feminism had been focused primarily on securing women's right to vote, second-wave feminism addressed a wider range of issues including reproductive rights, domestic violence, workplace equality, and more. Second-wave feminism was responding to many of the restrictive gender norms of the mid-20th century, including the idea that women's purpose in life was to become demure mothers and wives.
By the 1990s, when this poem was written, third-wave feminists began more actively seeking to upend patriarchal norms altogether—and with them, the treatment of the straight, white, male perspective as the model for all human experience. "Medusa" exemplifies this aim, adding nuance to and garnering sympathy for a character typically treated as nothing more than monstrous. While pointing out the devastating effects of jealousy, the poem implicitly critiques the broad societal rejection of angry women as irrational "Gorgon[s]." It gives physical manifestation to women's rage upon being mistreated and betrayed (and, the poem implies, cast aside for a younger model).
It's also worth considering the poem within the context of Duffy's own relationship with poet Adrian Henri. She and Henri began a relationship when Henri was 39 and Duffy was 16; they lived together for 10 years, with Henri being not only Dufffy's romantic partner but also her mentor. Henri was persistently unfaithful, and it is likely that this formative relationship is at the heart of some of the core themes in The World's Wife.
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More “Medusa” Resources
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External Resources
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Another Poem From "The World's Wife" — Listen to Duffy herself as she reads and discusses another poem from "The World's Wife." This one comes from the perspective of another mythological character: the wife of King Midas.
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A Short Biography of Duffy — Read a brief introduction to Carol Ann Duffy from the Poetry Foundation.
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Images of Medusa — Take a look at the many different ways Medusa has been portrayed throughout history.
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Feminist Retellings In ‘The World’s Wife’ — Read an essay on the subversive poetry collection that "Medusa" comes from.
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A Reading of the Poem — Listen to the poem read aloud.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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