Mrs Darwin Summary & Analysis
by Carol Ann Duffy

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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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