Carol Ann Duffys Little Red-Cap and Delilah Essay -- Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy's "Little Red-Cap† and â€Å"Delilah" â€Å"During the 1980s, a unique type and style of women-led peace protest strategies emerged that relied on the powerful language, and particularly the powerful imagery of women as a group engaged in an extended protest against nuclear weapons† (LaWare 18). Carol Ann Duffy’s book, The World’s Wife, was first published in Great Britain in 1999, and two of its dramatic monologues similarly rely on the powerful language and imagery of women engaged in a protest against historically patriarchal narratives and male violence. â€Å"While some peace encampments [in the 1980s] included men and women, many were women only, including one of the first and longest lasting peace encampments, the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common in Newbury, England, which evolved into and ignited a women’s peace movement† (LaWare 18). â€Å"[T]housands of women from Britain and the world†¦ later visited and lived at the camp during its almost twenty years of existence, until the last group of women left in 2000[,]† and while it’s not clear whether Duffy visited the camp, the camp’s strategies of resistance are embedded in two of her poems (LaWare 19). The speakers of â€Å"Little Red-Cap† and â€Å"Delilah† employ the camp’s strategies of physically embracing a symbol of male violence, subsequently defacing the symbol through an act of creative nonviolence, and finally transforming the symbol’s patriarchal sphere into a space filled with peace and feminine imagery. First, the speakers of Duffy’s two poems resemble the protestors at Greenham Common who physically embraced a symbol of male violence: [T]he Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp gained both national and international attention in D... ...orld’s Wife. New York: Faber, 1999. 28-29. ---. â€Å"Little Red-Cap.† The World’s Wife. New York: Faber, 1999. 3-4. Holy Bible, New International Version. Zondervan, gen. ed. International Bible Society, 1984. BibleGateway.com. Gospel Communications International. 14 May 2005 search=judges%2016&version1=31>. LaWare, Margaret L. â€Å"Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common.† NWSA Journal 16.3 (2004): 18-41. Little Red Riding-Hood Picture Book. London: George Routledge and Sons, circa 1870. The Little Red Riding Hood Project. Ed. Michael N. Salda. Dec. 1995. The de Grummond Children’s Literature Research Collection, University of Southern Mississippi. 14 May 2005