THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN

DUFFY
‘The Map-Woman’ This poem can be seen to give a range of information to a reader, allowing them
to think of various associations and connotations before beginning the poem. The main focus of this
would be the blending of an object and a person, questioning how this could be possible, likely
understanding that the poem will be metaphorical in its subject matter. It would also cause a reader
to have multiple questions, most notable of which would relate to what the map is of, and how this
is connected to the woman or poem itself.
Poem Structure
Even without reading ‘The Map-Woman’ it would be clear that it is a very structured and quite
regimented poem, as all thirteen stanzas each have ten lines. This could be linked to the idea of
a the structure of a map, which is presented in a clear and methodical way, very similar to that of
this poem. However, it is also quite a long poem when compared to the other poems being studied
as part of this anthology, which could be seen as representation of the extensive information
provided by maps, and the seeming ‘never ending’ nature of them in all the details that they can
show.
The consistent line length as part of this consistent structure would encourage a reader to read from
punctuation to punctuation, with this demonstrating that Duffy wants to deliberately control the
flow of the poem in order to impact the rhythm. It is therefore also important to consider the use of
punctuation, with many semi-colons and hyphens used. While it could be anticipated that there may
be more punctuation in a longer poem, these specific choices also help to control the rhythm of the
poem and ensure that the intended emphasis is placed on specific words.
There are however a range of unusual breaks in the overall structure of ‘The Map-Woman’, for
example enjambment across stanzas as shown between the eleventh and twelfth stanzas. The break
between “what was familiar” and “was only a facade” places additional emphasis on the second half
of the sentence, making a reader consider the ideas of “facades” and how things can be hidden
depending on how a person decides to present themselves. There is also an example of consonance
with the letter ‘f’ which further encourages a reader to remember this line.
Poetic Techniques
The range of connections that the woman has to the town are explored through listing, with many
sections of the poem taken up by giving a detailed insight into the physical description, or even the
items being worn. For example the first stanza is predominantly a list of clothing used by the woman
to hide her “map of the town” which begins to sound lyrical, aided by the use of punctuation. As
such a reader may have the impression of it sounding like an old story or tale, giving the poem a
mythical and imaginative tone and feel. S
imiles are also frequently used in ‘The Map-Woman’ such as “like a fly” in the third stanza. In this
specific example, it provides an amusing image but could also be seen as commenting on the way in
which individuals make up only a fraction of society, with one person very small in the context of an
entire town or country. Another use of a simile is “clear as an operation scar” in the fifth stanza, with
additional emphasis placed on “operation” due to the four syllables of the word dominating in the
context of one syllable words. The connotations are largely negative because they allude to suffering
and illness, showing that a whole range of emotions and situations are shown as being part of this
map and therefore a part of the woman.
The personal connections in the poem are further emphasised by the repetition of “her” and other
personal pronouns. This encourages a reader to feel like they actually know the character, rather
than just observing her from a distance, which in turn would help them to develop a personal
 THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
connection. However, the use of “she” also returns some sense of distance with no use of a name,
with this aspect of anonymity perhaps encouraging a reader to consider how these ideas could apply
to people throughout society.
Important Lines
“Over her breast was the heart of the town”
The imagery this provides reinforces the idea of the “heart” and the way that the town is vital to the
woman, and arguably the woman is vital to the town. The idea use of “breast” could also be
interpreted as the woman contributing to the sustaining and nurturing of the environment, with the
two being interdependent.  The use of the past tense for “was” adds an extra layer of meaning to
this description, with some readers questioning a potential transition as the woman has changed.
“Her new skin showed barely a mark.”
The use of “barely” is notable because it shows that the map has now almost entirely disappeared,
with  new, modern and clean connotations evoking ideas that the old map ‘tarnished’ the woman.
However it is not definite or complete, alluding to some remaining impacts from her past. The idea
of a “mark” could help to encourage a reader to look past physical changes a person may
experience, and instead on the mental impacts and emotions connected to what they have gone
through.
“old streets tunnelled and burrowed”
The description of the streets as a living entity is an interesting description which would capture the
attention of a reader. Describing them as “old” and linking to the underground gives the impression
of history and archaeology, with hidden secrets and information, showing that all these memories
and impressions may no longer be visible but still have an impact on the woman today. In addition,
the part rhyme between “tunnelled” and “burrowed” gives a more playful tone to the poem. ‘The
STRUCTURE

 Enjambment – this shows freedom within the poem which contrasts with the
constraints explored in the poem
 Regular stanza length – the strong structure shows the constraint she feels within
her life
 Intrinsic rhyming couplet at the end
 Anapest rhythm- along with the litanies, helps to give the poem a galloping tempo
 Rhyme which is sometimes strong, “skin” and “begin”. At other times, there is half
rhyme conveying a barely contained energy
LANGUAGE TECHNIQUES

 Extended metaphor of the map as the woman’s skin “A woman’s skin was a map of
the town”. The skin shows where the woman has come from
 Litanies – give the poem a galloping tempo
 Similes – grounded in physical concrete nouns, abstract nouns
 Repetition
 Rhetorical questions
 Assonance
 Sexual imagery “crossed the bridge at her nipple”
 THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
IMAGERY

 Bone is deep support

 Travel – “A-Z street-map”, “from the Market Square to the Picture House”, “alleys
and streets and walks” (body) and “crossed the bridge”. Some of these places may be
quite significant and they show how the woman is looking for things outside of the town –
seem like unreachable (the memories that shape her). The poet uses its geography to
explore the social expectations and assumptions of that time, neatly summarised by the
list of English heroes after whom the more affluent streets are named.
 Proper nouns – “Picture House”, “The Beatles”, “Dustin Hoffman” these cultural
references of pop culture are from the post-war era of the 50s and 60s. She creates a kind
of English Everytown from that period, with its motorways and sensible shops and its
strict social hierarchies – mayor, councillors, teachers.
 Clothing – “ankle-length cloak”, “leggings” – clothing throughout HISTORY, the
universal theme. Clothing hides the skin (the map) and then the imagery moves onto the
skin and an exploration of geography and location, before beneath the skin with a
disturbing image which turns the woman’s body into earth “tunnelled and burrowed” by
the past. The relief of her new blank skin is short-lived, suggesting that the idea of
‘starting again’ is an illusion because we carry our past inside us.
 Religious imagery – Bible “like old print on a page”, “wedding pair ran, ringed, from
the church”
 Evidently, throughout the poem physical details build up, bringing the woman’s
difficult situation vividly to life. Layers of imagery mirror the woman’s different levels of
self, working inwards through the course of the poem.
 The tone is nostalgic of the past, suggested by constant use of proper nouns from
the past

Title: 
"The Map Woman" = super hero quality
"The" = definite article, the woman is unique 
"Map" = where we've come from & where we've been, maps were often made by men (travllers &
pirates) Duffy is perhaps asking us to think about men drawing up the world - the feminine approach
is different from males, the woman creates the map on her skin. Perhaps maps symbolise theidea
that women are 'drawn' from male expectations. 
Structure: 
13 stanzas each with 10 lines - rigid, tight structure, perhaps represents the clear and methodical
way in which a map is presented. 
No regular rhyme scheme = the woman's body will change & so will her identity 

Techniques/Language/Themes: 

Simile = "her veins like shadows below the lines of the map" the map is a part of the
woman's identity, her past & present, the map itself cannot really ever be changed or
separated from her body, her memories are carried with her. 
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
Pressures from society & sibilance = "she sponged, soaped, scrubbed;" the woman aims to
get rid of the map, idea that society tells women what they shouldn't have, the woman has
a negative view of herself, perhaps Duffy is showing the effects of 21st century standards
placed on women today through social media & advertisements. The sibilance perhaps
emphasises how aggressively the woman is trying to get rid of her map. 

Transformation = "birthmark...tattoo...broad if she binged, thin when she slimmed," her

outer skin becomes marked to reveal her roots & identity as she grows, also shows her body
changing physically (society pressure?) compared to later on "Her new skin showed barely a
mark." has she changed to fit in with society's new standards? "barely" suggests that her old
skin has almost completely disappeared, yet it is not definite, suggesting that something still
remains from her past. 

Cultural references of pop culture = (post-war era 1950s/60s) "Picture House "The Beatles"
"Dustin Hoffman"

Society/life expectations = everything is already set out and planned for these
women "wonder who you would marry...your tiny face trapped in the window's bottle-thick
glass like a fly." child looking into an adults world, almost like a child pressing their face on
the glass and looking in. "like a fly" simile suggests how small one person really is yet society
still expects them to conform to these standards. 

Opening:

"A woman's skin was a map of the town" extended metaphor of the map as the woman's
skin, her skin shows where she has come from. Inspiration for the map woman has perhaps
come from a tattoed lady often shown at the circus/freakshows. 

Ending: 

"old streets tunnelled and burrowed, hunting for home." the streets are linked to the
underground alongside the description of "old" (adjective), giving a sense of history, secrecy
and hidden information suggesting that although these memories are not visible anymore,
they still impact and change the woman's identity. 

The Map Woman is a poem that collates all of the ideas of one’s past, one’s present and
one’s future into something that one can wear, like a piece of clothing. Duffy has created an
extended metaphor that rolls straight off of the tongue, just like the woman’s, in the poem,
life has rolled straight off of her body, but not out of her mind.
The first thing to point out is the structure: written in thirteen regular ten-line stanzas, the
poem is not in free verse. However, there is no regular rhyme scheme. There are strong
rhymes on occasion, but most of the time the poem uses half-rhymes or no rhyme at all.

I will break up the analysis into stanzas to ensure that it is clear, because this poem does
have an effective disorder.
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
Stanza 1:
The first stanza begins with

‘A woman’s skin was a map of the town / where she’d grown from a child’.

We can instantly see that the poem is in third person, and it is also in past tense. This allows
the reader to become very disconnected with the character, but this is done so that we have
an outsider’s perspective on the story. The use of the metaphor ‘skin was a map of the
town’, followed by enjambment, represents how the ‘map’ that the woman has on her skin
is endless and never ending. She has the ‘map’ on her skin to represent that this is her home
town, so it is innately going to be with her. But, the end-stopped line at the end of the
second line juxtaposes the idea that the ‘map’ is endless because Duffy has “stopped” the
map.
Duffy then uses an asyndetic list to represent the shame that the woman would feel if she
went outside and exposed the map – so she covered it up ‘with a dress, with a shawl, with a
hat, / with mitts or a muff, with leggings, trousers / or jeans, with an ankle-length cloak,
hooded / and fingertip-sleeved.’ The clothes that Duffy has listed asyndetically represent the
woman’s feminine side, which is more provocative – ‘dress’, ‘shawl’,’leggings’, for example –
but also represents her shameful side, that is more concealing – ‘trousers / or jeans’, ‘ankle-
length cloak, hooded’. This shows a desperation to cover up her past, but at the same time,
wants to be a normal woman.
Duffy calls the map a ‘birthmark, tattoo’, because these should be permanent scars on one’s
body, and then says that

‘the A-Z street-map grew, a precise second skin,’.

The use of ‘A-Z’ indicates that her skin covers the entire town, but the fact that it ‘grew’
juxtaposes that idea – how could the map grow if it was already complete? The ‘second skin’
metaphor is a very clever way of portraying the woman’s past coming back to haunt her, as
though the ‘map’ is growing over her normal skin like a wizard’s ‘cloak’. The ‘second skin’ is
‘broad if she binged, thin when she slimmed’ as though to explain that when the woman
grows, or shrinks, the ‘map’ and her past will go with her. The ‘second skin’ is also ‘a precis
of where to end or go back or begin.’ This shows a hesitation of where the ‘second skin’ is
supposed to lead the woman, but the difference between ‘end’, and ‘begin’ is very evident,
but Duffy is masking it as though to ‘end’ the map and to ‘begin’ the map are the same
thing.

Stanza 2:
The second stanza talks about where things “in the town” land on the map on her body. For
instance,

‘Over her breast was the heart of the town, / from the Market Sqaure to the Picture House’.

The way that Duffy has started to use body parts in this stanza is very clever, especially by
using the pun of the ‘heart of the town’ being near the woman’s ‘heart’. Duffy then says
that the ‘alleys and streets and walks, her veins / like shadows below the lines of the map,
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
the river / an artery snaking north to her neck.’ The way that Duffy has used the shapes of
body parts and functions to mimic the parts of the town is very clever. The thinness of the
‘alleys and streets and walks’, written in a syndetic list, are being related to the thinness of
the veins. Also, the use of the active verb ‘snaking’ mimics the idea of a meandering ‘river’.
Duffy says that ‘you would come to the graves’ after passing a ‘bridge at her nipple’, where
the ‘grey-haired teachers of English and History, the soldier boys, the Mayors and
Councillors’ are.

Stanza 3:
The list of those who are in ‘the graves’ is continued into the third stanza, without a full stop
at the end of the second stanza. Instead, Duffy has used a comma to suggest that there is a
vast amount of people in ‘the graves’ on the woman’s map. Duffy says that ‘their bodies
[were] fading into the earth like old print / on a page.’ The simile here of ‘old print on a
page’ illustrates the idea that when you die at an old age, like ‘grey-haired teachers’, you
will fade into the ‘second skin’ that she has and into the ‘earth’, and they are fading ‘into’
instead of “out of” the earth, implying that they are going to be with the woman, despite
‘fading’.
Duffy begins to use second person now by saying ‘[y]ou could sit on a wooden bench / as a
wedding pair ran, ringed, from the church’ so as to connect the reader into experiencing the
map alongside the woman. This, according to the poem, will “you” ‘wonder / who you
would marry and how and where and when / you would die;’ and the use of syndetic listing
again in the poem suggests that the map, and life, is continuing, unstoppably, to grow.

The wondering of marriage and death is converted into another idea as Duffy says that we
may just be ‘waiting fr time to start’ while we are ‘trapped in the window’s bottle-thick glass
like a fly.’ Now, the simile of the ‘fly’ stuck in glass is, somewhat, a cliché, but we begin to
feel what the woman feels like: trapped with her ‘second skin’ without being able to get out,
as though she is stuck inside ‘bottle-thick glass’.
Stanza 4:
The beginning of this stanza is slightly ambiguous, with a lengthy rhetorical question:
‘And who might you see, short-cutting through / the Grove to the Sqaure – that line there,
the edge / of a fingernail pressed on her flesh – in the rain, / leaving your empty cup, to
hurry on after / calling their name?’

This represents the idea of following “someone” through the town, ‘short-cutting’ and going
across lines that are not permnanent. And, we know that they are not permanent, like
streets or roads, because they are made by the ‘fingernail pressed on her flesh’, and not a
“fingernail mark on her map”. Half-way through the quotation above, the idea that it is
an interrogative sentence is lost because of the extent of description, and this represents
getting lost in life. The irony is that the woman should not be getting lost as she has an
innate ‘map’ of the town.
Duffy says that ‘[w]hen she showered, the map / gleaned on her skin, blue-black ink from a
nib.’ This portrays that the map on her skin is an artwork, reinforced with the ‘ink from a
nib’. Perhaps Duffy wanted to represent that the map is not just a route layout, and not just
an innate belonging that the woman has, but is also a calligraphic piece of art that should
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
not be covered up, but exposed. In fact, the way that Duffy has made the woman’s body a
piece of art is trying to make the woman feel more comfortable in her own body, and
represents how women feel self-conscious about their appearance.

The next line says that the woman ‘knew you could scoot down Greengate street’, and the
verb ‘knew’ indicates that the woman knows her map very well. The way that Duffy has
used proper nouns throughout the poem already, such as ‘Greengate street’ and ‘the Swan
Hotel’ in this stanza, presents the realism of the narrative. Duffy then uses the ‘Beatles’, as
though she is symbolising a significant moment in history for the woman.

Stanza 5:
The former stanza ends with enjambment to represent the flowing of the story, and the
flowing of the map. But, we see the Beatles ‘run for a train or Dustin Hoffman
screaming / Elaine! Elaine! Elaine! or the spaceman in 2001 / floating to Strauss.’ The link to
history and the past is evident here, and this looks like the woman looking back on things
that she experienced, or at least is imagining had happened in the town.
Duffy uses pivotal sibilance:
‘She sponged, soaped, scrubbed;’

The sibilance here demonstrates the bitterness that the woman feels towards her own body
and the map upon her skin. The active verbs are all tautological, which shows the
desperation the woman has to get the map off of her skin, as though she does not want to
remember her past. ‘[T]he prison and hospital stamped on her back,’ represents the lack of
need for the ‘prison and hospital’ in her past, as she cannot see it. But, it is difficult to
imagine that Duffy would mention these places unless they had meaning – perhaps the
woman can sense the ‘prison and hospital’ because these are things that she is going
to need in the future, instead of having used in the past?
‘The river’ that was before ‘snaking north’ is now ‘heading south’ as though the current has
changed directions. Perhaps this is a metaphor a change of heart that the woman
experienced in her life. The ‘heading south’ river is ‘clear as an operation scar’. This implies
that she has had an operation that looks like a ‘river’ running along her body – this
contradicts the idea that she has had no use for a ‘hospital’.

The railway is now pictured, and the woman is ‘pining / for Glasgow, London, Liverpool.’
And again, Duffy has used ‘[s]he knew’ to end the stanza, and carry onto the next stanza,
implying that her knowledge is now overrunning and continuous.

Stanza 6:
Duffy talks about how on railway platforms strangers will stare at you as you wave at them
and as you ‘vanished into the belching steam’ of a train. The onomatopoeic use of ‘belching’
makes the image feel a lot more negative, due to the connotations of ‘belching’. The woman
‘vanished’ in a metaphorical ‘belch’ of steam, but this is her wishing that she could make the
map ‘vanish’. And if she did make the map ‘vanish’, she would be ‘tasting future time / on
the tip of [her] tongue.’ We can see now that she is desperate to lose her past and ‘taste’
the future.
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
The idea that she ‘knew’, again, that ‘you could run / the back way home – there it was on
her thigh -‘. The way that this line finishes with a hyphen as an end-stopped line acts as a
disjunciton, but is actually a connective, so it is doing the same thing that enjambment does:
flowing. The ‘back way home’ is evidently a route that not everybody knows, so could we
argue that she wants to conceal her map so that people do not find out secret routes
around the town? To get back home, you would have to ‘duck and dive’ until you got there,
which again is a cliché. The clichés that Duffy has used in this poem so far juxtapose the
innvotation of the story, and also juxtaposes the unique ways home.

Stanza 7:
This stanza begins with a declarative sentence:
‘She didn’t live there now.’

This fairly monosyllabic declarative illustrates that she almost resents herself for still
remembering the ‘back way home’ to a ‘home’ that she no longer lives in. The first six lines
of this stanza represent the extremes that the woman is willing to go to in order to conceal
her body and map completely:
‘She didn’t live there now. She lived down south,
abroad, en route, up north, on a plane or train
or boat, on the road, in hotels, in the back of cabs,
on the phone; but the map was under her stockings,
under her gloves, under the soft silk scarf at her throat,
under her chiffon veil, a delicate braille.’
This asyndetic list is really pivotal as the woman is evidently becoming progressively
insecure about the map ‘under her stockings’. In fact, we could deduce that she does not
really have a place to live now, and this is suggested through the haphazard and random
directions that she ‘lived’ in like ‘down south, abroad, en route, up north, on a plane or train
or boat, in hotels, in the back of cabs, on the phone’. The way that she is living all over the
place, including on public transport, it suggests that she is a traveller now, and she does not
have a permanent home. This begs the question, why does she want to forget about her life
when she did have a home? Perhaps her home life was not stable or good for her as a child
or a younger person.
Duffy then says ‘[h]er left knee / marked the grid of her own estate. When she knelt / she
felt her father’s house pressing into the bone’ as though her old home is still indented and
still means something to her. The ‘looped soundtrack of then’ is still playing in her head
when she kneels, and she remembers all of the good times of her childhood now, which
continues into the following stanza.

Stanza 8:
This stanza almost glorifies all of the misbehaviours that children take part in. For instance
‘children’s shrieks’ are heard just after ‘an ice-cream van [cries]’. These two images
juxtapose how children conventionally feel when an ‘ice-cream van’ is about. Furthermore,
the narrator talks of a girl who ‘could hitch / from Junction 13’ and a ‘kid who’d run / across
all six lanes for a dare before he was tossed / by a lorry into the air like a doll.’ These images
are very dangerous, and are almost “too dangerous too be true”, but the way that Duffy has
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
rotated the danger back to childish manners with the simile ‘like a doll’ implies that perhaps
this story is slightly exaggerated – maybe the ‘kid’ was not running ‘across all six lanes’ of a
motorway, and maybe he just crossed a road recklessly.

Duffy creates an image of culture to her map, as she talks of the motorway ‘flowing away,
was a roaring river of metal / and light,’ because she then says an asyndetic list: ‘cheerio, au
revoir, auf wiedersehen, ciao.’ The culture that is represented in the British, French, German
and Italian ways to say “goodbye” creates the idea that the town is cultural. Either that, or
the woman herself is cultural, and is saying goodbye to the town.

Stanza 9:
Duffy now takes the reader back to the idea of body image. The woman ‘stared in the mirror
as she got dressed’ which reveals the map to herself:

‘the roads / for east and west running from shoulder / to wrist, the fuzz of woodland or
countryside under / each arm.’

The way that Duffy is dehumanising the woman into being the ‘woodland or countryside’
reinforces the insecure body image that she has, and thinks of herself as the ‘fuzz’ of nature,
rather than human. This is reinforced when Duffy says that ‘her baby-blue eyes unsure / as
they looked at themselves.’ as she is ‘unsure’ and insecure in her own mapped body.
Juxtaposing with this, the following sentence says ‘But her body was certain, / an inch to the
mile, knew every nook and cranny, / cul-de-sac, stile, back road, high road, low road, / one-
way street of her past.’ Again, Duffy has used an asyndetic list to represent the map of the
town on the woman’s body, but the way that it was only her ‘body’ that was certain, and
not her mind, portrays that the woman is mentally uncomfortable with looking back into her
past, but her body is saying otherwise. This again conforms to a cliché of what the “mind” is
telling you, and then what the “heart” is telling, and the woman in the poem is clearly
conflicted.

This stanza finishes mid sentence saying ‘There it all was, back’.

Stanza 10:
The sentence from the former stanza ends saying ‘to front in the glass’. This shows the
woman looking at her reflection in the mirror, analysing the town on her body, and she
clearly knows now that ‘there it all was’, and her body was certain that the map was correct.
The woman is evidently afraid to look at her past in the mirror because

‘She piled on linen, satin, silk, / leather, wool perfume and mousse and went out. / She got
in a limousine.’

The expense of the materials that the woman is wearing now portrays that she has some
wealth in her new life now. In addition, due to the expense of the materials, they are
unlikely to perish and reveal her map, thus people will not find out about it. However, the
following pivotal declarative sentence makes all of the woman’s efforts to stay concealed
disappear:
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
‘The map perspired / under her clothes.’

Then a sentence soon after says:

‘The map seethed / on her flesh.’

Both of these declarative sentences link to each other, and are very similar. The map is
leaking, and this may be due to the thick and imperishable materials that she is wearing. The
progression from ‘perspired’, which is just like sweating, which is bad enough, to ‘seethed’
shows that instead of simply concealing the map, the woman’s desperation to escape her
past is so intense that it is now turning to liquid and boiling underneath her clothes, as if the
map is trying to escape from her.
‘She took a plane’ and then she ‘spoke in a foreign tone’, which implies that she flew to
another country as quickly as possible to escape the town that she grew up in. Maybe this is
why her map is beginning to drip off of her body? But, when speaking in a foreign tone, the
‘map translated everything back to herself.’ The map is still there, and still prominent,
despite turning into perspiration.

Now, a ‘lover’s hands / caressed the map in the dark from north to south, / lost tourists
wandering here and there, all fingers / and thumbs, as their map flapped in the breeze.’
Who is the ‘lover’ that suddenly came into the poem? We could deduce that the ‘lover’ is
not another person, but this is just a metaphor for her present ‘caressing’ her past, because
she is releasing that her past is important to her in the present day, and she realises
this after it begins to ‘perspire’ and ‘seethe’. Also, the way that Duffy says that ‘their’ map
flapped in the breeze implies that the ‘lover’ and the woman are becoming one person, or
one soul – are the past and the present becoming one soul?
Stanza 11:
The pace at the beginning of this stanza slows right down with the conjunction ‘so’. The
pace of the poem before was very fast, but we do not realise that until we get to this stanza.
The stanza lists the things that the woman does after she and her ‘lover’ merge, such as ‘she
went back, drove a car for a night and a day, till the town appeared on her left’. When she
gets to the town, she hires ‘a room with a view’ – which, whether this is meant to be
intertextuality at all, makes me think of A Room With A View by E. M. Forster – and ‘soaked
in the bath.’ Now, does one think that the ‘bath’ will remove the map more, or will it secure
it more?
After her bath, she went out into the night, and she thought ‘she knew the place like the
back of her hand, / but something was wrong. She got lost in arcades, / in streets with new
names, in precincts / and walkways, and found that what was familiar’. The way that she is
now losing her way implies that the map has gone from ‘the back of her hand’ – yet another
cliché. Had the woman looked at the ‘back of her hand’ before she went out, she may have
been less surprised at her amnesia.

Stanza 12:
The previous stanza finished mid-way through a sentence – ‘found that what was familiar
(end of eleventh stanza) was only facade.’ The idea that the town was now only a ‘facade’
THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
makes the woman is now doubt everything that she believed in, as her memory is
completely lost.

She almost immediately goes back to her hotel room and ‘she stripped / and lay on the bed.’
But, could we infer that she ‘stripped’ herself of her ‘second skin’? Or, has she already done
this? She sleeps, and

‘her skin sloughed / like a snake’s, the skin of her legs like stockings, silvery, / sheer, like the
long gloves of the skin of her arms, / the papery camisole from her chest a perfect match /
for the tissuey socks on the skin of her feet.’

She now feels her skin, and is aware of what it feels like. But, she thinks of it as clothing, as
something that she can just remove when it is unclean, or unneeded. Does she even know
that it is ‘skin’, or the map? Following this is a pivotal declarative sentence:
‘Her sleep / peeled her’.

The way that Duffy has split up this sentence creates a visual sense of binary oppositions:
the distinction between ‘her sleep’ and ‘peeled her’ makes it seem as though she was so
unconscious (sleep) of something physically happening to her body (peeled). Also,
the assonance of the sound ‘ee’, and subsequently the diacope of ‘her’, makes the sentence
even more pivotal, and it links ‘sleep’ and the idea of ‘peeling’ skin, and she becomes both
‘sleepy’ and ‘peeling’ simultaneously.
Duffy goes on to say that all of her clothing and skin is ‘patterned A-Z’.
The anaphoric reference of ‘A-Z’ creates an idea that at the beginning of the poem we were
at ‘A’, and after the long journey that we were taken on, we are at ‘Z’. Duffy then says that
‘a small cross where her parents’ skulls / grinned at the dark.’ The woman’s parents are
evidently dead, and the reanimation of the ‘skulls’ so that they ‘grin’ creates the idea that
they are spiting their daughter for losing her past.
At the end of this stanza Duffy says ‘Her new skin showed barely a mark.’ This is because her
‘new skin’ has not experienced anything yet, she has only been asleep. But, when she begins
to experience more, we could infer that she will get new ‘marks’ on her skin.

Stanza 13:
When the woman wakes, she ‘spread out the map on the floor.’ The woman has become
disconnected from her map now as Duffy calls is ‘the’ map, and not ‘hers’. The woman can
now see her entire map, her entire skin, as though she is looking at her entire life. Duffy
uses a rhetorical question saying ‘[w]hat / was she looking for?’ But, who says that she is
‘looking for’ anything? There is no evidence that she wants to find anything in her past – if
anything, she was trying to get away from it:
‘Her skin was her own small ghost, / a shroud to be dead in, a newspaper for old news / to
be read in, gift-wrapping, litter, a suicide letter.’

The semantic field of death that Duffy has used here represents that the woman’s old self is
dying, but this is ‘old news’. But the way that her old skin is a ‘ghost’, is ‘dead’, and is a
‘suicide letter’ shows the deadliness that has been surrounding her for her whole life as she
has evolved, and now her old self is dying.
 THE MAP WOMAN- CAROL ANN
DUFFY
The woman leaves her skin in the hotel room, and goes out for a drive. ‘She ate up the
miles.’ but this is when her ‘skin itched, / like a rash, like a slow burn, felt stretched, as
though / it belonged to someone else.’ She now feels like she is not herself because she has
left her past behind her. The way that her new skin ‘itched’ and ‘burned’ and ‘stretched’ is
indicative of the mistake that she made by allowing her map to ‘perspire’ and ‘seethe’ in
stanza 10.

But, the poem ends with the idea that the woman still has her innate home town engraved
into her body, which represents the idea that your past will never leave you:
‘Deep in the bone / old streets tunnelled and burrowed, hunting for home.’

This ending sentence, with the verbs ‘tunnelled’ and ‘burrowed’ represents an animalistic
image of rabbits. Then, the way it says that the “rabbits” are ‘hunting’ for home implies that
the woman is now both the victim of hunting – the ‘tunnels’ and ‘burrows’ created in her
escape – and the perpetrator – the ‘hunter’. Duffy leaves the reader with the idea that the
woman has lost her skin, but will not ever lose her memories.

Themes:
 Entrapment.
 Body Image.
 The Past, Present and Future.
 Memories.
 Journeys.
 Unstoppable Emotions.
 Suppressed Emotions.
 Past and Present: Unlike other poems in the collection, ‘The Map-Woman’ focusses more on past and present in
terms of personal changes and transitions rather than broader changes in society, allowing for an in depth look at
the things and people that have shaped this one person.
 Identity: The poem is built around the idea of personal identity within society, and the way that different things
can impact an individual both visibly and mentally.
 Society and Culture: There are several references to key moments in society and culture such as movies or well
known figures, along with broader ideas that appeal across demographics to connect people through shared
experiences and memories.

The range of techniques used in the poem are typically easy to identify, meaning that this poem is a good option as
part of a comparison. For example, ideas of identity could be compared in ‘Inheritance’, ‘Effects’ or ‘Fantasia on a
Theme of James Wright’, while the structure could enable comparisons with ‘Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn’.