Carol Ann Duffys Little Red-Cap and Delilah Essay -- Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffys Little Red-Cap and DelilahDuring the 1980s, a unique type and musical mode of women-led field pansy protest strategies emerged that relied on the regent(postnominal) language, and particularly the powerful imagery of women as a group engaged in an extended protest against thermonuclear weapons (LaWare 18). Carol Ann Duffys book, The Worlds Wife, was first published in Great Britain in 1999, and two of its dramatic monologues similarly rely on the powerful language and imagery of women engaged in a protest against historically patriarchal narratives and male violence. While some peace encampments in the 1980s included men and women, many were women only, including one of the first and longest lasting peace encampments, the Womens Peace Camp at Greenham Common in crudebury, England, which evolved into and ignited a womens peace movement (LaWare 18). Thousands of women from Britain and the world later visited and lived at the camp during its almost twenty years o f existence, until the last group of women left in 2000, and while its non clear whether Duffy visited the camp, the camps strategies of resistance are embedded in two of her poems (LaWare 19). The speakers of Little Red-Cap and Delilah employ the camps strategies of physically cover a symbol of male violence, subsequently defacing the symbol through an act of creative nonviolence, and finally transforming the symbols patriarchal sphere into a shoes filled with peace and feminine imagery. First, the speakers of Duffys two poems resemble the protestors at Greenham Common who physically embraced a symbol of male violence The Greenham Common Womens Peace Camp gained both national and international attention in D... ...orlds Wife. New York Faber, 1999. 28-29. ---. Little Red-Cap. The Worlds Wife. New York Faber, 1999. 3-4.Holy Bible, New International Version. Zondervan, gen. ed. International Bible Society, 1984. BibleGateway.com. Gospel Communications International. 14 May 2005 search=judges%2016&version1=31. LaWare, Margaret L. Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of impedance at the Womens Peace Camp at Greenham Common. NWSA Journal 16.3 (2004) 18-41.Little Red Riding-Hood Picture Book. London George Routledge and Sons, circa 1870. The Little Red Riding Hood Project. Ed. Michael N. Salda. Dec. 1995. The de Grummond Childrens Literature Research Collection, University of Southern Mississippi. 14 May 2005