How far do lines 1 to 34 in The Devil's Wife represent Duffy's concerns in 'The World's Wife'?

The poem The Devil's Wife is a prime example of Duffy using the relationship between
men and women as a tool to explore varying ideas about humanity. The poem touches on many
themes and concerns such a responsibility and blame, power in its varying types, freedom and
imprisonment innocence, transformation and the idea of exclusion and outcasts. Perhaps the most
important concern in the poem is that of what the relationship between men and women represents
for Duffy; the division of power between Hindley and Brady and the different types of power show
some very interesting ideas, and it is in this that Duffy is exploring the complex issue of desire in
humans. Another important aspect to do with responsibility is Duffy's presentation of the different
genders in the poem, and what that entails; Brady is shown to the reader as 'The Devil', a creature
inherently evil, mainly because of his very nature as a man or beast. This idea of men, at least from
the viewpoint of Hindley, being blameless due to their very nature seems to go against Duffy's
stance of the pro feminist.

The poem deals with the Moors Murders, a series of murders committed by Myra Hindley and
Ian Brady in England between 1963 and 1965. It is written from the viewpoint of Myra Hindley,
following Duffy's trend of presenting issues from a female perspective. The poem follows Hindley
through the murders themselves, being prosecuted and imprisoned and finally her appeal after her
self portrayal as a repentant Christian. The viewpoint in the poem allows Duffy to explore several
different themes, such as submission and dominance, the effects of social exclusion and the media's
portrayal of the murders and the subsequent years.

The idea of dominance and submission is a very strong theme in this poem, and can be seen
within the second stanza; when Duffy writes 'He bit my breast......we're the same, he said, That's it. I
swooned in my soul', she is showing Brady as the one in control, at least on a superficial level, and
is also exploring the unusual kind of relationship they had. The image 'He bit my breast' is quite
animalistic and disturbing, yet she seems to take some reassurance, if not pleasure from being
treated this way. The idea of the dominant and submissive roles in a relationship can also be seen in
Mrs Beast, which has many comparable elements to The Devil's Wife. In Both poems the man is
depicted as a beast, and in some ways both deal with a woman taming that beast, although this is a
lot more subtle in The Devil's Wife; 'I'd walk around on my own. He'd tail', this gives the
impression of Brady being led around by Hindley, hinting at her having a complex and hidden
power over Brady. In Mrs Beast Duffy writes 'They're bastards when they're Princes. What you
want to do is find yourself a Beast', like in The Devil's Wife, Duffy is showing a female persona
actively entering into a relationship with a man who is beast like to satisfy her personal needs.

Another of Duffy's concerns that is explored in this poem is innocence and innocence lost.
Perhaps the most potent image of this is 'We drove to the woods and he made me bury a doll'. This
is a very potent representation of Hindley willing sacrificing her innocence, something that is also
seen in Little Red Cap, when she writes 'I....went in search of a living bird – white dove – which
flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth.' Both poems are dealing with innocence being
sacrificed to explore the darker nature of humanity and to learn from this. The change after losing
her innocence is reflected in the shift in sentence structure and imagery from the first stanza
onwards. After the first stanza and her exposure to the Devil, the sentences become longer and the
imagery is seen to become more expressive and complex, such as 'I flew in my chains over the
wood where we'd buried the doll'. This image shows us the many layered nature of this persona,
suggesting that sacrificing her innocence has both freed and imprisoned her simultaneously.

One very prominent themes in this poem is that of culpability, and how it relates to physical
aspects of man. For example, in the last stanza of the 'Medusa' section, the persona is seen to say
'The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife which made me worse'. This presents the idea
that the Hindley is accepting that the Devil was in culpable for the crimes as he is portrayed as an
inherently evil creature, but that she made a choice to become evil. Duffy reinforces this idea by
making repeated use of 'I'; 'I know it was me.....I know I carried the spade. I know I was covered in
mud', this shows us Hindley's acceptance of her responsibility for what she has done. And alongside
this realisation is her coming to terms with life without her Devil, which represents a complete loss
of control of the situation for her, 'If the Devil was gone then how could this be hell?' This is a very
important image as it hints at Hindley's motivation for letting the Devil control her, as it gave her a
sense of control and knowledge over her life, and without that she is at a lost.

The poem is a very complex exploration of relationships between men and woman, as it is
taking an example from an extreme of behaviour and mentality. Duffy makes this unusual issue
accessible by using quite simple and sometime colloquial language to create quite complex
imagery; 'I felt like this: Tongue of stone. Two black slates for eyes. Thumped wound of a mouth.
Nobody's Mam.' This brutal description of Hindley suggests many things about the persona that
Duffy builds in this poem, that her life has lead her to have a scared and beaten mind, and that all
she is lacking in a basic element of humanity, and capacity for love. This is perhaps best shown
when Duffy writes 'He held my heart in his fist and squeezed it dry', which shows her having her
humanity taken away by an evil force. The brutality of this is reflected in the use of the word 'fist',
which again is symbolic of brutality.

The poem The Devil's Wife represents many of Duffy's concerns, which she subtly explores
through the medium of the relationship between Brady and Hindley. By portraying Hindley as a
kind of warped masochist, she makes the reader consider the implications of a hard and somewhat
depressing life, such a Hindley had, how this decides a persons actions and how far this goes to
alleviating responsibility for said actions.