Thetis – the ways in which this poem represents Duffy’s view on male and female relationships

In the poem Thetis, Duffy writes of a sea nymph who tries to escape the clutches of her suitor by changing her physical form. The suitor, however, is persistent and is able to reciprocate each change. In the end, Thetis gives in and marries the suitor, before giving birth to a child. Although the suitor is never mentioned in the poem, we feel his presence due to his determined chase of Thetis.

Carol Ann Duffy portrays male/female relationships as being flawed. In the poem, there is never any mention of the love the suitor feels for Thetis. He is simply pursuing her either for sexual relations or for the chase itself. This is made apparent with the phrase ‘hook and his line and his sinker’, which is a cliché for how easily fisherman were able to catch their fish. It shows that although the suitor is determined in his want of Thetis, he also sees it as a game or recreation activity of sorts. After Thetis is captured; and married with all the Gods and Goddesses as witnesses, according to the legend; she is immediately impregnated and gives birth to a child. Duffy seems to be exploring the lengths men would go to in order to fulfill their base desires, with no regard for their female counterparts.

Thetis may be seen as a metaphor for women’s ability to survive and adapt, as well as for their vulnerability at the hands of men. She turns from a bird to an albatross, from a snake to a lion in order to escape the fate thrust upon her. Her survival instincts kick in, which can be revealed in the excess of rhymes such as ‘paw’, ‘raw’, ‘jaw’ and so on, which rather than a comic effect, creates speed. There are also abrupt pauses, at the end of lines as well as within them: ‘Then I did this: / shouldered the cross…the sky. / why? To follow a ship’ (7-10). The overall effects of these techniques creates the impression of a fast moving creature who is always on the lookout for danger.

Although Thetis, at first look, is the story of a woman’s plight to get away from her suitor, Duffy also looks at the transformations of Thetis in contrast to male transformations. Her suitor changes his own shape in the poem, to rival her shape and to be able to contain her. This may also be a metaphor for the way in which women try to change over the years to adapt to male perceptions of them. They are always, however, berated by the men – who are one step ahead of them and have a new perception for them to fill. ‘But I felt my wings / clipped by the squint of a crossbow’s eye’. The clipping of wings has traditionally been done to birds to stop them flying away from their owners. Used in this context, it dehumanises Thetis and makes her less of a person than her suitor, who can control her and stop her escaping.

Another aspect of male and female relationships that Duffy is exploring is the power struggle between the two. In all of her poems, there is never harmony between the two sexes and Thetis is obviously no exception. The sea nymph tries to defy the expectations that have been enforced on her and refuses to marry a man she neither knows nor loves. All through the poem, Thetis changes herself to become more powerful with each transformation in order to have the power to escape from the ‘strangler’s clasp’ of her suitor. He, however, will not allow her to gain such power and changes himself to be something of higher power than Thetis.

Lastly, Duffy explores the expectations of subservience men have of women, and women have of themselves – the expectations thrust upon them by a patriarchal society. As the myth goes, Thetis was destined to give birth to a child greater than his father, and so Zeus, the God of Gods ordered her to marry a mortal – and expected her to do so. She was expected to do so by her suitor also. Thetis, however, had her own mind made up and changed into various forms in order to escape this fate, as Duffy clearly shows in the poem. In spite of this, at the end of the poem, Thetis distances herself from her sexual organs. The passionate fire she had been went out and she ‘changed’ and ‘learned’. She accepts what she is – a vessel for a child. Using ‘the’ (to describe ‘the child’) distances Thetis from it and shows detachment. It also shows the loss of hope and the absence of any last surge of defiance. The voice or persona of Thetis also does not describe the arrival of the child with any joy, choosing to describe it crudely as ‘burst out’.

We can, however, interpret this in a different way whereby Thetis undergoes a different and final transformation as a mother and as the mother of a male child, her attitude to masculinity is tempered by maternal love. She is ‘turned inside out’ after all, which suggests a full and complete change. These are, in my opinion, the ways in which this poem represents Duffy’s view on male and female relationships.