12.1.2

Themes

Test yourself

Possession

Duffy suggests throughout Before You Were Mine that there is something possessive about a child's love for their mother.

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Possessive language

  • The poet uses possessive language to describe her mother, imaging that she belonged to her even before she was born – ‘Even then I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello.’
  • Even the line used as the title, 'before you were mine' suggests irritation at a life before she existed.
    • It shows the narrator's desire to possess her mother entirely.
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Burden of motherhood

  • The poet presents motherhood as a burden. She describes her cries as ‘possessive’ because they take her mother's attention away from her past life.

The Past

Duffy uses several techniques to create a vivid memory of her mother's past, as imagined by her, in Before You Were Mine.

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Excitement

  • The narrator describes her mother with exciting and glamorous language. For example:
    • ‘sparkle and waltz’.
    • ‘stamping stars’.
    • ‘high-heeled red shoes’.
    • ‘Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn’.
  • There is also a lot of vivid, sensory imagery – which helps to bring these memories to life. For example:
    • ‘clear as scent’.
    • ‘shriek’ and ‘clatters’.
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Narrator's creation

  • There is a sense of artifice (deception) in the poem - Duffy is imagining her mother’s life before she was born as if she had seen it.
  • ‘I knew you would dance like that’ – implies that Duffy is somehow transported in time to see her mother as she was.
  • This is Duffy's vision of her mother's glamorous past as she hopes it might have been.

Jump to other topics

1When We Two Parted - Lord Byron (1788-1824)

2Love’s Philosophy - Percy Bysshe Shelley

3Porphyria’s Lover - Robert Browning (1812-1889)

4Sonnet 29 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

4.1Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ Analysis

5Neutral Tones - Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

6Letters from Yorkshire - Maura Dooley (Born 1957)

7The Farmer’s Bride - Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)

8Walking Away - Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972)

9Eden Rock - Charles Causley (1917-2003)

10Follower - Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

11‘Mother, Any Distance’ - Simon Armitage (Born1963

12Before You Were Mine - Carol Ann Duffy (Born 1955)

13Winter Swans - Owen Sheers (Born 1974)

14Singh Song! - Daljit Nagra (Born 1966)

15Climbing My Grandfather - Andrew Waterhouse

16Grade 9 - Comparisons

16.1Grade 9 - Comparisons

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