Feminine Gospels

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One device that Duffy uses consistently throughout The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High is the asyndeton. Duffy creates asyndetic lists to display the rigidity of the school curriculum. Each list is boring, split grammatically by the commas, and monotonously slow. Duffy indicates her distaste for rote memorization through the construction of these asyndetic lists.

Firstly, the consonance across ‘deep, dumped’ creates a sense of oppression, the language flowing in hypnotic circles. Furthermore, the plosive ‘p’ within both these words cuts through the narrative, representing the brutality Monroe experienced on a daily basis. The cave= yonic symbol of daughter's place of origin, linking her to the mother. Could also imply that women have been kept in the dark and that having children enables them to escape into the light The end of this section points to Cleopatra’s downfall, yet is much more subtle than the other sections. This is perhaps relating to how successful Cleopatra was in her life, her demise only a tiny part of her story. The historic romance of ‘armies changing sides, of cities lost forever in the sea’ creates a tone of reverence. Cleopatra is fantastically powerful, her demise coming from a self-inflicted ‘snake’ bite. This section ends with a powerful demonstration of Cleopatra’s success. The clever grammatical division, using caesura, or everything in this section coming before ‘of snakes’ represents her final moment. Death to a snake bite is her final act, ‘snakes’ bluntly finishing her section. The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High by Carol Ann Duffy traces the developing wave of laughter. Duffy represents how female voices can lift each other up and lead to liberation. The ‘starlike sorrows of immortal eyes’ is oddly wounded. Duffy could use this to suggest a melancholic pang to the character. Perhaps Helen, in her godly position, understood the great burden that beauty had placed upon her.Demara, Bruce (7 July 2016). "The Bizzaro History of the Poet L aureate". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016. Not all the fantasies carry the same charge. "Work" takes a single mum, working her fingers to the bone to fill her larder, and develops her problem through a rhetoric of absurdity that leaves her at the heart of the capitalist internet trying to feed a planet. Sometimes the gritty details make a familiar point surprising. An anorexic shrivels like Alice until she is blown away as a seed, to nestle at length in the stomach of a gloriously self-indulgent eater. She has become literally that thin woman notoriously found inside every fat one, except in this version, she has no wish to get out . Miss Batt and Miss Fife have a similar new beginning, the ‘small room’ they share bathed in ‘new light’. The use of light is promising, Duffy symbolizing the happy future they have started together. Miss Batt moves down Miss Fife’s body, caressing her ‘down to the triangle’. The happy union of the women is mirrored by the beauty of the ‘brightest stars’, the galaxy looking at their sexual unification.

Duffy notes Helen to have an unobtainable beauty, ‘daughter of the gods’ and ‘divinely fair’. The reference to beauty continues in ‘pearl’, Duffy using this to suggest the value which beauty holds in society. Duffy then uses asyndeton, connecting many adjectives to describe how beautiful Helen was.These final three stanzas explore the mystery of Helen, the perusers unsure of where she escaped. The use of ‘dusk’, ‘moon’, and ‘smuggled’ play into the semantics of secrecy, Helen slipping away from her followers’ grasps. Yet, even in this act, the male gaze focuses on how ‘her dress/clung to her form’. Duffy suggests that at all times the male gaze sexualizes women.

Key features: monosyllabic and harsh consonant sounds, asyndetic listing, declarative sentences, cross-line rhyme, caesureThe language is a mix of colloquial and lyrical, the opening stanza about Helen of Troy being a good example, with “divinely fair” juxtaposed with “drop-dead gorgeous”. The head girl, Josephine June, is stripped of her ‘Head Girl’s badge’. The monotonous oppression of the school emphasized through the blunt use of assonance, ‘Assembly’s abysmal affair’, is deeply depressing. Although it is a group issue of laughing, only one girl, in particular, is punished. Duffy could be commenting on the prejudiced nature of society, always finding one person to blame. The young girls reject this, their screams of ‘All for one!’ echoing across the stanza. The use of italics for this phrase represents how they have taken over the power structure of the school. Where once it was oppressive teachings occupying the italics, now the girls have reclaimed this style. Either about the rebirth of a friend, or the woman being reborn could be seen as the voice of feminism When she wants to, Duffy can write with lyric intensity, noticing "where the lights from the shop ran like paint in the rain", observing a child's beauty in the glow under the skin of her hands, or watching the same child sleeping "with the whole moon held in your arms". BBC Radio 4 – Woman's Hour – The Power List 2013". BBC. Archived from the original on 19 March 2014 . Retrieved 17 July 2016.

Litotes: each stanza starts with a measure of time, 'not tonight', majority of which reference the future Laughter spreads across the school, Duffy again employing the semantics of water. Indeed, laughter came in ‘waves through the wall’, flowing into each classroom. The ripple impact of laughter spread like an infection, passing from one to another. The internal rhyme across ‘door. Uproar’, continues this flow, the rhymes of The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High reflecting the connecting laughter.

In Stylist magazine, [27] Duffy said of becoming poet laureate: "There's no requirement. I do get asked to do things and so far I've been happy to do them." She also spoke about being appointed to the role by Queen Elizabeth II, saying: "She's lovely! I met her before I became poet laureate but when I was appointed I had an 'audience' with her which meant we were alone, at the palace, for the first time. We chatted about poetry. Her mother was friends with Ted Hughes whose poetry I admire a lot. We spoke about his influence on me." [27]