Pilate's Wife

instantly attracted to him. But she’s unable either to pursue her

SUMMARY own desires or to stop Pontius from killing Jesus, no matter
what she does: as a woman and a wife, she has no real power.
The speaker describes her husband by painting a picture of his
Women’s desires and their strength have long been restricted
feminine hands. They were softer than hers, and his nails
and ignored, this poem suggests, and marriage has been used
reminded her of seashells from Galilee. She saw his hands as
as a tool for such oppression.
lazy and effeminate; he used to clap to summon servants to
feed him grapes. She flinched under his light, papery touch. From the beginning of the poem, the speaker makes it clear that
This, she says, was what her husband Pontius Pilate was like. she is in a loveless marriage. She is not attracted to her
husband in the least, it seems; Pontius is lazy and effeminate,
The speaker longed to go back home to Rome—or to be with
she complains, and his touch makes her "flinch." She longs to go
some other man. By the time Jesus came to Jerusalem, she was
"home" and be with "someone else," yet is powerless to do so.
bored enough that she disguised herself and snuck out with her
maid to join a frantic crowd of Jesus’s followers. She stumbled, Though trapped in her marriage to Pontius, she still has a
grabbed a donkey’s bridle to right herself, and looked up— strong will and desires of her own. In sneaking out to see Jesus
speak to a crowd, the speaker is rebelling against her husband.
—straight into the face of Jesus. He was ugly. And yet, she
As soon as the speaker locks eyes with Jesus, she is instantly
remembers, she could tell he was talented. The way he looked
attracted to him, later going on to have a dream about him
at her made her feel he really saw her. His eyes were beautiful.
which leaves her “sweating” and “sexual."
Before she knew it, Jesus had disappeared, his disciples
pushing through the crowd and towards the gates of the city. Unfortunately, because of her position as a woman and as
Pontius’s wife, the speaker has very little real power to act on
The night before Jesus’s trial, the speaker had a dream about
that will or those desires. She attempts to save Jesus, warning
him. He was touching her, but then his touch began to hurt.
her husband to “leave him alone,” but Pontius does not take her
There was blood everywhere. She looked down and noticed
seriously. Ultimately, he chooses to ignore her, and Jesus is
that there was a nail hammered through each of Jesus’s palms.
executed. In this way, the speaker’s unwanted marriage
When she woke up, she was both aroused and afraid.
undermines her power and represses her desires, suggesting
She sent her husband a note, warning him to leave Jesus alone. that marriage can be a tool of sexist oppression.
Then she got dressed as quickly as she could. But by the time
she got to the trial, the crowd had already made up its mind.
Where this theme appears in the poem:
Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns, would be executed. They had
decided to pardon Barabbas, a thief, instead. The speaker knew • Lines 1-24
Pilate saw her, but he only looked away and rolled up his
sleeves.
MASCULINITY, POWER, AND DESIRE
He washed his useless, perfume-scented hands. Then, Jesus
was dragged away to be crucified on the hill known as the Place “Pilate’s Wife” imagines Jesus’s crucifixion from the
of Skulls. The speaker's maid knows the rest of the awful story. point of view of the frustrated wife of Pontius Pilate
The speaker asks: Was Jesus God? She answers: Of course he (the Roman governor who had Jesus executed). The speaker
wasn’t. But Pilate, she says, believed that he was. finds her husband effeminate, weak, and sexually repulsive.
Pontius Pilate might be a high-ranking governor who holds
Jesus’s life in his hands, but he’s also a spineless coward. Jesus,
THEMES meanwhile, is much more sexually alluring to the speaker
because he’s “tough,” “talented,” and devoted to his cause. Being
an attractive man, in this speaker’s eyes, isn’t about political
MARRIAGE AND WOMEN'S OPPRESSION power; it’s about having conviction and integrity.
“Pilate’s Wife” retells the story of Jesus’s crucifixion The speaker spends the poem’s opening lines complaining
from the perspective of the wife of Pontius Pilate about her husband’s "woman’s" hands and his "idleness."
(the Roman governor responsible for Jesus’s execution). From Pontius is "indolent," his "pearly nails" and soft skin conveying
the poem’s opening lines, the speaker resents her weak, idle, that he's unused to hard work. He doesn’t even get his own
out-of-touch husband, whom she clearly didn't choose for snacks, instead using his soft hands only to “clap” for his
herself. Bored by her husband and her life, she sneaks out to servants to bring him more “grapes”!
watch Jesus meeting a crowd, looks into his eyes, and is

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The speaker finds her husband repulsive not just because he’s her husband clapping to summon servants to feed him grapes,
not traditionally macho, however, but also because he acts suggesting that he is unable to do anything for himself. His soft
without any moral integrity: he lets Jesus die despite hands are the result of his laziness and self-indulgence.
“believ[ing]” him to be God. Instead of actually standing for The speaker explains that she not only resents her husband for
something, he just washes his “useless, perfumed hands” of the his idleness, she also finds him sexually unappealing. His touch
whole ordeal. He refuses to take any responsibility for what makes her “flinch.” This suggests that she was forced to marry
happens. Pilate against her will. Right from the start, then, readers
Jesus, by contrast, embodies an intensity and conviction that understand that this speaker is living in a bad time and place to
Pilate clearly lacks. He’s “talented” where Pilate is lazy, and he be a woman: an era in which women might have very little say
has “tough,” “brown” hands presumably strengthened and over whom they married.
weathered by his devotion to his work. Even more importantly, Besides foreshadowing Pilate's fateful hand-washing, the
Jesus actually sees the speaker: "He looked at me. I mean he speaker's focus on hands shows that Pilate is wealthy,
looked at me," the speaker says, suggesting that her own pampered, and powerful, with a safe and comfortable position
husband rarely does just that. Indeed, Pontius ignores her in society.
"warning note" to leave Jesus alone, implicitly because doing so
Pilate's wife will tell her story in free vverse
erse: poetry without a
would be politically inconvenient. Though he’s “ugly,” the
regular rh yme scheme or meter
rhyme meter. This choice makes the poem
speaker is attracted to Jesus because he has what her husband
feel casual and confessional, as if she's whispering her story
does not: a backbone.
into the reader's ear rather than writing a formal composition.

Where this theme appears in the poem: However, this free verse is also compressed into regular
quatr
quatrains
ains (or four-line stanzas) with roughly even line
• Lines 1-4 lengths—a regularity that subtly hints this opinionated speaker
• Lines 9-12 might be constrained by her circumstances. As readers will
• Lines 14-16 soon see, her constraints will have serious consequences.
• Lines 19-24
LINES 5-7
I longed for ...
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS ... the frenzied crowd.
The poem’s speaker admits to yearning for Rome (where she
LINES 1-4 comes from) and for another man. She feels both stuck and
Firstly, his hands—a ... sexually unfulfilled in her marriage, but still, she cannot take
... me flinch. Pontius. action beyond longing for a different life. No matter how she
"Pilate's Wife," like most of the poems in Carol Ann Duffy's "long[s] for Rome, home, someone else," she can't make any real
collection The World's Wife, retells the story of an important moves toward her desires. Despite the speaker’s high position
man from history or literature from the perspective of one of in society as the wife of an important Roman official, she has
his female relatives. In this poem, the speaker is the wife of little freedom.
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Jerusalem who allowed Notice how the internal rh
rhyme
yme of "Rome
Rome, home
home" emphasizes a
Jesus to be crucified. Famously, Pilate symbolically washed his long assonant /o/ sound, evoking a plaintive "Oh!" of longing.
hands to show that he was done with the whole Jesus business, The poem shifts when the speaker, “bored stiff” by both her life
renouncing any responsibility for Jesus's fate in spite of the fact and her husband, finally decides to rebel against Pontius by
that he could have stopped the crucifixion with a snap of his disguising herself and sneaking out with her maid, joining a
fingers. In other words, Pilate was a legendary coward. crowd gathered to greet the famous prophet Jesus. Here, the
As the first stanza shows, Pilate's wife knows that her husband poem alludes to the biblical scene in which Jesus enters
is weak even before the crucifixion—and that his hands have Jerusalem, humbly riding a donkey, and is greeted like a king by
something to do with his weakness. The poem begins with her an awestruck crowd—much to the displeasure of the Roman
detailed portrait of Pilate’s “woman’s” hands: “pale, mothy,” and authorities, who don't like any threats to their own power!
soft, manicured and ineffectual. His nails remind her of From the moment the speaker sees “the Nazarene" (that is,
seashells from Galilee, an allusion to a sea where Jesus gave Jesus, who was from the small town of Nazareth), he is Pilate’s
sermons that sets the poem in the biblical Middle East. opposite. Whereas Pilate bores his wife, Jesus has drawn a
Through the description of Pilate’s hands, the speaker reveals crowd and whipped them into a “frenz[y]." Jesus is charismatic
other character traits she loathes about her husband. He, like and magnetic in ways that Pontius, despite being a governor, is
his hands, is lazy, effeminate, and theatrical. The speaker shows not, setting up an important juxtaposition between the two

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men. This moment alludes to a scene in the Bible in which Pilate’s
wife warns her husband not to crucify Jesus because she
LINES 8-12 “suffered” in a dream of him. In Duffy's telling of this dream, the
I tripped, clutched ... speaker feels Jesus touching her. At first, it seems as if she's
... to the gates. having a sex dream about him. Then she begins to feel pain, and
The second stanza ends on a surprising enjambment
enjambment. Rather notices that both of Jesus's palms have been "skewered" by
than closing the stanza at the end of a sentence, the speaker nails.
carries an idea over a stanza break: The dream is a premonition, warning her that Jesus will be
crucified, but it is also a fantasy, allowing her to be touched by a
I tripped, clutched the bridle of an ass, looked up man other than Pontius. The speaker wakes up both afraid and
and there he was. His face? Ugly. Talented. aroused.
Take another look at these lines:
"He," of course, is Jesus himself—and the enjambment here
mirrors both the speaker's stumble and her surprise as she His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt.
looks into this powerful figure's face for the first time. He might Then blood. I saw that each tough palm was
be "ugly," but she's still immediately transfixed. skewered
Describing Jesus as both "ugly" and "talented," the speaker by a nail. [...]
suggests that what's attractive about Jesus is his charisma, not
any kind of ordinary physical beauty. Even more importantly, anaphoraa in those highlighted words draws attention to a
The anaphor
the speaker says, Jesus looks at her and truly sees her: process that at first sounds more like the story of a woman
losing her virginity (with pain and drops of blood) than the story
He look
looked
ed at me
me. I mean he look
looked ed at me
me. My God. of a woman suffering Jesus's crucifixion alongside him! This
His eyes were eyes to die for. [...] grim and funny passage thus does two things at once: it
presents a premonition of Jesus's death, and it suggests that
The repetitions here suggest that being really looked at, really the effeminate Pilate might never have had sex with his wife.
noticed, is what truly matters to the speaker. Jesus, she feels, In these lines, the motif of hands returns, once more
sees her as an individual, a real person—as opposed, readers juxtaposing Jesus with Pilate. Jesus’s hands are “brown” and
can guess, to the way Pilate looks at her. The line "his eyes were “tough,” where Pilate’s are “pale” and “mothy.” Jesus's touch is
eyes to die for" might also make a dark joke, foreshadowing the also much more sexually appealing to the speaker than Pilate's.
thousands of years of Christian history in which countless
Though Jesus's hands are physically stronger and manlier than
saints and martyrs would die for Jesus's sake.
Pilate's, they can't save him: he is executed by having nails
The speaker's interaction with Jesus is memorable but brief. driven through his palms. Pilate, on the (literal) other hand, uses
Before the speaker can say anything, Jesus is gone, his “rough his hands to “clap for grapes” or command his soldiers to “seize”
men” (that is, his lower-class disciples) pushing their way Jesus: his weak hands are powerful instruments. Despite his
through the crowd towards the gate of the city. The poem effeminacy, he still has more authority than Jesus in a power
juxtaposes Jesus with Pontius Pilate by describing Jesus as structure that rewards class above all else. Entrenched male
more traditionally masculine, from his tough, unrefined power, this juxtaposition suggests, isn't all about traditional
features to the “rough men” surrounding him. masculinity!
The speaker’s conversational tone makes this dramatic
LINES 17-20
encounter feel funny, playful, and tongue-in-cheek, not
dramatic. When Jesus meets her eyes, she exclaims “my God": Leave him alone ...
words that make her sound more like she's saying "Phew, he ... up his sleeves
was dreamy" than like she's hailing the Son of God! After her dream, the speaker decides to take action and sends a
note to her husband warning him to leave Jesus alone. Even
LINES 13-16 though she gets dressed “quickly" and hurries to her husband's
The night before ... side, Jesus has already been marked for execution by the time
... sweating, sexual, terrified. she arrives. "Crowned with thorns" (that his, wearing a crown
Now the speaker leaps over several days in the biblical of thorns, which Roman soldiers placed on his head to mock the
narrative, skipping the story of Jesus's arrest and jumping to idea that he was a king), he's about to be dragged off to the
the night before his trial and execution. That night, she recalls, horrible fate the speaker dreamed of.
she had a memorable dream. The speaker notes that at the trial, the crowd is “baying for

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Barabbas"—another Biblical allusion
allusion. On the day of Jesus's
execution, Pilate summoned a crowd and allowed them to SYMBOLS
request that a single prisoner be pardoned, rather hoping
they'd choose Jesus; Pilate felt that Jesus might be innocent, HANDS
but wouldn't make a stand for him. Instead of choosing Jesus,
People’s hands, in the poem, symbolize their class
the crowd voted to pardon Barabbas, a thief.
and their position in society.
By the time the speaker arrives, then, it is too late for her to
Pontius’s hands are soft and weak because he has not had to
save Jesus—but not too late for her husband to intervene.
use them: he's a high-ranking governor, not a working man. He
However, in line 19, Pilate sees the speaker—who, remember,
uses his hands to command those around him, “clapping for
has already begged him to spare Jesus—and decides to ignore
grapes” or instructing his soldiers to “seize” and execute Jesus.
her, turning away from her and rolling up his sleeves to wash his
Pontius's hands show he's rich and powerful enough to be idle.
hands. The small gesture shows just how powerless the
speaker is in her marriage and in society: even after begging her Jesus, by contrast, has tanned, “tough” hands. However, unlike
husband for help, she is unable to save Jesus. Pilate, by Pontius, he has very little political power. Jesus’s hands,
contrast, is all-powerful but unwilling to help. symbolic of his low class, become his greatest weakness: he is
crucified and his palms are “skewered by a nail,” eventually
LINES 21-24 killing him. The fact that his hands are physically stronger than
and slowly washed ... Pontius’s does him very little good in the end.
... believed he was. This symbol also alludes to the biblical story of the Crucifixion.
The speaker watches Pontius wash his “useless, perfumed” Pilate infamously washed his hands before executing Jesus,
hands before the crowd. Symbolically
Symbolically, this moment suggests telling spectators that he was symbolically clean of Jesus’s
he's “washing his hands” of blame for Jesus’s death. The blood (since the spectators were the ones who chose to send
speaker uses the moment as an opportunity to insult her Jesus to the Cross). Just as in the poem, Pilate’s feminine hands
husband’s femininity and his idleness one last time. belie his real power: his theatrical hand-washing hides the fact
that in reality, he did have the ability to prevent Jesus’s
Then, the speaker can only watch helplessly as Roman soldiers
execution.
grab Jesus and drag him to “the Place of Skulls"—that is,
Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified. The speaker is
unable even to go and watch the execution; instead, she says, Where this symbol appears in the poem:
she got the story from her maid, who “knows all the rest." • Lines 1-4: “Firstly, his hands—a woman's. Softer than
Here, the poem juxtaposes the speaker’s lack of freedom in her mine, / with pearly nails, like shells from Galilee. /
marriage with her maid’s ability to travel the city and hear all Indolent hands. Camp hands that clapped for grapes. /
the gossip, in spite of her lower class. The fact that the speaker Their pale, mothy touch made me flinch.”
has to hear secondhand what happened to Jesus once again • Lines 14-16: “His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt.
suggests that her wealth and power are really only illusory. As a / Then blood. I saw that each tough palm was skewered /
married woman, she's essentially a prisoner, unable to save by a nail.”
Jesus or even to witness his fate. • Lines 19-21: “Pilate saw me, / looked away, then
carefully turned up his sleeves / and slowly washed his
The poem closes with the speaker using a rhetorical question to useless, perfumed hands.”
ask: "Was he God?" The answer, to her, seems clear: “Of course
not,” she quips. However, “Pilate believed he was.” In one way,
this line is just another dig at Pilate’s intelligence: if a fool like
Pilate believed Jesus was God, the speaker suggests, Jesus POETIC DEVICES
couldn't have been God. But this line also darkly observes that
there's something very wrong with a world in which a powerful- JUXTAPOSITION
but-spineless man can believe he's met God himself—and still Juxtaposition helps the speaker to create a contrast between
send him to his execution to avoid trouble. Pilate's power is the effeminate Pilate and the manly Jesus. The speaker uses
meaningless (and dangerous) because he's too cowardly to contrasting descriptions of the two men to reveal their
wield it in the name of anything but his own pleasure. opposite positions in society. Pontius has “pale, mothy” hands,
The strong-willed, witty, frustrated speaker, meanwhile, is left while Jesus’s are “brown” and “rough.” Pontius is “useless”
utterly powerless in a marriage that's more like a jail—all where Jesus is “talented." Pontius’s touch makes the speaker
because she's a woman. flinch while Jesus’s (in her dreams) leaves her “sweating” and
“sexual.” The juxtaposition between the two characters
emphasizes just how cowardly Pontius is and just how

Page 4
convicted and intense Jesus is. encounter with a man—suggesting that Pilate might never have
The poem also juxtaposes the speaker’s own powerlessness had sex with her.
with Pontius’s ability to do whatever he pleases. The speaker However, that piercing pain is soon displaced onto a
has no freedom; she can't live where she chooses, marry whom premonition of the crucifixion: the speaker sees Jesus's "tough
she chooses, or even leave her house without a disguise. palm[s]," whose toughness once struck her as so powerful,
Meanwhile, Pontius, though he's "indolent" and "useless," is also "skewered / by a nail," feeling the pain as if in her own body. All
powerful, able to make life-or-death decisions (even if he the imagery surrounding Jesus is both exciting and violent,
spinelessly claims they're out of his hands). By juxtaposing the whereas Pilate’s touch is soft and "perfumed" but repulsive.
speaker’s restricted life with Pontius’s immense power and
freedom, the poem reveals how oppressive marriage could be Where Imagery appears in the poem:
for women.
• Line 2: “pearly nails”
• Line 4: “pale, mothy touch”
Where Juxtaposition appears in the poem:
• Line 12: “rough men shouldering”
• Line 1: “a woman's” • Line 14: “Then it hurt.”
• Line 3: “Indolent hands. Camp hands that clapped for • Lines 15-16: “each tough palm was skewered / by a nail. ”
grapes.” • Line 21: “perfumed hands.”
• Line 4: “pale, mothy touch,” “made me flinch”
• Line 5: “I longed for Rome, home, someone else” IRONY
• Line 6: “I crept out”
“Pilate’s Wife” uses iron
ironyy to subvert the reader's expectations,
• Line 13: “I dreamt of him.”
especially when it comes to which characters have freedom and
• Line 14: “brown hands”
power. Despite being effeminate and not stereotypically manly,
• Line 15: “tough palm”
for instance, Pontius Pilate is the most powerful man in the
• Line 16: “I woke up, sweating, sexual,”
poem.
• Lines 19-20: “Pilate saw me, / looked away”
• Line 21: “his useless, perfumed hands.” Throughout the poem, Pilate is contrasted with Jesus. Where
• Line 23: “My maid knows all the rest.” Pilate is effeminate and "camp," Jesus is stereotypically
masculine, with "tough" hands and striking sexual charisma. It
IMAGERY may initially seem, then, that Pontius is weaker than Jesus.
Duffy uses vivid visual and tactile imagery to bring her However, it is Pontius who comes out on top. At the end of the
reinterpretation of historical events to life. poem, despite Jesus’s strength and power, Pilate is able to have
Jesus executed. The ironic contrast between the two men
The poem begins with a detailed description of Pontius’s hands.
points out that male power isn't just about "manliness": only
The speaker uses a simile to compare his “pearly” nails to
men who are born wealthy, like Pilate, have any worldly power,
delicate seashells, suggesting that he is idle and vain, spending
regardless of how traditionally masculine or feminine they are.
more time at the manicurist than at work. The poem’s opening
line also uses tactile imagery, describing Pilate’s repulsive “pale, The speaker’s complete lack of power—despite the fact that
mothy touch": in other words, when Pilate touches her, the she's clever, strong-willed, and married to a very powerful
speaker feels as if she's being fluttered over ineffectually (and man—is ironic, too. Throughout the poem, the speaker reveals
rather disgustingly) by a big bug. Given how preoccupied and herself to be brave and intelligent. She is bold enough to sneak
familiar the speaker is with Pilate’s hands, it is clear that she is out and watch Jesus enter Jerusalem, and she repeatedly
unable to escape the husband she resents. pokes fun at her husband’s laziness and privilege. However, in
spite of her smarts and courage, she is unable to save Jesus, not
The poem continues to use tactile imagery to draw attention to
even by appealing to Pontius.
characters’ hands and to create a sense of danger for Jesus and
the speaker. When the speaker sneaks out and encounters Through its irony, the poem criticizes ironclad structures of
Jesus, she suggests that he and his disciples come from a classism and sexism.
different kind of background than Pilate with her image of his
"rough men shouldering a pathway” through the crowd. Those Where Iron
Ironyy appears in the poem:
"rough" fellows wouldn't know a nail file if it stabbed them. • Lines 19-21: “Pilate saw me, / looked away, then
Similarly, when the speaker has a prophetic vision of Jesus’s carefully turned up his sleeves / and slowly washed his
execution, she dreams Jesus is touching her with "tough" hands. useless, perfumed hands.”
"Then it hurt," she says, in a moment that invites readers to • Lines 22-23: “They seized the prophet then and dragged
assume she's describing the pain of a woman's first sexual him out, / up to the Place of Skulls.”

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REPETITION
• Lines 14-15: “Then it hurt. / Then blood.”
Repetitions highlight the poem's symbolism and emphasize
• Line 21: “hands”
important moments.
One of the most distinctive flavors of repetition in the poem is
ALLUSION
its diacope on the word "hands," which appears no fewer than
five times across the poem. That repetition, besides alluding to “Pilate’s Wife” is based on the story of Jesus's crucifixion. As a
the biblical story of Pilate washing his hands to seal Jesus's result, the poem contains many allusions to both biblical and
fate, helps to establish the speaker's disgust at her spineless, historical events.
lazy, effeminate husband. Take a look at the way the poem uses In the poem’s second line, for example, the speaker compares
the word in the first three lines, for instance: her husband’s nails to seashells from Galilee, a region where
Jesus often preached. This allusion places the poem in time and
Firstly, his hands
hands—a woman's. Softer than mine, space (as well as suggesting that Pilate spends plenty of time at
with pearly nails, like shells from Galilee. the salon).
Indolent hands
hands. Camp hands that clapped for grapes. The next major biblical allusion occurs in the fourth stanza,
when the speaker dreams of Jesus’s crucifixion. In the Bible
There's not just diacope on the word "hands" itself here. telling of the crucifixion story, Pilate's wife has a dream about
There's also par
parallelism
allelism in the speaker's description of those Jesus which causes her “great suffering” (and, one imagines,
hands, drawing special attention to her disdainful adjectives: considerably less pleasure than the version of the dream in this
"indolent" and "camp." Later on, by contrast, Jesus's hands are poem). Duffy fleshes out this short line from the Bible to
"tough" and "brown," work-worn and earthy compared to suggest that Pilate's wife might have had more complicated
Pilate's manicured fingers. feelings about Jesus than pure awe or pity.
Repetitions also suggest just how fascinating the speaker finds Finally, the scene of Jesus’s trial and execution is filled with
Jesus. When she meets him in a crowd, she recalls: biblical allusions:

He look
looked
ed at me
me. I mean he look
looked
ed at me
me. My God. • When the speaker hears the crowd “baying for
His eyes were eyes to die for. Barabbas,” she's describing the famous scene in
which Pilate presents two prisoners to the crowds
Notice how the speaker’s repetitions here, focusing on glances of Jerusalem and offers to let one go. The crowd
and eyes, stress that the speaker feels truly seen by Jesus and chooses the thief Barabbas over Jesus.
reveal how lonely and trapped she feels in her marriage to • Jesus's "crown of thorns" was the mocking,
Pontius. Something as small as a glance is enough to make her torturous one the Roman soldiers forced him to
feel appreciated. wear on the day of his death, ridiculing the idea that
this apparently powerless man was the Messiah.
This encounter makes such an impression on her that she
• Perhaps most important is the image of Pilate
anaphoraa as the dream turns
dreams about Jesus. Listen to her anaphor
washing his hands. In this symbolic scene, Pilate, in a
strange:
fatal moment of cowardice, behaves as if he has no
power to prevent Jesus's death even though he
His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt. knows that he does—and feels that Jesus is
Then blood. [...] innocent. By literally and figuratively "washing his
hands" of the situation, he abdicates his
That repeated "then" invites readers to imagine a process—and responsibility.
one that, at first, sounds more like a deflowering than a
premonition of Jesus's crucifixion! Here, repetitions wink at the These vivid details, integral to the poem’s plot, also add to the
reader, pointing out the dream's odd blend of sexuality and nightmarish atmosphere and make the familiar biblical story
horror. more lifelike.

Where Repetition appears in the poem: Where Allusion appears in the poem:
• Line 1: “hands” • Line 2: “Galilee”
• Lines 10-10: “He looked at me. I mean he looked at / me • Line 4: “Pontius”
/ .” • Lines 5-6: “When the Nazarene / entered Jerusalem,”
• Line 14: “hands” • Line 13: “The night before his trial, I dreamt of him.”

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 • Similarly, the fifth stanza ends with the image of
• Lines 18-23: “the Nazarene was crowned with thorns. / Pontius “carefully turning up his sleeves,” leaving the
The crowd was baying for Barabbas. Pilate saw me, / reader holding their breath, hoping that he will act
looked away, then carefully turned up his sleeves / and to prevent Jesus’s execution. The final stanza,
slowly washed his useless, perfumed hands. / They however, begins with “and slowly washed his
seized the prophet then and dragged him out, / up to the useless, perfumed hands.” The reader learns that
Place of Skulls. ” Pontius will not halt the execution at the same time
that the speaker does.

VOCABULARY METER
erse, meaning that it doesn't
“Pilate’s Wife” is written in free vverse
Galilee (Line 2) - A seaside region where Jesus often gave use a steady meter
meter. The poem's flexible, conversational
sermons. rhythms help it to read like an intimate confession straight from
Indolent (Line 3) - Lazy. the mouth of Pilate’s wife, without the restrictions of a
traditional form or regular meter.
Camp (Line 3) - Theatrically effeminate.
However, the poem does use roughly consistent line lengths
Pontius Pilate (Line 4, Line 24) - The Roman governor who
and predictable quatr
quatrains
ains, making the poem look pretty orderly
oversaw Jesus’s crucifixion.
on the page. Perhaps this foursquare shape subtly suggests
The Nazarene (Lines 5-6, Line 18) - Jesus—so called because how constricted the speaker feels by her unhappy marriage,
he came from the town of Nazareth. her frustrated desires, and her powerlessness in a man's world.
Jerusalem (Lines 5-6) - The city where Jesus died and was
resurrected, according to the Bible. RHYME SCHEME
Ass (Line 8) - A donkey—in this instance, Jesus's donkey! Christ erse poem, it does not have a
Because “Pilate’s Wife” is a free vverse
was said to have entered Jerusalem riding on donkey-back. regular rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme. Though the speaker does use moments
of internal rh
rhyme
yme for rhythm and emphasis—for instance, "I
Barabbas (Line 19) - In the biblical story of the Crucifixion, longed for Rome
Rome, home
home" in line 5 or "eeyes to die for" in line
Barabbas was a thief who, by popular vote, was pardoned 11—there's very little rhyme here in general.
instead of Jesus, evading the death penalty.
The poem’s lack of rhyme gives it an informal, conversational
Place of Skulls (Lines 22-23) - The hill (also known as tone. The speaker seems to be speaking directly to readers,
Golgotha) where Jesus and other prisoners were crucified. confiding in them, complaining about her husband and
The Prophet (Lines 22-23) - Jesus. confessing to her secret desires.

FORM, METER, & RHYME SPEAKER

FORM The poem’s speaker is the wife of Pontius Pilate, the Roman
governor responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion. By retelling a
“Pilate’s Wife” is made up of 24 lines broken into six quatrains
familiar biblical story from the point of view of a character who
(or four-line stanzas). It is written in free vverse
erse, meaning it
has historically been overlooked, the poem calls into question
doesn't stick to any regular meter or rh rhyme
yme scheme
scheme—a choice
women’s role in society at the time.
that makes the speaker's voice sound intimate and
confessional, as if she's telling this story to readers in private. Fed up with her lazy, effeminate husband, this poem's speaker
is full of frustrated desires. Her pent-up energy makes her
The poem’s stanza breaks usually mark a change in subject or
rebellious. Sneaking out to see what the big fuss is when Jesus
scene: most of the stanzas come to a neat and self-contained
arrives in Jerusalem, she witnesses many of the biblical story's
ending. However, from time to time, the poem uses
key moments: she sees Jesus enter the city, watches his trial,
enjambment to carry a scene across stanzas for emphasis or
and even has a premonition about his death. However, she is
dramatic effect. For example:
unable to change the outcome of the story, no matter how hard
she tries; Jesus is executed in the end. This shows how little
• Stanza two ends with the speaker tripping and
power the speaker—and other women—historically held.
looking up, the pause leaving the reader anticipating
what she will see. Stanza three begins with “and
there he was,” making Jesus’s entrance into the
poem that much more dramatic.

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 perspective of Pilate's nameless wife—who was said to have
SETTING begged her husband not to let Jesus die—Duffy gesture at the
still-real difficulties of being a disenfranchised woman in a
The poem takes place in Jerusalem at the time when Jesus was
man's world (or, for that matter, a woman married to a man she
crucified. Run by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, this is a
doesn't think much of). In this way, “Pilate’s Wife” is both a
dangerous city under a strong imperial thumb. Jesus's dramatic
historical poem and a product of the time in which it was
arrival presents a threat to the established order that Pilate
written.
represents.
The poem’s speaker includes passing details about the setting
in her descriptions and imagery
imagery, giving the poem a subtle sense
of place. In the first stanza, for example, she compares her
husband’s manicured nails to seashells from the Sea of Galilee.
And her easy reference to the "Place of Skulls"—the notorious
execution hill also known as Golgotha—suggests she well
knows how gruesome Roman justice looks.

CONTEXT
LITERARY CONTEXT
The Scottish-born Carol Ann Duffy (1955-present) is the first
(and so far, the only) woman to serve as Poet Laureate of the
UK. A working-class writer and an out lesbian, she brought
fresh air and new perspectives to a laureateship historically
dominated by (mostly) straight, white, middle-class men.
"Pilate's Wife" appears in her collection The World's Wife
(1999), a darkly funny collection that reflects on the struggles
of being a woman in a sexist world. The poems in The World's
Wife are monologues in the voices of mythical and historical
women from Medusa to Frau Freud to Mrs. Midas Midas. By giving
these largely silent figures their own say, Duffy offers feminist
critiques of myth, history, and literature.
Duffy’s poetry often tackles current events and issues: she has
written poems about the war in Afghanistan, the climate
change crisis, and the FIFA World Cup. But she also frequently
returns to myth and legend, often using old stories to illuminate
modern issues. Duffy’s recent poetry collection Grimm Tales, for
example, is a modern retelling of eight traditional fairy tales.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
"Pilate's Wife" is a modernized retelling of a historical (and
legendary) event: Jesus's trial and execution. Accused of
blasphemy for claiming to be the son of god, Jesus was brought
before Pilate, the Roman governor of Jerusalem. According to
the biblical telling of this story, Pilate at first looked for a way to
release Jesus, thinking him essentially innocent. But at last,
spinelessly, he "washed his hands" of the whole situation,
denying his own responsibility and letting an angry crowd
decide whether or not Jesus would die. The rest, of course, is
history, both biblical and global.
Published in 1999, the poem uses contemporary, colloquial
language to modernize this story. By telling the tale from the

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