The Full Text of “Mrs Aesop”
The Full Text of “Mrs Aesop”
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“Mrs Aesop” Introduction
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Carol Ann Duffy's "Mrs Aesop" is a poem about an ancient Greek storyteller famous for his fables, or short tales that teach a moral lesson. The poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue from the imagined perspective of Aesop's long-suffering wife, who portrays her famous husband as a condescending, impotent bore whose incessant moralizing has ruined their marriage. The poem implies that Aesop's holier-than-though attitude actually stems from deep insecurities about his masculinity, and cheekily suggests that audiences take the teachings of famous men with a grain of salt. "Mrs Aesop" first appeared in Duffy's 1999 book The World's Wife, a collection of poems told from the perspective of the female counterparts of famous men.
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“Mrs Aesop” Summary
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The poem's speaker, Mrs. Aesop, begins her monologue by bluntly expressing how she finds her husband so boring that he'd make Purgatory even worse than it already is. Aesop is a little man who doesn't make a good first impression, so to get people to like him, he tries to impress them. After he recites a famous aphorism to his wife about dead men telling no tales (meaning the dead can't give away anyone's secrets), Mrs. Aesop makes fun of him by twisting the language of his aphorism about how a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush into an insult: the bird in his hand pooped on him, and the two in the bush were worthless. He's utterly tiresome, she says.
Mrs. Aesop hates going anywhere with her husband. He's slow, taking his sweet time to look around before stepping outside their property. He combs the hedges in search of animals to describe like humans (i.e., a shy mouse and a sly fox) and make up stories about, even imagining that common animals like crows and donkeys must want to be like more majestic animals like eagles and lions.
Mrs. Aesop tells a story about one walk with her husband she particularly hated. They walked past a sleeping hare in a ditch—of course, Aesop had to stop and write a note about it—and, later in their walk, they came upon someone's pet tortoise. While she compared the tortoise's glacial speed to how slow their marriage feels, Aesop used the moment to quote the moral from one of his most famous fables: slow and steady wins the race. Mrs. Aesop insults him.
In her frustration, Mrs. Aesop asks a series of rhetorical questions alluding to details in Aesop's tedious tales. For example, what race was he talking about in "The Tortoise and the Hare"? What sour grapes was he talking about in "The Fox and the Grapes"? She also alludes to the phrase "you can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear" and to the stories "The Dog in the Manger" and "The Fisherman and the Little Fish," questioning the existence of any purse, pig, dog, or fish. Aesop's stories are so boring that she nearly falls asleep when he tells them. She thinks Aesop just tells the stories for the sake of telling them. She mockingly quotes him comparing how actions are louder than words, which reminds her of their sex life.
Aesop is devilishly bad at sex. One night, Mrs. Aesop says that she made up her own fable to make fun of her husband, specifically targeting his sexual impotence. Her heart, she says, has grown blacker than the pot in the famous idiom about "the pot calling the kettle black," which she proves by using a double entendre to threaten to chop off his penis to make herself feel better. Having finally silenced her husband, Mrs. Aesop gleefully claims the last laugh.
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“Mrs Aesop” Themes
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The Tedium of Moralizing
"Mrs. Aesop" is a dramatic monologue from the point of view of the wife of Aesop, an ancient Greek storyteller famous for his fables (stories that teaches a moral lesson). While Aesop is traditionally considered a very wise figure, his wife describes him as a boring, patronizing man whose incessant moralizing has ruined their marriage. Instead of making someone a better person, the poem thus suggests, relentless moralizing can distract from actual morality—and drive people away in the process.
Mrs. Aesop sees her husband as a smug, tedious bore because of his need to make a moral out of everything. He's consistently distracted, more interested in finding animals to put in his stories and making up pithy lessons than in spending quality time with his wife.
When Aesop sees a tortoise and a hare, for example, he says, "Slow but certain, Mrs Aesop, / wins the race." Mrs. Aesop, meanwhile, compares the tortoise to their relationship: "slow as marriage." The implication is that Aesop's moralizing has made him utterly oblivious to the feelings of those around him, including his wife's immense resentment.
Indeed, Aesop is distant from and formal with his wife. Instead of using her first name or a pet name, he refers to her only as "Mrs. Aesop." The only time he even speaks to her in the poem is to patronizingly quote his own moral lessons at her—hardly a romantic husband!
And despite spending all his time moralizing, there's nothing in the poem to suggest that Aesop is actually more "moral" than anyone else. On the contrary, Mrs. Aesop declares that the real purpose of Aesop's stories is the stories themselves rather than living the good life his fables supposedly teach. Even he doesn't even live by the morals he celebrates. He says, "Action, Mrs. Aesop, speaks louder than words," yet seems to do nothing but talk throughout the entire poem; there’s never an indication that he’s taking any "actions" to improve his own life or their marriage!
Aesop, in this poem, is thus unable to see the irony inherent in who he is: a man who tells fables about how to live a good, moral life, whose storytelling has destroyed his relationship with his wife.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-25
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Fragile Masculinity and Pride
In Duffy's poem, the wife of the famous storyteller Aesop describes her husband not as a wise fable-master but as a man who is deeply insecure in his masculinity. Aesop overcompensates for his physical insecurities by developing a sense of moral superiority that his wife sees through even as he patronizingly tosses lesson after lesson in her face. In this way, the poem considers the fragility of the male ego: behind some men's desire for fame and authority, the poem implies, is nothing more than wounded pride.
The poem quickly establishes that Aesop is not a traditionally "manly" man. Mrs. Aesop describes her husband as "Small," boring, and sexually impotent. He "didn't prepossess," meaning he didn't make a good impression on first meeting people. Thus, "he tried to impress" with his fables; lacking a conventionally masculine presence, he decided to act as though wiser and more moral than everyone around him.
Ironically, some of his fables are about animals who want to be more powerful than they are supposed to be, but Aesop is too proud to apply that lesson to himself. Instead, he overcompensates without considering how his behavior affects those closest to him—like his wife. Indeed, as his wife, Mrs. Aesop is forced to bear the brunt of Aesop's wounded pride. Aesop, focused on showcasing his moral authority, shows no real interest in her. He only talks to her to condescendingly tell her the morals of his stories, and even then he doesn’t notice how she can "barely keep awake."
Unfortunately for Aesop, his overcompensation ultimately backfires when Mrs. Aesop twists his morality tales in order to emasculate him further. Fed up, Mrs. Aesop tears apart both his insecurity and his carefully constructed moral authority at the same time: "I gave him a fable one night / about a little cock that wouldn't crow," she says, going on to threaten to "cut off your tail." She's viciously (and, depending on how much sympathy the reader has for her at this point, quite cruelly) mocking his sexual impotence and threatening to cut off his penis. Aesop, whose identity is based on his stories, is ultimately silenced: "That shut him up," says his wife. The normally verbose Aesop ends the poem with nothing to say.
In suggesting that Aesop's famous morality tales are actually the result of his bruised ego, his wife ultimately robs those tales of some of their power. It's also worth remembering the poem’s context: "Mrs. Aesop" appears in Duffy's book The World's Wife, a collection featuring poems told from the forgotten (or imagined) female counterparts of famous male figures. In granting Mrs. Aesop a (decidedly scathing) voice, the poem also cheekily pokes holes in the unquestioned authority granted so many men from history and myth.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-3
- Lines 9-10
- Lines 14-15
- Lines 17-25
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mrs Aesop”
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Line 1
By Christ, he ... bore for Purgatory.
The title of the poem tells readers that the speaker is Mrs. Aesop, the wife of the ancient Greek storyteller famous for his fables. Aesop, a legendary figure who supposedly lived over 2,500 years ago, is one of the most influential and loved storytellers in history. However, Mrs. Aesop quickly makes clear that she has some major problems with her husband, and her use of contemporary and conversational language provides the first clue that Duffy is using these characters to explore modern themes of marriage, morality, and storytelling.
The poem itself begins in media res, Latin for "in the middle of things," as it expects the reader to understand through context who the "he" in the first line is. This makes it feel almost as if the reader is stepping into the middle of a conversation, with Mrs. Aesop describing to an unknown but trusted listener how her highly-respected husband is actually a total bore. By delivering an unexpected opinion in such an inviting way, the poem beckons the reader to lean in closer, to read on as if a friend is telling them a secret.
The poem opens with Mrs. Aesop making fun of her husband, using colloquial, everyday language to describe how she finds Aesop to be extremely boring. "By Christ," she says, using lightly blasphemous language that establishes her as a cheeky, funny character who is unafraid to speak her mind.
She continues by saying, "he could bore for Purgatory," invoking the notorious place in the Catholic tradition where the souls of the dead go to make up for their sins. By mentioning Purgatory, Mrs. Aesop uses hyperbole to stress how their marriage seems like an endlessly boring place with no end in sight.
While the poem is written in free verse, without a regular meter or rhyme scheme, the first sentence creatively plays with rhythm and sound, using stresses and assonance to show how Mrs. Aesop will continue to use sonic devices to make fun of her husband.
The poem begins with a foot called a spondee, the two stressed syllables in "By Christ," which also share the same long /i/ sound, immediately communicating the sharp, frustrated tone Mrs. Aesop takes when describing Aesop. By repeating the long /or/ sounds in "bore" and "Purgatory," the poem stresses the sound of "boring," cementing for the reader exactly the problem that has come between Mrs. Aesop and her husband.
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Lines 1-5
He was small, ...
... the bush. Tedious. -
Lines 6-10
Going out was ...
... to be lions. -
Lines 11-15
On one appalling ...
... . Asshole. -
Lines 16-19
What race? What ...
... moral of itself. -
Lines 19-21
...
... was diabolical. -
Lines 21-25
I gave him ...
... laughed last, longest.
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“Mrs Aesop” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
"Mrs. Aesop" is chock full of allusions. The first—and most important—allusion is in the title itself, “Mrs. Aesop,” which alludes to Aesop, an ancient Greek storyteller famous for his fables:
- While not much is known about Aesop, including whether he ever really existed, the ancient stories do say that he was small and ugly, which Mrs. Aesop notes in the poem.
- Whether he was real or not, many fables have been attributed to Aesop. The poem alludes to some of his most famous fables, including "The Lion and the Mouse," "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Donkey in Lion's Skin," "The Dog in the Manger," "The Fox and the Grapes," and more.
- Duffy doesn’t include these many allusions to Aesop’s fables to celebrate the famous storyteller. Since Mrs. Aesop sees her husband as a condescending, moralistic bore, she alludes to his own fables to critique, make fun of, and ultimately emasculate him.
One way the poem uses allusion to critique Aesop is through direct quotes. In lines 2-3 ("Dead men,
Mrs Aesop, he'd say, tell no tales"), 14-15 ("Slow / but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race"), and 19-20 ("Action, Mrs A., speaks louder / than words") the poem quotes Aesop directly reciting the morals to some of his stories, after which Mrs. Aesop immediately says something degrading about him.For example, after Aesop says, "Action, Mrs A., speaks louder / than words," Mrs. Aesop pivots to her most biting critique of her husband: their sex life sucks. The effect is simple: direct allusion to a fable is directly correlated with anti-Aesop feeling.
Another way the poem uses allusion is by referencing components of one of Aesop's fables. In the second stanza, Mrs. Aesop mentions a "shy mouse […] a sly fox […] one particular swallow / that couldn’t make a summer." Each of these alludes to a specific fable ("The Lion and the Mouse," "The Fox and the Crow," and "The Swallow and the Crow" respectively), but doesn't expand to include other parts of the fable. By excluding the morals those animals correspond to, the poem shows how Mrs. Aesop really just doesn't care about the fables in the first place.
The final and most cutting way Mrs. Aesop alludes to her husband's fables is to use the language of fables in a way that makes fun of her husband. "The bird in his hand shat on his sleeve," she says, disrupting the moral of the fable "The Hawk and the Nightingale" ("a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush") to disrespect Aesop, only to continue by calling the birds from the fable "worth less" anyway.
In the final stanza, Mrs. Aesop bitingly twists other well-known idioms, including "the pot calling the kettle black" and "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face," to directly threaten his masculinity.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 1-3
- Lines 4-5
- Line 6
- Line 7
- Line 8
- Lines 9-10
- Lines 11-12
- Lines 13-15
- Lines 16-17
- Lines 19-20
- Line 23
- Lines 24-24
- Line 25
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Irony
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Colloquialism
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Rhetorical Question
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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"Mrs Aesop" 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.
- Purgatory
- Prepossess
- Hedgerow
- Jackdaw
- Appalling
- Diabolical
- Cock
- Tail
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory.”)
In Roman Catholic tradition, the place in the afterlife where souls of the dead go to atone for their sins before going to Heaven. While Heaven is a place of eternal joy, and Hell is a place of eternal suffering, Purgatory is temporary and, importantly, often portrayed as bland and boring, a waiting room for the afterlife. By invoking Purgatory, Mrs. Aesop is equating being married to Aesop to a state of ultimate boredom.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mrs Aesop”
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Form
"Mrs. Aesop" is made up of five quintains, or five-line stanzas. Like most of the poems in her collection The World's Wife, the poem is a dramatic monologue told in the voice of its titular character, which also makes it a persona poem. It is written in free verse, with no meter or rhyme scheme, which allows Mrs. Aesop's voice to mimic the natural, conversational patterns of a conversation with a friend.
Although it lacks a concrete rhyme scheme, the poem makes artful use of sonic devices like assonance and alliteration to give certain moments a storybook-like sound, matching the poem's exploration of children's stories and fables.
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Meter
Since "Mrs. Aesop" is written in free verse, it has no set meter. This allows Mrs. Aesop's voice to feel natural and conversational, mimicking the varying patterns and cadences of speech rather than the strict metrical rhythms of more formal poetry.
The way Mrs. Aesop jumps between stories about her husband, quotes (or misquotes) from his fables, and cutting, humorous insults makes the poem sound like Mrs. Aesop is an old friend unloading her sorrows upon the reader. The poem uses wildly varying rhythms to achieve this effect.
For example, listen to the way the third stanza uses the shifting rhythms of speech to ultimately land a punchline:
On one appalling evening stroll, we passed an old hare
snoozing in a ditch—he stopped and made a note—
and then, about a mile further on, a tortoise, somebody's pet,
creeping, slow as marriage, up the road. Slow
but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race. Asshole.Here, Mrs. Aesop tells a story in three sentences of vastly different lengths. First, she introduces the topic and provides the story's set-up in a sentence that sprawls across four lines, including multiple clauses, asides, and interruptions.
Next, she quotes her husband, who speaks with a slow, plodding rhythm across two lines that feel distinctly different from Mrs. Aesop's fast-paced voice. This is because, unlike Mrs. Aesop's free-verse voice, Aesop speaks metrically; "Slow but certain wins the race" is a series of three trochees (poetic feet with a stressed-unstressed beat pattern) followed by a single stressed syllable, making it a catalectic phrase that sounds like a children's rhyme:
Slow but | certain | wins the | race
To fully illustrate just how differently the two characters speak, the stanza finishes with a single word insult made up of two stressed syllables (a spondee; "Ass-hole"), providing a sharp, adult response to Aesop's ponderous quotation.
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Rhyme Scheme
While "Mrs. Aesop" doesn't have a steady rhyme scheme, it uses devices like assonance, internal rhyme, and slant rhyme to call attention to specific words and themes within the text.
For example, take a look at the very first stanza of the poem:
By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory. He was small,
didn't prepossess. So he tried to impress. Dead men,
Mrs Aesop, he'd say, tell no tales. Well let me tell you now
that the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve,
never mind the two worth less in the bush. Tedious.The use of assonance in "By Christ" quickly followed by the assonance/consonance in "bore for Purgatory" immediately show that Mrs. Aesop is skilled in using the type of language her husband employs in his famous fables. She continues in line 2 by rhyming "prepossess" and "impress," building a strong sonic anchor point for the poem's thematic exploration of Aesop's overcompensation for his lack of traditional masculinity.
The rest of the stanza uses the short /eh/ sound many more times: as assonance with "dead," "men," "let," and "never," and again as internal rhyme with "Well" and "tell." The fourth line rhymes "that" and "shat" to introduce Mrs. Aesop's propensity for swearing, an aspect of her character that introduces humor into the poem. The end of the stanza includes a callback to the rhyme in line 2 with the word "less", and finishes up by slant rhyming with the word "Tedious," reinforcing just how creative Mrs. Aesop is in her expression of boredom with her husband.
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“Mrs Aesop” Speaker
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As with every poem in Duffy's collection The World's Wife, the speaker of the poem is the titular character, Mrs. Aesop. Mrs. Aesop's husband is Aesop, an ancient Greek storyteller famous for his fables. Not much is known about Aesop, including whether or not he was actually a real person or if he was ever married, so it's clear that Duffy invented her for the poem.
While Aesop supposedly lived over 2,500 years ago, the way Mrs. Aesop speaks places her solidly in contemporary times. In this way, the poem uses her character to show how history's prioritization of men's stories over those of women has lasted for millennia.
Mrs. Aesop is a dynamic character with a sharp, funny voice, who wants the world to know that Aesop is a condescending husband, a terrible lover, and a boring moralist. She begins her monologue with characteristic bluntness, using blasphemy ("By Christ") to say that her famous husband is actually as boring as Purgatory. She continues to demean her husband for being small and insecure, and she expresses total disdain for his fables, which she finds boring. She's very witty, twisting the morals of his stories to show how absurd his obsession with fables is. Additionally, Mrs. Aesop is quite vulgar, completely comfortable using swear words and other colloquialisms in her tirade against Aesop. Finally, she's completely honest, not shying away from talking about her problems with their sex life.
Her unguarded voice and cutting, comedic tone make her both funny and, perhaps, sympathetic to the reader. When she finally silences Aesop and claims the last laugh, the reader might be laughing along with her.
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“Mrs Aesop” Setting
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The poem's allusion to Aesop would theoretically place the poem in Greece in the late 500s BCE. However, the poem contains a number of clues that actually place the setting in more contemporary times, most likely somewhere in rural Britain.
The first clue that the poem isn't about ancient Greece comes in the first line, which begins by referencing Christ, who wouldn't be born for over 500 years after Aesop's death! It goes on to mention Purgatory, a Roman Catholic idea that wouldn't exist until over 1,000 years after the death of Christ. And the mention of hedgerows in line 7 ends up placing the poem much later, as hedgerows are a ubiquitous presence in rural England (where they mark property lines between various farms and other plots of land).
By placing these characters from ancient Greece somewhere in recent England, the poem develops a feminist theme: the stories of women have been ignored for millennia in favor of those of famous men, and it's finally time to hear what the long-ignored women of history have to say.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Mrs Aesop”
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Literary Context
Carol Ann Duffy is one of the most well-known and highly-acclaimed contemporary poets in the UK. Born in Scotland in 1955 to working-class parents, in 2009 she became the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ person to be appointed poet laureate of the United Kingdom. Her influences include modernist poets like T.S. Eliot, Romantic poets like John Keats and William Wordsworth, and, most relevantly, free verse poets like Sylvia Plath, whose exploration of women's interior lives would prove foundational to Duffy's own poetry.
"Mrs Aesop" was included in Duffy's famous 1999 book The World's Wife, a collection of poems all told from the point of view of the female counterparts of some of history and mythology's most famous men, including Mrs. Darwin, Mrs. Sisyphus, Medusa, and more. Duffy's poems offer a feminist retelling of history by giving voice to women who have long been ignored and silenced.
"Mrs Aesop," of course, is based on Aesop, a legendary figure who lived over 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece. His fables, which were originally spread by word of mouth, have since been printed and reprinted countless times in numerous languages. As such, Aesop is undoubtedly one of the most influential storytellers in history. By telling the story of Aesop's wife, who summarily calls Aesop a boring, impotent hypocrite, Duffy's poem critiques the entire canon of storytelling, implying that the teachings of even the most influential men can often be taken with a grain of salt.
Historical Context
The rise of Carol Ann Duffy's poetic career coincided with two major developments: the shift from second-wave to third-wave feminism and the age of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the UK.
Having secured suffrage and other legal rights for women, second-wave feminism began in the '60s, demanding an end to the gender norms that expected women to solely be wives, mothers, and homemakers. One woman who expanded the possibilities for what women could be was Margaret Thatcher, who was elected the first female Prime Minister of the UK under the promise of libertarian economics and conservative social policies. Thatcher's 11-year tenure was marked by inflation, unemployment, poverty, and union struggles, and she was greatly disliked by the working-class communities where Duffy was raised.
Third-wave feminism began in the late '80s partly in response to the social conservatism Thatcher embodied, and sought to critique the patriarchal social norms that it saw both in society in general and second-wave feminism in particular. Responding to this tumultuous time, Duffy's poems give voice to the too-often forgotten women of history with her characteristic humor, imagination, and compassion.
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More “Mrs Aesop” Resources
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External Resources
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Aesop's Fables — Read an illustrated selection of Aesop's Fables presented by the Library of Congress.
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Duffy on Sylvia Plath — Read an article by Duffy on how Sylvia Plath has influenced her.
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On Aesop — Learn more about Aesop's life, with illustrations from a rare 1687 manuscript.
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On Fables — Learn more about fables as a genre, including how to write one of your own.
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Duffy's Life and Work — Learn more about Duffy in this biography from the Poetry Foundation.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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