Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Poetry Analysis: Carol Ann Duffy’s “Before You Were Mine”


The tone of the poetess is assertive. The title “Before You Were Mine” gives the impression that the daughter arrived before the mother. In order to be chronologically coherent, the poet should have phrased the title as “Before I was Yours”. The word “mine” sounds the possessiveness of the speaker. The speaker asserts how prior to her birth, her mother had her own private life as echoed by “from the corner you laugh on”: the girlish frivolousness that endowed her with the freedom to giggle at the slightest things. Her carefree life is seen as engaged in tête-à-tête with her friends Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.

The three of you bend from the waist, holding
each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.
Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

The assertion of female sexuality as representative of individual freedom is apparent here. The image of Marilyn with her skirt blown up by an air vent depicts the celebrated scene of Marilyn Monroe in the film “The Seven Year Itch.”Marilyn Monroe has forever been the pervading symbol of sexuality and femininity. Critics also point out that the girl may be viewing a photograph here where her mother and friends are at a corner in Glasgow Street. The picture of girlishness and Marilyn Monroe bridges the gap between the teenager and the woman, adolescence and sexuality.

The poetess shuttles between the present and past as she asserts: “I’m not here yet.” This idea enforces the fact that now she was the centre of attraction in her mother’s life who was far from the time on the ballroom when a thousand eyes rested upon on her.The second stanza focuses on her mother before her days of motherhood. During her days of courting, if she found the right person who walked her home, the following days would be filled with “fizzy the fizzy, movie tomorrows”. The late-nights would follow with her grandmother looking out for her to reprimand her. Yet, the nights were worth it, as she ventured into a cloud-cuckoo land for days.However, motherhood changes the whole scenario particularly with being a Roman Catholic. A woman was expected to stay home to nurse her children in Glasgow in the 1950s. It indicates the unconditional sacrifices motherhood entailed such as submitting her time, service and herself to a part of her own self. The poetess foregrounds the same pointing to her reckless life before the speaker’s birth.

The decade before the poetess’s birth was the best according to her. She declares her own arrival by the “loud possessive yell.” Now the poetess has her hands inside the red high-heels of her mother that are now rendered a relic. The high-heels are an indication of the fashionista that her mother once was, and their now being a relic is a rooof of their lack of utility value in the present. ”Red is a fiery colour, of the fire of youth.

and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square
till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,
with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

Now the ghost of the teenage mother haunts the sensibility of the speaker. The word ‘ghost’ is characterized by guilt (on the part of the speaker) that her mother had to give it up all for her sake. The word ‘ghost’ also portrays something ethereal in the remote past that lingers over one persistently. She alludes to her clandestine night-meetings at George Square in Glasgow. She can perceive her visually and through the sense of smell (as scent) that lends the reminiscence a touch of it occurring in the present.

There would be moments where the woman and the girl would unite like when she taught her the ‘Cha cha cha’ steps on the way from mass. The moment also marks the marriage of Roman Catholicism and the arts. The mother’s glamorous side, the religious stance, and the maternal emotion are united in this moment after mass. She wanted her mother like this without any inhibitions, to bloom like a flower, fully realizing itself:

I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere
in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts
where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.

The place is not given precision here, but the position that girl wants the mother to be in definitely is. The phrase “wrong pavement” exemplifies how her mother was now out-of-place and seemed incongruous as she was not accustomed to these things nowadays.
Waltz reflects rhythm, balance and at the same time “togetherness”. ‘Waltz’ is also utilized as a symbol of the father-son relationship in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” Therefore, the poetess wishes that her mother would be her old self in spite of her presence in her life as she wanted a harmony of both (as echoed by the word ‘waltz’) to exist in their life manifesting both her maternal identity and the enthusiastic self she once was. The image of waltz locks them through the bridging of present-past memories; the girl/woman pair literally and symbolically in an embrace of expression.

© Rukhaya MK 2010

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1 Comment

  1. I need to know when Before you were mine was wrote in

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