CW Mrs Quasimodo Tuesday, 19 February 2019 Learning Outcomes To understand how the original story is explored and subverted by Duffy To be able to analyse and evaluate Duffy’s use of language and verse form

Victor Hugo – French poet and writer, wrote Les Misérables and was famously exiled from France for campaigning against the government. For this poem, Duffy relies upon the reader’s knowledge of two texts: Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and the film of this story (1939) in which Charles Laughton gives the definitive presentation of Quasimodo, the bell-ringer.

Mrs Quasimodo Definitions: Whole-class analysis: Everyone to contribute! Definitions: Campanologist: a bell ringer arpeggio - the sounding of the notes of a chord in quick succession epithalamion: a wedding song stretti - close together; here it emphasises the technical mastery Quasimodo has over the bells

Structure, Form and Language What happens in this poem? Is this poem in free verse or can you spot a rhyming pattern? What symbolism does Duffy use in this poem? Why? What tone do you think this poem is intended to establish?

(first published in 1995 as Mrs Quasimodo's Divorce) Mrs Quasimodo first gets mad and then gets even; her tone is of anger at the loss of the trust which she had placed in her man. Mrs Quasimodo is a repository of female virtues: stoical, ‘sweet-tempered, good at needlework’, but condemned by her misshapen appearance to dwell in a squalid isolation; once ‘wed’ to Quasimodo, she even proves herself compliant both in bedroom ‘And did I kiss each part of him’ and in kitchen [his supper] ‘on a tray beneath a cloth’ It is against this background that Duffy (returning to the script) imagines Quasimodo’s obsession with Esmeralda, ‘the pin-up gypsy’ who seeks sanctuary within the Cathedral grounds.

Questions... In the original story the reader is meant to feel sympathy for Quasimodo. How does Duffy turn this idea on its head? Mrs Quasimodo seems to have found a soul mate in her husband who 'swung an epithalamium' (line 34) for her when they were married. This does not last however, find evidence to show that the marriage turns sour. Duffy describes Quasimodo as 'an ugly cliché in a field' (line 6) What does this show? Think about techniques Duffy uses too. Living 'alone up seven flights' (line 15) her solitary life is conveyed through the details of a colourless diet of 'boiled potatoes' (line 16) and monochromatic vista of 'grey lead roofs' (line 18). Why does Duffy describe her life in this way? Nothing is too obvious for a man. She confronts the brutal reality that in his eyes nothing - not a dutiful nature, not even a sensitive appreciation of bell-music - is going to compensate a woman for an unprepossessing appearance. Why is Duffy showing this? Why does Duffy use the graphic description 'he fucked me underneath the gaping, stricken bells / until I wept' (lines 31-2) ‘murdered music of the bells’ What has Mrs Quasimodo done? ‘heavy dugs’, ‘thighs of lard’ and ‘wobbling gut’, What does this show about Mrs Quasimodo’s opinion of herself? Mrs Quasimodo embarks upon a dysmorphophobic rant: “You pig. You stupid cow. You fucking buffalo./ Abortion. Cripple. Spastic. Mongol. Ape.” Why?