Another theme that Duffy explores throughout Beautiful is the female body. Indeed, the title word ‘Beautiful’ refers to female beauty. Yet, this beauty is often a negative thing, leading to exploitation. Duffy argues that the female body is used as a point of manipulation, and society sexualizes these bodies for its own gain. Especially in the third section of the poem, Duffy suggests that society focuses on Marilyn Monroe due to her beauty. While some could see this as a form of gaining power, it seems that Duffy focuses more so on how this attention leads to the eventual demise of these women. Duffy likes to take a familiar psychological reality and extend it as an outrageous metaphor. In "The Map Woman", for instance, an A-to-Z street map of the town in which a woman has grown up is tattooed over the skin of her whole body. Wherever she goes, and whatever she becomes, that geography remains an indelible pattern she cannot escape; until, that is, almost accidentally, she hits on the remedy. She decides to return to the real town that haunts her. In the intervening years, the place she remembers has become almost unrecognisable under newly built arcades and shopping malls. Bewildered by these changes, she retreats to her hotel room. There, she sloughs her skin like a snake. In the last verse, Duffy escapes from the metaphor to close the poem with a resonance that recalls some of Larkin's memorable conclusions: I have been a fan of Carol Ann Duffy’s for some years now; she is a wonderful poet, whose work always speaks to me. I was in awe when I read The Bees, and cheering for girl power when making my way through The World’s Wife. Her Christmas books are an absolute delight, and she has even introduced one of my favourite novels, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, in the Vintage Classics edition. When I therefore found two of her poetry books whilst in an Oxfam bookshop, preparing for their Scorching Summer Reads project, I snapped them up immediately. I loved Rapture, but the second volume, Feminine Gospels, was something else entirely.

The internal rhyme between ‘tattoo’ and ‘map grew’ displays the permanence of her ‘map’ identity. Practically impossible to remove, the ‘tattoo’‘map’ is inescapable for the Map-Woman. She cannot escape her identity, it is permanently etched onto her skin. The internal rhyme is emblematic of this connection, reflecting a sense of togetherness.

Are these poems placed at the end to the book to signal a movement or development? We shall have to wait for the next book to know. For the moment Duffy prefers to wear a tougher face, and to keep her voice jaunty. She moves through the lives she invents with a kind of casual confidence which her characters sometimes briefly share, like the shopaholic who Duffy’s ‘The Long Queen’explores the historical figure of Queen Elizabeth I. Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, she was the monarch that headed the Elizabethan age, in which England become a major European power in both political and artistic spheres. She was a popular queen, having a cordial relationship with Parliament and her subjects looking up to her rule. The first English Epic poem, ‘ The Faerie Queene‘ by Edmund Spenser revolves around Elizabeth I immortalized in the figure of ‘Gloriana’. Duffy draws upon the reputation of Elizabeth I, using the figure to begin her collection, Feminine Gospels, with an image of a strong, powerful, and well-respected woman in history. More in-depth references come with ‘ The Long Queen‘ refusing to marry, something Queen Elizabeth, also known as The Virgin Queen, cleverly avoided in her lifetime. Duffy here is showing how consumerism is destroying women's morals and women prostitute their bodies and souls to gain worldly goods.

When she wants to, Duffy can write with lyric intensity, noticing "where the lights from the shop ran like paint in the rain", observing a child's beauty in the glow under the skin of her hands, or watching the same child sleeping "with the whole moon held in your arms". when the law would change . Tears: salt pearls, bright jewels for the Long Queen's fingers to weigh as she counted their sorrow.The use of consonance in /w/ across ‘witches, widows, wives’ creates an extended ‘w’ sound. This extended sound could reflect the unity of women, the harmonic consonance echoing through the images of women. The united sound becomes a reflection of the united women, everyone coming together under the figure of Elizabeth I. Yet, although it seems gone, ‘new skin’, there are still hints that remain. The use of ‘barely’ suggests that there is something still visible, not quite getting rid of what she once had. The ‘small cross where her parents’ skulls’ is deeply unsettling. Perhaps Duffy is suggesting a part of the reason the Map-Woman was so unhappy with being known by her city was due to abusive parents, or a depressing childhood. The ‘skulls’ seem malevolent, both ‘grinned’ and ‘dark’ being unsettling images. Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.

The language is a mix of colloquial and lyrical, the opening stanza about Helen of Troy being a good example, with “divinely fair” juxtaposed with “drop-dead gorgeous”. Throughout Feminine Gospels the reader understands a little bit more about how society views or pressures women, and even how women view and pressure themselves. This is all done through subject and form as a way of enlightening the reader into very current issues in the modern world. It is not merely a desire to encapsulate women, but a desire to press the issue of better understanding women. At no point does Duffy let the reader off the hook with a soft poem about love or even desire. Feminine Gospels is very much an indictment on the modern world, and how women are still very much controlled.

Duffy employs a form of epiphora at the end of the second stanza, ‘The whole world swooned’ echoing ‘The US whooped’. Now, her commodification has spread to the whole world, becoming an international sex symbol. She is abused and exploited for the whole world to see. I sat down in the library to read some of the books I'd already chosen, but this one caught my eye and attention somehow, sitting on a shelf just to my right. It combined a few of the best things in the world: poetry, poetry written by women & poetrt about women. I read in it one sitting, still at the library, sitting on a worn colourful striped armchair. Feminie Gospels is Duffy's sixth collection of poetry, and features poems with subjects ranging from women in history, lesbian school teachers & Anonymous (who in Virginia Woolf's words was a "woman" - as always, I agree with her). The standouts for me were The Diet, Tall, Loud & The Laughter of Stafford Girl's High. This collection is lyrically written, powerful, beautiful. I am very interested in researching further in how Duffy explains her own poetry and the intent behind them. I wish my brain was advanced enough to understand every poem I read but then again, that would take away a lot of the magic.