When I finished The World’s Wife, I wondered why Duffy chose to end the book with the poem “Demeter.” I had heard of Demeter before in Greek mythology but needed to investigate her story after reading the poem. Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, and her virgin daughter, Persephone, was abducted to the underworld by Hades. As the legend has it, while her daughter was missing, all living things ceased their growth since Demeter was so distraught. Hades eventually agreed to release Persephone, but she ate a pomegranate from him and became bound to him for a third of the year, usually during the winter or the drought, spending the rest of the year with her mother.

After learning about Demeter and Persephone, this poem held a much greater significance. This poem was about the ultimate kind of love, a mother’s love. Duffy spends much of the book giving examples of different types of flawed love in regard to the women and their husbands in many of the “Mrs. __” poems. Most of her other poems are witty, ironic, and entertaining; yet “Demeter” has a very different tone from the others – it is sincere.

Although Persephone is the one who spends more time in the underworld, Demeter herself becomes pretty much dead when her daughter is not with her, sitting in her “cold stone room / choosing tough words, granite, flint, / to break the ice.” The first two stanzas of the poem represent when she is in despair. The language used by Duffy conveys Demeter’s depression with the short, harsh-sounding words and the motif of ice and winter.

This tone completely shifts once Demeter sees “my daughter, my girl, across the fields.” Demeter’s frozen heart seems to instantly melt the moment she sees Persephone. Her language is warm and embracing with the use of “my daughter” and “my girl.” Demeter swore as though “the air softened and warmed as she moved.” As a loving mother, Demeter’s happiness revolves around her child. Duffy herself has a daughter, Ella, and it can be inferred that this is a testament to how a mother’s love is the greatest love of all.