Pygmalion's Bride by Carol Ann Duffy
Pygmalion's Bride by Carol Ann Duffy

Pygmalion’s Bride

Carol Ann Duffy * Track #19 On The World’s Wife

Pygmalion’s Bride Annotated

Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory.
I thought "He will not touch me",
but he did.

He kissed my stone-cool lips.
I lay still
as though I’d died.
He stayed.
He thumbed my marbled eyes.

He spoke -
blunt endearments, what he’d do and how.
His words were terrible.
My ears were sculpture,
stone-deaf shells.
I heard the sea.
I drowned him out.
I heard him shout.

He brought me presents, polished pebbles,
little bells.
I didn’t blink,
was dumb.
He brought me pearls and necklaces and rings.
He called them girly things.
He ran his clammy hands along my limbs.
I didn’t shrink,
played statue, shtum.

He let his fingers sink into my flesh,
he squeezed, he pressed.
I would not bruise.
He looked for marks,
for purple hearts,
for inky stars, for smudgy clues.
His nails were claws.
I showed no scratch, no scrape, no scar.
He propped me up on pillows,
jawed all night.
My heart was ice, was glass.
His voice was gravel, hoarse.
He talked white black.

So I changed tack,
grew warm, like candle wax,
kissed back,
was soft, was pliable,
began to moan,
got hot, got wild,
arched, coiled, writhed,
begged for his child,
and at the climax
screamed my head off -
all an act.

And haven’t seen him since.
Simple as that

Pygmalion’s Bride Q&A

What is the effect of Duffy's wordplay and references to being a statue?

The word-play is analysed in the line-by-line annotations. They show the cleverness of the woman and the poet. She is able to resist him, is defiant. The words imply her contempt and his ineptness.
The statue is a metaphor for women’s passive power. When she has nothing else for defence she can be c...

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Hi, What does "to talk white black" mean? I could not find it in the internet.

It is just a way of saying that Pygmalion talked so much that he convinced himself that white was black. His bride wasn’t taken in! It’s like saying ‘he can persuade people that good is bad’ or ‘he can convince people that a Mini is a Rolls Royce’. Hope this is clear.

What is the author trying to say about gender inequalities with this poem?

In the “song bio” I wrote this.
“Duffy sees the man as an insensitive autocrat, who is interested in his own desires but fails to recognise those of Galatea. When she does assert herself Pygmalion loses interest and rejects her. We can draw from the story the theme of male insensitivity and desire f...

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Is the woman in the poem really a bride or is she meant to be something else?

She has been created by Pygmalian. A bride is a new wife who is honoured and feted at a wedding ceremony, but with overtones of a traditional wifely role. Galatea, however, is just something the man wants to control and manipulate. The irony is that this “bride” – this new wife – is resistant. She t...

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