Theme of the poem
•theres a theme of immortality
•This themecan be seen in ancient Greek influences which uphold the idea of art immortalieing people especially women
• Plato took on the concept of immorality in his his symposium where he said that women immortalize themselves through their children
•This is uniquely true for women who could not write it artistically create their own narratives due to long standing male oppression
Links to Oranges
• Louis and immortalizes herself through Jeannette by engraving her ideas and religious dogma within her
• Jeanette lack of childhood is contrasted with the emphasis of childhood and growing into woman hood in the long Queen
The titles meaning
•Conceit of a godess or patron saint of womenhood
•Duffy personifies womanhood into a deity who experiences every aspect of the female condition both negative and positive
“The long queen couldn’t die”
•First line of the poem
•Duffy reimagines a timeless female monarch who reigns not over land, a particularly masculine desire, but over the domains of “childbirth, childhood and pain” which are feminine experiences historically used to define and confine women
•The idea of immortality and the unchanging state of the female condition
• In this first declaration, she’s set up as both a celebratory and cautionary who universalizes the female experience suggesting a collective female identity shaped by suffering and service
“No girl born who want the Long Queens always child”
•Seems that the Long Queen embodies maternity
•She is a mother to “women, girls, spinsters and hags” - All women regardless of age and social class effectively have a shared female experiences with some aspects dictated by patriarchal values
•While Louie practices epistemic distance from her daughter, The long queen embraces all her daughters in all their differences
•Encourages all women to adopt a sense of pride surrounding womanhood or the female, in a direct rejection of patriarchal repression and male dominance which is especially poignant during the 20th century amidst 3rd wave feminism when Duffy was writing
“The long queens colour, Royal red, of intent: the pain when a girl first bled”
•The “Royal” at once lends majesty to the Queen further reinforcing the pride in female joys and suffering
•”Pain when a girl first bled” is incredibly significant as it de-stigmatizes the repulsive nature surrounding female menstruation
•Reiterating that blood represents vitality as much as it does pain
•In this way Duffy openly acknowledges and celebrates the idea of bleeding as from menstruation comes the possibility of life
•Reclaiming these taboo narratives, especially surrounding femininity, is common in modern literature
“Tears: salt pearls, bright jewels for the Long Queens fingers to weigh as she counted their sorrow”
•She’s clothed in the suffering and pain of women
•Duffy suggests that women are made beautiful by their suffering through the images of “salt pearls” as tears
•Perhaps Duffy reclaims female suffering, especially through childbirth and puberty, as something to be celebrated as a unique part of the female experience: common of modern times to ‘reclaim ideas’ and reimagine a negative concept as something powerful
