The Full Text of “Mrs Darwin”
The Full Text of “Mrs Darwin”
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“Mrs Darwin” Introduction
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"Mrs Darwin" takes the form of an imagined diary entry by Emma Darwin, wife of the naturalist Charles Darwin, in which she recounts an 1852 trip to the zoo where she told her husband that he resembles a chimpanzee. By cheekily implying that Emma may have given Charles the idea that humans evolved from apes, the poem highlights how women's contributions to history are often erased or ignored. The speaker's remark also sounds like a subtle dig at her husband's manners, and the poem thus further suggests that Charles Darwin, despite being a larger-than-life figure, was as a regular, flawed human being. "Mrs Darwin" appeared in Carol Ann Duffy's 1999 collection, The World's Wife, which features poems told from the perspective of female counterparts of famous male figures from history and myth.
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“Mrs Darwin” Summary
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The poem begins by indicating the specific day it takes place: April 7, 1852 (a few years before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species). The speaker, revealed by the title to be Darwin's wife, succinctly recalls going to the zoo with her husband. She remembers pointing out a nearby chimpanzee and telling her husband that there was something about the ape that resembled him.
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“Mrs Darwin” Themes
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The Women Behind Great Men
“Mrs Darwin” is written as a fictionalized diary entry by the wife of Charles Darwin, the naturalist famous for his theory of evolution. In the poem, “Mrs Darwin” (whose real name was Emma) recounts a trip to the zoo where she pointed out a chimpanzee that reminded her of her husband. The poem implies that her comment is what sparked Charles Darwin’s theory that human beings descended from apes. By cheekily imagining that it was really Darwin’s wife behind this world-changing idea, “Mrs Darwin” highlights how women’s contributions to history have often been overlooked by society, if not outright taken credit for by the men in their lives. At the same time, it subtly punctures such men’s inflated self-importance, reminding readers that even "great" men are as apelike (which is to say, as human) as everybody else.
The poem imagines that the Darwins’ trip to the zoo takes place in 1852, seven years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. As such, the poem’s implication is that Emma Darwin’s comment—“Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you”—is what puts the idea of human evolution into her husband’s head. In real life, Darwin had begun to develop his theory before 1852; as such, it’s also possible that Emma in the poem is pushing the seed of an idea further or simply joking with her husband to deflate the self-seriousness of his research and public image.
The poem's description of this trip to the zoo isn’t meant to be taken as a literal, historical account, however. Rather, it’s a funny, made-up scene that comments on the ways women’s contributions to history tend to be ignored. Maybe the speaker was making a scientific observation, or maybe she was just ribbing her husband; either way, she never gets credit for her comment. She doesn’t even get a proper name in the poem, for that matter, and instead is referred to only in terms of her relationship with her more famous husband.
In addition to implying the overlooked importance of women, “Mrs Darwin” is also a humorous reminder of the frequently overstated genius of men. The poem’s speaker refers to her husband as “Him,” that capital H indicating how Darwin was (and sometimes still is!) seen as an almost god-like intellectual figure. The speaker seems to use the capital letter ironically, however, in order to point out the distance between the public perception of her husband as a towering genius and the actual, flawed, normal man she knows.
Indeed, by comparing her husband to an ape, the speaker brings him down to earth and subtly undermines his authority. The speaker may even be suggesting that her husband is a little uncivilized or oafish! More broadly, the imagined scenario in “Mrs Darwin” suggests that many of the most famous men throughout history were in fact regular, flawed human beings—and that without women like Emma Darwin by their side, these men may not have gone down in history at all.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-4
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mrs Darwin”
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Lines 1-2
7 April 1852. ...
... to the Zoo.The Mrs. Darwin of the title, and the speaker of the poem, is Emma Darwin, wife of the famed naturalist Charles Darwin.
The poem itself then opens rather unusually: "7 April 1852." Sometimes poets include a date underneath a poem's title (before the first line) or at the very end of the poem (after the last line). That date usually indicates the day the poem was finished, and sometimes poets include the place of composition too. But in this case, "7 April 1852" is the actual first line of "Mrs Darwin," indicating that the poem is taking the form of a diary entry.
The second line is then short and bluntly descriptive: "Went to the Zoo." The brevity here adds to the sense that Mrs. Darwin quickly jotted these lines down in her journal at the end of the day.
Notably, line 2 lacks a subject: the speaker implies that Charles and I or We went to the zoo, but doesn't actually say so (that confirmation will come in the next line). The implied subject contributes to the poem's off-hand, informal tone, which is appropriate for a diary entry.
These first two lines are short and strongly end-stopped with periods, and they don't follow any particular meter. These qualities, like the second line's implied subject, add to the poem's informal feel. The lines do, however, share a subtle end rhyme between the "two" in "1852" and "Zoo." (There's also an internal rhyme in line 2: "Went to the zoo.") The rhyme is subtle; readers might almost miss it on the page given that it relies on a numeral. Still, it's a good reminder that, despite the poem's appearance as a diary entry, "Mrs Darwin" is still a poem—it would be odd for an actual diary entry to rhyme!
The tension between the poem's imaginative artfulness, on the one hand, and its historical plausibility, on the other, helps create much of the irony and humor that make "Mrs Darwin" so clever and memorable.
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Lines 3-4
I said to Him— ...
... me of you.
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“Mrs Darwin” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
"Mrs Darwin" makes little sense to readers without its context. The poem alludes to actual people: Charles Darwin, the famed naturalist who proposed the theory of evolution, and his wife, Emma.
While the people in the poem are real, it's important to remember that the specific events of the poem are not. And while Emma and Charles may very well have visited zoos together (especially the London Zoo), the actual incident the poem describes isn't based on an actual outing. Rather, the poem imagines this trip to the zoo in order to make a humorous point.
The poem takes place on a specific date (April 7, 1852), but there's no evidence that anything especially noteworthy happened on that day in the Darwins' actual lives. Duffy likely chose the year because "two" rhymes with "Zoo" and "you," and because it preceded the 1859 publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
"Mrs Darwin" also contains an implicit literary allusion to this famous book, which argues that human beings evolved from apes. Though the poem doesn't mention Charles's famous book by name, the joking implication that it may have been Emma who first suggested the book's central idea, seven years before its publication, is clear.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 3-4
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End-Stopped Line
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Assonance
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Irony
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"Mrs Darwin" 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.
- 7 April 1852
- Him
- Chimpanzee
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “7 April 1852.”)
This date, set in italics, is also the first line of the poem, indicating that "Mrs Darwin" takes the form of a diary entry. The date's specificity makes the poem seem more believable, though it doesn't appear that anything especially important actually happened in the lives of Emma and Charles Darwin on April 7, 1852. What is important about this date is that it comes well before the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mrs Darwin”
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Form
"Mrs Darwin" consists of a single, four-line stanza (a.k.a. a quatrain). The poem mimics the form of a diary entry: the first line establishes a date for the entry (7 April 1852) and the lines that follow describe, in simple language, the Darwins' visit to the zoo. Though this particular visit is fictional, the poem's form makes the trip to the zoo seem like a real historical event.
The lines don't have a regular meter, instead following the natural rhythms of everyday speech. Lines 1, 2, and 4 do share an end rhyme, however, adding some playful music to this humorous poem.
There's one more notable formal aspect of "Mrs Darwin." The first three lines are very short (just three or four words), while the last line is very long (ten words). The exaggerated contrast in line lengths highlights the irony of the final line. Much like the punch line of a joke, the very long line 4 cheekily draws attention to itself and to its subversive suggestion: that even "great" men, such as Charles Darwin, can be a little ape-like—and that the women who support those "great" men deserve a lot more credit for their hard work.
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Meter
"Mrs Darwin" doesn't have a regular meter and its lines feature dramatically different lengths (nine, four, four, and twenty-one syllables, respectively). "Mrs Darwin" takes the form of a diary entry, and the lack of regular meter reflects the casual, off-hand tone that people tend to use in diaries.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Mrs Darwin" follows an AABA rhyme scheme: "1852," "Zoo," and "you" all rhyme.
This pattern of rhyme is fairly common in quatrains, and it helps to hold the stanza together (by sonically linking the last line with the first two) while allowing for expressive variation (since the third line doesn't rhyme with anything).
This pattern allows the word "Him" at the end of line 3 to stand out to the ear, given that it's the only word at the end of a line that doesn't share that /oo/ sound. By making "Him" sound a little awkward or out of place, the speaker subtly emphasizes Charles's presence in the poem.
Though it's safe to call this AABA rhyme, some readers might insist that the rhyme in line 4, on "you," is really a kind of rhyming assonance. Rhyme traditionally depends on a shared vowel sound preceded by a contrasting consonant (like how the "two" in "1852" and "Zoo" share the vowel /oo/ but differ in their consonants, /t/ and /z/). Since "you" doesn't really have a consonant at the beginning, rhyme sticklers could insist that this isn't proper rhyme.
However one prefers to think of it, there's no doubt that the shared vowel /oo/ adds some playful music to the stanza. It reminds readers that "Mrs Darwin" is a poem; even though it looks like a diary entry, most actual diary entries don't just happen to have three out of four rhyming lines!
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“Mrs Darwin” Speaker
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"Mrs Darwin" makes no attempt to obscure its speaker's identity: the Mrs. Darwin of the poem's title is in fact Emma Darwin, the wife of the famous naturalist Charles Darwin.
"Mrs Darwin" appears in Carol Ann Duffy's 1999 collection, The World's Wife, which is full of poems spoken by women famously linked with historical and mythical men (for example, "Anne Hathaway" and "Circe"). That Emma's given name doesn't appear anywhere in the poem or its title reflects that women's stories are often overshadowed by those of the men in their lives.
Though Emma Darwin is clearly the poem's speaker, it's important to note that the poem is spoken in the voice of Emma Darwin as imagined by the poet, Carol Ann Duffy. That is, while "Mrs Darwin" presents itself as a diary entry—complete with a specific date—the poem is a fictional text, not a historical document.
The Emma of this poem might be making a keen scientific observation of the similarities between human beings and apes. She also might be ribbing her husband for his ape-like manners. Or she might cleverly be doing both things at the same time! It's also up to readers whether the capital "H" in "Him" is meant to be ironic or not. That is, it sure seems like Emma is poking fun at her husband's inflated ego, but Duffy might simply have written the line this way to emphasize the patriarchal nature of the Victorian society in which the real Emma Darwin lived.
It's worth noting that the real Emma Darwin was critically important to Charles's personal happiness and professional success. She took notes for him, assisted with his correspondence, and entertained his friends and colleagues—all the while attending to her own affairs and giving birth to 10 children!
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“Mrs Darwin” Setting
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Given the poem's resemblance to a diary entry, it's safe to assume that the poem takes place on or shortly after April 7, 1852, following the Darwins' (fictionalized) trip to the zoo. Readers can imagine Emma Darwin sitting down to jot a few thoughts in her journal after this event.
This places the poem in the middle of England's Victorian era, which emphasized strict moral and social codes for women in particular. Women at the time were expected to defer to and support their husbands (notice how Emma, perhaps ironically, refers to Charles as "Him," with a capital H—as though he were God).
Do note that there's nothing to indicate that April 7 was notable in the lives of the actual Darwins; Duffy is imagining a funny scenario to make a point about women's overlooked contributions to history.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Mrs Darwin”
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Literary Context
Carol Ann Duffy is among the most acclaimed and high-profile poets in the contemporary UK. Born in Scotland in 1955, she became the UK's first female poet laureate in 2009 and served in the position for the next 10 years.
"Mrs Darwin" first appeared in Duffy's 1999 collection The World's Wife, which features poems written from the perspectives of the wives, sisters, and female contemporaries of famous and infamous men from history and myth. Some of Duffy's characters in the collection include Mrs. Sisyphus, Mrs. Midas, Mrs. Faust, Circe, Medusa, Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife), and Mrs. Aesop. These poems implicitly challenge patriarchal social norms and highlight the ways in which women's experiences and contributions to art, science, and beyond have often been overlooked, or even outright taken credit for, by the men in their lives.
The World's Wife can be considered a work of feminist revisionist mythology, an approach dating back roughly to the 1960s in which writers engage with fairy tales, religious stories, and myths through a feminist lens. Duffy’s work in this vein connects her to poets including Anne Sexton, Muriel Rukeyser, Alicia Ostriker, Eleanor Wilner, and Alice Notley.
Duffy was especially influenced by the writings of 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.
Historical Context
"Mrs Darwin" is dated April 7, 1852, a day that appears to have been chosen by the poet more or less at random for its rhyme with "Zoo" and "you." Though the visit to the zoo the poem describes doesn't seem to have occurred on that day (and may never have occurred just as it does in the poem), it's certainly possible (and, in fact, likely) that Charles and Emma Darwin visited the London Zoo, where they would have seen chimpanzees. In 1852, they were living in a small village called Down, about 16 miles outside of London, which gave Charles the peace and quiet he needed to work but allowed for trips to London.
It's important to note that 1852 is several years before the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles's masterpiece describing his theory of evolution (which included the revolutionary idea that humans are descended from apes). In this sense, the poem nods toward the possibility that Emma's comment to Charles at the zoo may have sparked his revolutionary idea. That being said, Charles went on his famous voyage aboard the Beagle in the 1830s, and throughout the next two decades was continuously forming his theory of evolution. Ultimately, then, it's historically impossible that an 1852 comment could have given Charles the idea of human evolution; he'd already been working on his theory for many years by that point.
Nonetheless, the poem doesn't seem too concerned with actual history; it's a humorous poem pretending to be a diary entry in order to make a point, not an actual historical document. In any case, the historical record strongly shows the many ways Emma Darwin supported her husband's professional endeavors: she took notes for him, often wrote letters on his behalf, and generally organized his life—all while bearing him 10 children!
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More “Mrs Darwin” Resources
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External Resources
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Carol Ann Duffy on "Great Women poets" — Listen to an interview with Duffy on the day she became the first female poet laureate of the UK.
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The Lost Lectures: Carol Ann Duffy — Hear Duffy read from her work and discuss her artistic inspirations.
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Who Was Emma Darwin? — A short biography of Emma Darwin from the University of Cambridge.
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Carol Ann Duffy's Life and Work — A short biography of Duffy from the Poetry Foundation.
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The Theory of Evolution — Learn more about the world-changing theory that Duffy pokes gentle fun at here.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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