What do you think is the central message of the poem? First thoughts and feelings?

What is the moral message of the fairy tale and the Choose three words or phrases that interest you in the
poem? How do they compare? poem and annotate them to show how you think they
could be interpreted metaphorically.

Like this:
the edge of civilization

experience
limbo ‐ neither "THE EDGE OF THE WOODS"
one thing nor
another brink of
knowledge

somewhere both
exciting and frightening

adolescence

1
 Soooo... What is it about?
This is a poem about poetry

obedience

rebellion

the power of words

relationships

sexual attractiveness

power

Carol Ann Duffy

adolescence

independence

growing up

being a woman in the late 20th century.

Select three interpretations that you think are most relevant and with detailed reference to the
poem, explain why.

2
Opening the door to 'The World's
Wife'

'Little Red Cap' is the 1st poem in Duffy's 
collection.
Some critics have suggested that this poem sets 
the agenda for the whole collection.

If that is so, what features, concerns, ideas do you 
expect the rest of the poems to contain?

In pairs, draw up the agenda for 'The World's 
Wife'.

3
 The following analysis was written by poet and 
critic Deryn Rees Jones.
What does this add to your understanding of 
'Little Red Cap' and how this poem might connect 
with the rest of the poems?

Duffy uses the stories in tangent with autobiographical narratives so

that myth and fairy tale become ways of reading and mythologising her
own life...

Avril Horner has argued that 'The World's Wife' moves in its first
poem, 'Little Red Cap' to a rejection of heterosexuality in pursuit of
poetic female integrity, to the final poem 'Demeter' which 'celebrates
the mother-daughter bond and, by implication, a community of women.'

On the one hand the monologues are probably the most overtly feminist
of her oeuvre; on the other, they are also fantastically removed from
reality. As such, they allow Carol Ann Duffy to encode the personal
within the characters from myth and history, as well as making feminist
statements about the absence of women from history or their
misrepresentation.