Today we will analyse another of Duffy’s monologues: Mrs Aesop. Who’s Aesop? Aesop's Fables is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The fables have become classics and are enjoyed by children around the world.

Terminology Recap – What is a fable? A fable is a story which teaches a moral: “slow and steady wins the race.” Fables usually feature animals with human characteristics.

Aesop Aesop himself was described as a deformed dwarf, as this statue of him shows.

Mrs Aesop

To make detailed annotations. Some questions to consider: Task To make detailed annotations. Some questions to consider: What is the tone of the poem? What impression do we get of Mr and Mrs Aesop? How is their marriage presented? Why do you think the relationship soured? Find examples of intertextual references and explain their effect. What is the structure of the poem and why is it ironic?

Mrs Aesop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKMMH24bRUA

Purgatory. In Catholicism- the place were souls suffer for their sins before being admitted to heaven. Suggests the endless agony of listening to his moralising that Mrs A must endure. Refers to historical reports of his small stature. Suggests that he was compensating for his size by attempting to sound intellectual. Mrs A actually just found this annoying. Emasculation. By Christ, he could bore me 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. Allusion to the ‘bird in the hand’ proverb. Mrs A uses wordplay to subvert his fables and uses them to ridicule her husband. Minor sentence. Emphasises her ongoing frustration at her husband’s continuous moralising. Opening section establishes the satirical and damming tone that permeates the poem.

Repetition of allusions to Aesop’s fables Repetition of allusions to Aesop’s fables. Conveys the tedium of having to be married to someone obsessed with sourcing inspiration for his next fable. The extent to which he goes helps to convey how farcical he is. Duffy makes literal the metaphorical messages of the original fables (i.e by having Aesop literally look before he leaps) Going out was worst. He'd stand at our gate, look, then leap; scour the hedgerows for a shy mouse, the fields for a sly fox, the sky for one particular swallow that couldn't make a summer. The Jackdaw according to him, envied the eagle  Donkeys, would, on the whole, prefer to be lions.

Adjective choice. Conveys the loathsome experience of having to go out in public with him. Allusion to Aesop’s most famous fable: ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ 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 a marriage, up the road. Slow but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race. Asshole. She reports his speech making clear his patronising tone. The contrast between his self-righteous moralising and the persona’s colloquial and course language creates a comic effect; clearly conveying the persona’s mocking stance towards her husband. Simile. Compares their relationship to the creeping pace of a tortoise’s walk. Frustration, loathing are implied here.

Repetition of questions humorous conveys her resentment and frustration at his platitudinal language. The content of the questions, animals and fruit, make him seem even more ridiculous. What race? What sour grapes? What silk purse, sow's ear, dog in a manger, what big fish? Some days I could barely keep awake as the story droned on towards the moral of itself. Action, Mrs A., speaks louder than words. And that's another thing, the sex was diabolical. I gave him a fable one night about a little cock that wouldn't crow, a razor-sharp axe with a heart blacker than the pot that called the kettle. Condescending tone. Subverts the fable about the crow to suggest his sexual inadequacy. Mocks his masculinity. Subversion of the phrase ‘the pot that calls the kettle’-> suggests violence. As if her frustration has now boiled over.

Alludes to the phrase ‘cutting your tail off..’. An image of castration. Attacking his male power. Shows her trying to take control of the situation. I'll cut off your tail, all right, I said, to save my face. That shut him up. I laughed last, longest. ‘He who laughed last…’ Change from the masculine pronoun to ‘I’ (female persona) convey the change in power relations between husband and wife. Self-satisfied tone at the conclusion of the poem as Mrs A’s threat succeeds in silencing her annoying husband.

Mrs Aesop

Mrs Aesop