Analysing language, imagery, verse and form, discuss how Duffy presents the obsession
with body image and its consequences in this extract from, ‘The Diet’, considering how
this section is representative of ideas Duffy presents in the whole poem and Feminine
Gospels.
Throughout the ‘Feminine Gospels’ (Carol Ann Duffy, 2002), Carol Ann Duffy analyses the
effects of a patriarchal society’s expectations upon women, presented through an extended
metaphor. This metaphor runs across every poem that formulates her collection, each piece
tackling a different aspect of femininity that is destroyed by patriarchy. ‘The Diet’ examines
themes that stem from a flawed body image and its consequences, creating a stream of feminist
ideas in which the patriarchal society manipulates the way women see and treat themselves.
The three most notable ideas in ‘The Diet’ are the concept of extremes, loss of identity and lack
of control. These ideas are representative of the whole collection in the way they link to other
key poems, such as ‘Beautiful’ and the ‘Map Woman’ which both illustrate a loss of identity and
control at the hands of a society governed by men.
Duffy initially presents the topic of obsession with body image and its consequences in weight
loss to establish the danger of a lack of balance and giving in to extremes the patriarchal society
demands. When the poem opens, Duffy immediately centralises the restrictive diet. The usage
of asyndeton highlights how absurd the woman's fasting is as she is avoiding every food
category: ‘sugar, salt, dairy, fat, protein, starch or alcohol’. The list moves rapidly, Duffy treats
each category as insignificant, which reflects the woman’s perspective. The internal rhyme
increases the metre’s quickness, symbolising rapid weight reduction, a consequence of
obsession with body image. Through the use of internal rhyme ‘dinner, thinner,’ it is implied
missing meals is correlated to the woman becoming slimmer. The woman falls into extremes,
fasting to the point of being reduced to ‘skin and bone’ at the close of the stanza. All weight that
is possible to lose is lost in the first stanza, and the rest of the poem descends into irrational
exaggeration through hyperbole. Extreme dieting is taken further as the woman abandons
healthy food: leaving an ‘apple [ageing] in the fruit bowl, untouched’. This emphasises how this
diet is not just abstaining from unhealthy foods, crossing from diet into eating disorder.
Furthermore, ‘apple’ has connotations of Genesis, creating a hidden allusion, emphasising that
the woman is neglecting the way she has been created and trying desperately to become
something unrealistic. This concept furthers the idea of extremes, rejecting all things natural.
The second stanza is introduced with a cutting sound through sibilance in the phrase ‘starved
on, stayed in, stared in.’ This mirrors the cruel effect the diet has on the woman's body as the
sibilance cuts through just as the diet cuts through the woman's weight. Duffy divides ‘The Diet’
into 8 stanzas, each with 7 lines. The poem does not have a rhyme pattern; however, there are
multiple instances of internal rhyme, utilised to quicken the poem's pace, representing an urging
to continue on the diet. The poem’s regularity, with constant line lengths throughout each
stanza, represents the rigidity of the diet, never deviating from the tight guidelines. Each
stanza’s final line is shorter than the others and always ends abruptly with an end stop. By doing
this, the poem’s rhythm is jarred, advancing before being pulled back and halted. Therefore, the
structure may represent the diet process, with the woman constantly cycling between periods of
fasting and bingeing, furthering the idea of extremity and inconsistency. Therefore, overall,
, Duffy’s methods and techniques here highlight the threat of losing balance in your life and
caving into the extremities that the patriarchal culture demands.
Duffy presents the character’s loss of identity as the poem develops and does this to establish
how society’s demands can destroy your sense of self. The woman’s journey is continued as
she transforms into only a ‘skeleton’, creating a semantic realm of death. This is the first reveal
that she has lost her outside identity and now is at the anonymous base all people have. She
begins to deteriorate, with ‘guns for hips,’ conveying elements of danger and violence. Society’s
pressures have caused her to attack her own body. The noun ‘gun’ is associated with killing,
emphasising that society is willing to accept the possibility that she could die attempting to meet
this impossible standard. Duffy furthers this idea of a lack of identity by describing the woman as
lost because she is ‘looking for a home.’ It emphasises that she does not fit in this community
because of the stereotype that women must have a certain appearance to be able to profit from
a patriarchal society. Women should appear in a specific way, resembling ‘the width of a stick,’
according to a typical societal attitude propagated by the media. The weight imagery
dehumanises her by reducing her to an object through the technique of chremamorphism, which
is representative of how women are regarded in a patriarchal society. By employing
personification throughout, Duffy portrays society’s expectations of women as ‘doll-sized, the
height of a thimble,’ highlighting the struggles to fit in, obsessed and imprisoned to appear in a
specific way that erases identity and individuality. The oxymoron ‘Anorexia's true daughter’
contrasts motherhood with the eating disorder and implies that perhaps it has raised her,
creating regression in the way someone should be nurtured. The capitalisation and
personification of ‘Anorexia’ conveys the fact that it has become her parental figure and
controller, overwriting her identity. This idea of a rewritten identity is representative of ‘Feminine
Gospels’ as identity is the main topic covered in ‘The Map-Woman’, serving as a metaphor for
how life experiences may influence a person. Her ‘map’ is described as a ‘tattoo’, ‘birthmark’,
something permanent - it is indelibly etched into her skin and shows that identification cannot be
escaped, and only added to as she moves on through life. This links to ‘The Diet’ in the way that
‘Anorexia’ adds to and rewrites the women’s identity. This disorder has changed her
identification forever. Overall, here, Duffy’s methods illustrate how society's expectations may
ruin your sense of self by showing the character's loss of identity, and the horrific consequences
upon her individuality.
The final focus is the lack of control the character has over herself and her circumstances.
Duffy suggests this to demonstrate conforming to impossible standards is unable to be reversed
and limits an individual’s autonomy. Duffy illustrates how little control anorexia sufferers have
with an energising pace that is emphasised by the use of caesuras, which represent
out-of-control descent. The simile ‘the diet worked like a dream’ conveys to the readers that this
is society's ideal for women to be slender, but the dramatic irony is the fact that, as the poem
continues, it becomes a nightmare and the character loses herself. Furthermore, a dream is not
reality, emphasising again the unrealistic expectations society places. The woman is
metaphorically ‘blown’ by the wind in the fifth stanza which emphasises the loss of control and
this is a symbol of the woman's defeat in her fight against her eating disorder, which has taken
control of her life and rendered her a passive object that is subject to manipulation.
