Contextual stuff

The Massacre of the Innocents is recorded is the Gospel of Matthew. The biblical account is that King Herod ordered all male sons to be put to death after hearing the prophecy of the three Magi that a baby boy would rise to become King of the Jews.

Themes

The empowerment of women, motherhood, sexuality, marriage.

Language/imagery

The poem is set in winter, perhaps to tie in with our modern celebrations of Christ's birth. There is also perhaps something ominous about the 'ice' in the trees and the 'three Queens' at the gates; there are no verbs in these opening lines, instead the 'ice' and the 'Queens' seem to appear naturally, without effort.

The 'three Queens' are an intertextual reference, an inverted allusion to the 'three Kings' of the New Testament. Like the three Kings, the Queens are rich and exotic, 'dressed in furs, accented' and they bring 'gifts' for 'the King and Queen'. The speaker identifes herself and her husband in parenthesis '- Herod, me -'; their roles are more important than they as individuals.

The palace is resplendent with luxury which Duffy emphasises through the use of listing 'sunken baths, curtained beds, fruit' but it seems that the the Queen is unhappy. She states that everyone is asleep 'save me'; in this phrase 'save' is a preposition meaning 'except' but there could also be a double meaning here with 'save' being interpreted in its more common usage as a verb 'to rescue'. This would imply that the Queen, despite her wealth is trapped and unhappy; the fact that she is awake until the 'bitter' dawn supports this reading.

Like the three Kings, the three Queens are 'wise'. The line 'They knew what they knew' is tautological but seems to emphasise their wisdom; these women will not be fooled into thinking they know more than they know, unlike many of the men in this collection.

Throughout the poem there is a lack of respect and dignity afforded to King Herod, whose historic title is Herod the Great and who appears in the bible as a powerful, if diabolical, figurehead. In Duffy's poem, the King becomes a ridiculous figure as the Queens wait to perform their business after 'drunken Herod's head went back'.

The child by contrast is precious, likened to 'silver and gold'. The 'loose change of herself' is an image that reflects the promise of freedom and opportunity that the newborn girl embodies. The Queens instead of the materialistic objects bequeathed in the New Testament, offer abstract qualities or virtues 'grace', 'strength' and 'happiness' which seem to represent an ideal of womanhood in keeping with the mother's hopes for this daughter.

The italicised reported speech delivers a warning spoken in unison by the three women: 'Watch, they said, for a star'. The biblical allusions here are to both the star that heralded Christ's birth and to the crucifixion: 'a new star / pierced through the night like a nail.' This foreshadowing ensures that the image of the new star is bound up with the image of death and agony just as the arrival of 'Him' foreshadows the suffering and heartbreak of the newborn girl. The capitalisation of 'Him' is not here a religious reference but the first in a list of male roles, all capitalised perhaps to suggest that they are universal guises adopted by men to seduce women.

The list of male roles varies from 'Hero' to 'Rat' though within each line of the poem, the roles are linked phonologically, either by alliteration: 'Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk' or by internal rhyme: 'The Boy Next Door. The Paramour' or because each role is monosyllabic: 'The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake'. The use of phonological devices to link these disparate roles implies that under the surface, they are very similar, perhaps even identical. The end focus on 'Mr Right' implies that this is the most dangerous form a man can adopt.

The Queens' response to this warning is both sexual and maternal: 'the black Queen scooped out my breast, / the left, guiding it down / to the infant's mouth'. There is a sense of female solidarity here which combined with the reference in the previous stanza of how they 'stared at me / Queen to Queen, with insolent lust' could be interpreted as a lesbian bond.

Queen Herod's promise that 'No man [...] will make her shed one tear' causes a peacock, the male of the species, to scream, foreshadowing the massacre to come.

The Queens' departure follows the description of the guide who 'spat, snatched' and 'clapped', the harsh assonant sounds creating a hard macho image, the opposite of the 'chittering maid' who, at 'twelve, thirteen' has attained none of the womanly dignity of the Queens who each 'rise like a god on the back of her beast', the monosyllabic phrase highlighting the simplicity and grace of the action. This is juxtaposed with the contemptuous depiction of the act of sex; the Queen is 'splayed that night below Herod's fusty bulk' while thinking only of the warnings she has heard.

The source of the danger is merely a 'swaggering lad' or 'wincing Prince', but while the use of assonance makes these figures sound ridiculous, they do pose a real threat to the daughter's happiness as they come to 'break her heart' or 'take her name away'. Duffy here suggests that the traditional practice by which a woman adopts her husband's surname upon marriage, represents a loss of identity for the woman. Furthermore, the wedding ring, symbol of the eternal bond of marriage, becomes 'a nothing, nowt in gold' suggesting that what the woman receives in return is worthless. It is to save her daughter from this unfair exchange, that the Queen orders her Chief of Staff to 'kill each mother's son'. Thus the Massacre of the Innocents is reinvented; it no longer symbolises a jealous King's determination to maintain his position and power but a protective Queen's desire to protect her daughter from the inequalities of patriarchal society.

It is the ominous 'midnight hour' when the 'men and horses' depart to 'kill each mother's son' and the only witnesses to the massacre are the personified stars which 'shivered in the nervous sky', evoking anticipation and fear. The constellation Orion is depicted because in Greek mythology Orion was a hunter and therefore 'knew the score'. One of the myths surrounding Orion is that he was blinded but regained his sight, as alluded to in the phrase 'seen, not seen, then seen it all before'. Duffy describes a second constellation, that of the vain Queen Cassiopeia and 'the studded, diamond W' with its harsh consonance and description of gaudy wealth contrasts with the sensual luxuries of the three Queens and the maternal preoccupations of Queen Herod. Eclipsing these constellations though is the arrival of the new star heralded in the poem by a run of plosives 'blatant, brazen, buoyant' and 'blue' all signifying the males whose power is reflected in the 'Boyfriend's Star'.

The final three stanzas are triplets, that is they each contain three lines. The number three is traditionally seen as having powerful mystical properties and in Greek mythology it is associated with women; there are three muses, three furies, three fates and three gorgons, all of which are female. Of course classical mythology, with its dynamic, powerful, jealous, maternal and vindictive female figures was eclipsed by the coming of Christianity and its own masculine trinity of God the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thus the new star symbolises the rise of a patriarchal hegemony and in response to this threat the Queens 'wade through blood' and 'have daggers for eyes' to protect their 'sleeping girls'. In this way the poem represents the extent to which 'we Queens, we mothers, mothers of Queens' must go to to protect the matriarchal line in the face of this coming power.

 

Structure

The poem is mainly in free verse though it concludes with three triplets, the significance of which is outlined in the paragraph above.

Duffy adopts a narrative style and events are narrated in chronological order using discourse markers such as 'Once' and 'Afterwards' and 'And then'. Temporal markers also denote the seasons, 'ice in the trees', and times of day, 'midnight hour'.

 

Links to other poems

'Thetis' is also about motherhood; compare Queen Herod's 'my little child' and 'my baby' with Thetis' 'the child'.