The World's Wife

The World's Wife is a collection of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, originally published in the UK in 1999 by both Picador and Anvil Press Poetry and later published in the United States by Faber and Faber in 2000.Duffy's poems in The World's Wife focus on either well known female figures or fictional counterparts to well known male figures. The themes of the poems focus on the complexities of gender relations, the roles of women, and the often ill treatment of women through fictional, biblical, mythical, and historical contexts. Duffy often also makes modern day references in her poems in order to connect the different settings together into a cohesive collection and also highlight how the ill treatment towards women has endured through all the different contexts and into the modern era.