"Mrs Faust" appears in Carol Ann Duffy's collection The World's Wife (1999), which features monologues from the perspective of overlooked or invented female figures in myth, history, and literature. In this poem, Duffy imagines that Faust—a character from German folklore who makes a pact with the Devil—has a wife who's as clever and greedy as he is. Mrs. Faust's monologue charts the history of their cynical marriage, from their meeting as ambitious students through their "lifestyle" as a modern power couple. Though she's excluded from Faust's infamous deal—which grants him infinite wealth, knowledge, and pleasure in exchange for his soul—she gets the best of their partnership in the end. A modern satire of a famous medieval legend, Duffy's poem illustrates how savvy women in a patriarchal world often outplay men at their own ruthless games.
To begin at the beginning, Faust and I got married. We met when we were both scholars, lived together as lovers, broke up, got back together, married, borrowed money to buy a home, and thrived in our scholarship, earning Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. We never had children. We did have two terry-cloth bathrobes, monogrammed Hers and His.
We worked hard, accumulated money, and relocated. We bought expensive cars, a sailboat, a second house (this one in Wales), and trendy products, including cell phones and home computers. We got rich and relocated yet again. My husband looked shrewd, acquisitive, and a little insane—and I was no better.
I started to relish the luxuries we shared, though not our actual marriage. He started to relish the admiration of others, though he didn't love me. He slept with sex workers. I didn't get jealous, but I did feel persistently annoyed. In order to feel better, I tried going to classes on yoga, martial arts, and home design, and getting psychotherapy and colon cleanses.
At meals with friends, Faust would brag about how much money was involved in the deals he was doing in Asian markets. Afterward, he'd hail a taxi and chase sex in the Soho district of London, talking little, driving away anxiety, losing himself among fellow predators, and preying on others.
It wasn't enough for him. One winter night, I came back to our house, hungry for dinner. Upstairs, Faust was having a meeting in his private work room. I caught the scent of cigars—awful, strangely attractive, and forbidden in our home. My husband and the person he was meeting with were laughing loudly.
Afterward, the whole world, as he put it, seemed to open up like a pair of legs (seemed to be his for the taking). First, he gained political power: a secure seat in the lower house of Parliament and a British knighthood. Next, he acquired elite offshore and overseas bank accounts and became a powerful executive, with titles like vice-chairman, chairman, owner/CEO, and "Lord" in the upper house of Parliament.
Was all that enough for him? No, he demanded more! He became a powerful clergyman, then the Pope himself; he accumulated more knowledge than God. He broke the sound barrier as he jetted around the world, then stopped for lunch. He flew to the moon, where he golfed (like the Apollo astronauts) and scored a hole-in-one; he flew to the sun, where he smoked a big Cuban cigar.
Then, on an intuition, he invested in guided missile technology, in violence; he became an arms dealer. He sank a lot of money into that market, then pulled his money out. He purchased farmland, where he cloned sheep through new biotechnology. He searched online for women who were as young as Little Bo Peep (the shepherdess from nursery rhymes) and thought the way he did.
Meanwhile, I did my own thing. I took a quick trip to Rome, turned straw into gold as in a fairy tale (i.e., turned a bad situation to my advantage). I had plastic surgery done on my face, breasts, and butt. I journeyed to China, Thailand, and Africa, and came back full of spiritual wisdom.
I had my 40th birthday; swore off sex, alcohol, and meat; dabbled in Buddhism; then had my 41st. I changed my hair color to blonde, then red, then brown. I adopted the local cultures of places I visited, then went out of my mind. I fled home, solo, then returned.
Faust was waiting at home and asked to speak with me. He said he'd just received sexual favors from a simulation of Helen of Troy, the mythical queen whom men started a war over (whose "face" was so beautiful that it "launched a thousand [naval] ships"). He had made out with the virtual Helen. He'd been able to do all this because he'd struck a bargain with the demon Mephistopheles, representative of the Devil himself.
Mephistopheles was coming to claim what Faust owed the Devil. The price of all Faust's pleasure, wealth, and indulgence was his immortal soul.
Just then, I heard a snake-like hissing and felt that I could smell and taste evil in the air. The Devil's reptilian hands shot up through the Italian ceramic floor tiles, grabbed my barefoot husband, and yanked him right down to Hell, even as he continued to look strangely smug.
Well, so it goes. Faust bequeathed everything we owned—our boat, our houses, our private jet, our helicopter landing platform, our money, and so on and so forth—to yours truly.
That's life. I got sick and suffered terribly, but I charged a kidney transplant to my credit card, and I recovered. I still haven't revealed my husband's secret: that cagey, calculating, insensitive jerk never had a soul to sell the Devil in the first place.
Carol Ann Duffy's "Mrs. Faust" is a satirical retelling of the medieval Faust legend. In the classic tale, Faust is an ambitious scholar who strikes a deal with the Devil, receiving limitless knowledge, riches, and pleasure in exchange for his soul. In Duffy's version, Faust has an equally greedy wife, who narrates his story from her own jaded perspective. Together, Mr. and Mrs. Faust lead a thoroughly materialistic "lifestyle," full of financial and sensual indulgence. When the Devil comes to claim Faust, Mrs. Faust inherits his riches—and reveals that he never had "a soul to sell." True greed, the poem implies, is worse than selling out: it's more soulless, cynical, and banal than the kind of evil traditionally represented by the "Devil."
The poem's portrait of Faust, a legendary character from folklore, is ultra-modern: he lives like a barely exaggerated version of contemporary billionaires and oligarchs. Like the original Faust, he's a scholar (as is his wife). But he's uninterested in pursuing any kind of higher wisdom; instead, he acquires his knowledge and fancy degrees as a means to wealth and power. (Again, this is a takeoff on the original Faust, who cared about worldly knowledge rather than divine truth.) In fact, Faust never stops acquiring things: houses, cars, sex (via sex workers and mistresses), powerful positions in business and politics, etc.
None of it is ever "Enough," and he bargains with the Devil to feed his desire for "more." A few of the experiences he buys are exaggerated or supernatural: at the height of his power, for example, he "kn[ows] more than God" and lights a cigar on "the Sun." But in general, he's a recognizable version of a modern tycoon: acquiring private boats and aircraft, investing in sinister military tech, and so on. In this way, the poem also critiques modern capitalistic societies, which encourage and reward men like Faust.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Faust is "as bad" as her husband: equally cunning, cynical, and greedy. She isn't interested in higher wisdom, either. She happily joins Faust in his life of trendy purchases and pursuits, always acquiring "The latest toys." She claims to "love" their wealthy, fashionable "lifestyle" (though she and Faust don't love each other). When he cheats on her, she feels "irritation" rather than romantic "jealousy," and she easily soothes herself by splurging on new fads. Even her spiritual pursuits (such as travels in search of "enlighten[ment]") are blatantly materialistic—another set of experiences bought as part of her consumer "lifestyle."
Unlike previous versions of the Faust tale, this one has no redeeming moral at the end. The poem depicts greed as irredeemable and incurable, not a moral failing so much as a total lack of morality. Though Faust technically faces consequences, they're nothing he can't handle. When the Devil (whom he's tricked) drags him off to hell, he's "oddly smirking."
His wife isn't sorry to see him go, and she gladly inherits all he's left behind. Meanwhile, her own greed goes effectively unpunished. When she contracts an "ill[ness]," it's not divine retribution or a spiritual malaise; it's just a physical problem she can solve with money ("I bought a kidney / with my credit card").
In the end, then, the poem is darker and more harshly satirical than most previous versions of the Faust legend. In the modern, secular, hyper-capitalist world, Duffy suggests, there's no real punishment for insatiable greed and lust. Ruthlessly materialistic people may not enjoy true love or satisfaction, but they don't have "soul[s]" to bargain away, so they don't suffer any meaningful consequences, either.
"Mrs. Faust" portrays Faust and his wife as very similar characters, yet their marriage is cynical and loveless. From beginning to end, it's more like a successful business partnership than a romantic union. It's not a fully equal partnership, however, as Mrs. Faust is excluded from her husband's deal with the Devil. Rather than accept or openly fight this gender inequality, Mrs. Faust subverts it by letting her husband take the fall for both of them—then inheriting all they've acquired. In a patriarchal society, this miniature fable suggests, marriage is generally a bad bargain for women, but shrewd women can and do find ways to turn that bargain to their advantage.
The union between Mr. and Mrs. Faust is founded on greed rather than love. Her story of their relationship emphasizes professional advancement and material acquisition, never romance. In fact, the word "love" appears only twice in the poem. Mrs. Faust says that she "love[d] the lifestyle" rather than "the life" she shared with Faust, and that Faust "love[d] the kudos" he received from others, "not the wife" (her!). In other words, the marriage is both loveless and highly successful in material terms. Each partner uses the other to get what they want.
Dissatisfied even with this level of wealth and power, Faust schemes to acquire more than his wife, without letting her in on the bargain. Though satirically exaggerated, his scheme mirrors the kind of gender imbalance that plagues many traditional marriages, even between high-powered couples. When he decides "He want[s] more," Faust takes a private "meeting" and strikes a deal, which turns out to be "a pact / with Mephistopheles, / the Devil's boy." Though this meeting takes place in her home, Mrs. Faust isn't included. The private pact, complete with "cigar smoke," typifies the kind of lucrative deals men have historically struck with each other—and shut women out of. After the deal, Faust's wealth and power balloon to superhuman proportions; basically, he's now part of a cosmic Old Boys' Club.
Despite being both cheated on and cheated, Mrs. Faust gets the last laugh, winning ultimate power from an arrangement designed to disempower her. After her exclusion from her husband's bargain, Mrs. Faust goes "[her] own sweet way," enjoying the fruits of Faust's newfound power without challenging him. (Or asking questions about what he's been up to.) Her marriage never becomes emotionally fulfilling, and at times it's actively distressing (she goes "bananas"), but she carves out a great deal of independence within it. In fact, she reaps the greatest reward from their partnership, as his "will" leaves everything he's acquired "to [her]." After he's dragged off to hell, she "keep[s] Faust's secret" (the fact that he never had a soul), as if honoring an unspoken bargain they've struck between themselves.
In the end, Faust seems to have outsmarted the Devil—and Mrs. Faust seems to have outsmarted both men. Though not a traditional feminist statement, the poem illustrates how shrewd, ambitious women in a patriarchal system are often forced to—and able to—beat men at their own game.
First things first— ...
... up, hitched up,
Lines 1-5, along with the title, establish the poem's main characters and dramatic situation. "Mrs Faust," the poem's speaker, is a character the poet has invented and written into the classic Faust legend. She is married to Faust, normally the protagonist of the tale, a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for limitless wealth, power, knowledge, and pleasure. Dating to 16th-century Germany (where it was adapted from older tales), the Faust legend has become one of the world's best-known stories and the inspiration for several famous literary works. (For a more detailed summary of this legend, see the Literary Context section of this guide.)
In Carol Ann Duffy's poem, Mrs. Faust, not her husband, is the protagonist. She's the speaker of this dramatic monologue, and she's telling her side of the story.
From the start, her voice is brisk and no-nonsense, compressing a great deal of narrative information into the poem's short free verse lines. This style suits her confident, cavalier tone and the fast-paced life she describes.
After a straight-down-to-business introduction ("First things first"), she provides a capsule history of her relationship with Faust, using rapid-fire parallel clauses and epistrophe:
[...] I married Faust.
We met as students,
shacked up, split up,
made up, hitched up,
First, they dated as young scholars (an allusion to the traditional legend, in which Faust is a scholar and magician). Then, in quick succession, they moved in together, broke up, made amends, and got married.
The terse phrases and repetitions evoke a relationship that moved fast, generating a lot of conflict and drama in a short time. (The couple's early "split" foreshadows tensions to come.) They also suggest that Mrs. Faust, whose marriage soon became effectively loveless, has no sentimental feelings toward her how-we-met story and prefers not to dwell on it.
Likewise, her irreverent idioms ("shacked up" for living together, "hitched up" for getting married) convey a crisply realistic, even mocking attitude toward her past with Faust. Some previous versions of the Faust legend combined tragedy and comedy, but Duffy's version is a full-on satire.
got a mortgage ...
... bathrobes. Hers. His.
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Get LitCharts A+We worked. We ...
... was as bad.
I grew to ...
... not the wife.
He went to ...
... therapy, colonic irrigation.
And Faust would ...
... meet panthers, feast.
He wanted more. ...
... laugh aloud.
Next thing, the ...
... Chairman. Owner. Lord.
Enough? ...
... on the Sun.
Then backed a ...
... like-minded Bo Peep.
As for me, ...
... returned, enlightened.
Turned 40, celibate, ...
... went home.
Faust was in. ...
... the Devil's boy.
He's on his ...
... sold my soul.
At this, I ...
... down to Hell.
Oh, well. ...
... to me.
C'est la vie. ...
... I got well.
I keep Faust’s ...
... soul to sell.
Cigars are often phallic symbols (in fact, they're popularly associated with the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who discussed phallic symbols a lot in his work). They're also associated with male culture, especially business culture, and the patriarchy more generally. They're often smoked in the context of a celebration—for example, when a deal has been struck.
Duffy seems to have all these associations in mind when she depicts Faust and Mephistopheles ("the Devil's boy") smoking cigars to seal their devil's bargain. Theirs is a private, male-only meeting from which Mrs. Faust is pointedly excluded. They've become favor-trading members of what's often known as "the old boys' club." Mrs. Faust describes the cigar smoke as "hellish, oddly sexy, [and] not allowed": in other words, she perceives it as awful in a way, tempting in another way, and charged with the lure of the forbidden. She wants the kind of power that men have historically tried to reserve for themselves.
A cigar also appears in line 63, as Faust lights "a fat Havana on the Sun." A Havana is another name for a Cuban cigar, long considered a luxury product (and, again, one associated with high-powered men). By smoking this cigar on the Sun—an impossible feat for mere mortals—Faust seems to celebrate a kind of ultimate masculine triumph, as if his power had promoted him from man to god. It's an image of unbridled male arrogance, and Duffy deliberately portrays it as absurd.
In a way, "Mrs Faust" is one long allusion. It satirizes the Faust legend, a tale from German folklore, as well as other famous literary works inspired by that legend.
A detailed history of the Faust legend can be found here, as well as in the Literary Context section of this guide. The tale got started in the 16th century, when the anonymously authored Faustbuch (1587) combined older stories about wizards and necromancers with rumors about a historical Faust (a scholar and magician) who had died a few decades earlier. Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (c. 1592, published 1604) then popularized the tale in English. Over two centuries later, J. W. Goethe wrote the two-part, German-language play Faust (1808, 1832), considered a classic of world literature. In all of these versions, Faust is a scholar/magician who makes a pact with the Devil (or his representative, the demon Mephistopheles), offering his immortal soul in exchange for knowledge, pleasure, wealth, and/or power.
Duffy's poem adapts this tale into a turn-of-the-21st century context and adds the character of "Mrs Faust," not present in earlier versions. Her version imagines the Fausts as a rich, trendy, greedy couple determined to acquire the best life has to offer (from houses to yachts to "toys" that were new in the 1990s, such as "mobile phones" and "Internet"-connected home "computers").
Along with the general story, she also modernizes some specific details from previous versions. For example, in Marlowe's and Goethe's versions, Faust magically conjures Helen of Troy—the most beautiful woman ever, according to Greek myth—from the underworld and falls in love with her. (Goethe's Faust has a child with her.) By contrast, Duffy's Faust is "pleasured / by a virtual Helen of Troy"—apparently some sort of pornographic digital simulation. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus also peppers Mephistopheles with questions about the solar system and universe; in the poem, this curiosity about astronomy is reflected in Faust's voyages to the "moon" and "Sun" (lines 61-63).
It's also significant that Duffy's Faust, as in the Marlowe play and other older adaptations, goes to hell in the end—unlike Goethe's more sympathetic Faust, who is spared and goes to heaven. Anyone adapting the story in the modern day has a choice of classic endings, and Duffy chooses to make her Faust as villainous as possible.
Duffy alludes to other literary works throughout the poem as well. The line "spun gold from hay," for example, references the fairy tale Rumplestiltskin, in which the titular character weaves straw into gold. Rumpelstiltskin is able to perform the task only with the help of magic. Here, the implication is that Mrs Faust's money—like magic—makes the impossible possible.
"Bo Beep" in line 72 alludes to the famous English nursery rhyme "Little Bo-Peep." The implication is that Faust is cruising Internet dating sites for innocent young women to seduce (and perhaps bring into his sheep-cloning business). This marks another parallel with J. W. Goethe's version of the Faust story, in which Faust seduces a virtuous young woman named Gretchen.
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The protagonist of a German folktale that has been adapted into several famous literary works. An ambitious scholar, Faust (a.k.a. Faustus or Doctor Faustus) sells his soul to the Devil (strikes a "Faustian bargain") in exchange for unlimited wealth, power, and knowledge.
The poem contains fifteen stanzas of nine lines each. It doesn't follow a consistent meter, and it has no regular rhyme scheme, though it does contain rhymes in each stanza. Many of these rhymes include the final words of their respective stanzas, giving these stanzas a sense of strong closure—like a punchline. Readers can hear this effect in lines 16-18, for example:
[...] Faust's face
was clever, greedy, slightly mad.
I was as bad.
In general, the combination of irregular rhythm and occasional rhyme makes this satirical monologue sound loose and playful. There's a sense that "Mrs Faust," the comically heartless speaker, is free-associating a bit as she leaps from detail to detail, rhyme to rhyme.
Meanwhile, the nine-line stanzas are an unusual feature. Unlike with quatrains (four-line stanzas), cinquains (five-line stanzas), and so on, there's no special name for them. It's possible that Duffy chose them as an allusion—not to the Faust legend, but to another famous story about hell and damnation. In Dante's Inferno, part of the 14th-century epic called the Divine Comedy, hell is famously depicted as having nine circles, or layers. Perhaps, then, these nine-"layered" stanzas are a very subtle Dante reference!
The poem contains no regular meter. It's written in free verse (with occasional rhyme) and grouped into nine-line stanzas.
The lack of meter fits the breezy, slangy quality of this comic monologue. A strict meter would have made Mrs. Faust's voice sound somewhat formal, in contrast with the brisk, casual tone of phrases like "First things first" and "Oh, well." It would also have made her voice sound more traditional, since meter was once a standard feature of English-language verse. Instead, the Fausts seem to pride themselves on being ultra-modern—investing in "The latest toys" and so on.
Still, Duffy writes with a strong sense of rhythm, and some passages of the poem fall into traditional metrical patterns. Listen to the rhythm of lines 19-22, for example:
I grew to love the lifestyle,
not the life.
He grew to love the kudos,
not the wife.
With different line breaks, this could be an iambic pentameter couplet (two five-beat lines following a da-DUM, da-DUM rhythm):
I grew | to love | the life- | style, not | the life.
He grew | to love | the ku- | dos, not | the wife.
In other words, the poem preserves hints of traditional form within its "modern" free verse. This style fits "Mrs Faust" well—after all, it's a modern adaptation of a traditional legend.
As a (mostly) free verse poem, "Mrs Faust" has no regular rhyme scheme. However, it does feature a number of rhymes, which often include the final word of a given stanza.
These stanza-ending rhymes have a forceful, punchline-like quality, and they can be quite inventive, as when "chronic irritation" (line 25) rhymes with "colonic irrigation" (line 27). Most are perfect rhymes, but a few are imperfect (e.g., "kids"/"His" in lines 8-9), and one is a rich rhyme, involving homophones ("allowed"/"aloud" in lines 43 and 45).
Rhyme adds a playful element to an already mischievous, satirical poem. The inconsistency of the rhyme pattern and rhyme types fits the poem's casual tone. Rhyme can also have a free-associative quality (one word makes you think of a similar-sounding word, etc.), so it provides a kind of connecting thread through the twists and turns of Mrs. Faust's story. The rhymes, slant rhymes, and light rhymes become especially dense in the final stanza ("ill"/"hell"/"well"/"still"/"sell," plus "vie"/"kidney" and "card"/"bastard"), as if to give the poem's ending a little extra punch.
The speaker, identified in the title as "Mrs Faust," is a character invented by the poet; she's not part of the original Faust legend. (Note that UK spelling conventions prefer "Mrs" to "Mrs." with a period.)
In most versions of the Faust story, Faust, or Doctor Faustus, is an aging bachelor scholar who seduces a beautiful young woman after making his bargain with the Devil. In Duffy's version, he's married to an equally clever, accomplished, ambitious, and greedy wife both before and after his bargain. (However, he cheats on her throughout his marriage, as revealed in lines like "He went to whores" and "Faust surfed the Internet / for like-minded Bo Peep").
Although Mrs. Faust is every bit as cynical and amoral as her husband, she's excluded from his deal with the Devil, and this allows her to prevail in the end. When his debt comes due and he's dragged off to Hell, she remains behind and inherits everything (because he's left her "the lot" in his "will"). There are other, subtler differences, too: for example, they have slightly different vices beyond selfishness and greed. Mrs. Faust seems to invest more in vanity (cosmetic surgeries, cheesy journeys of "enlighten[ment]," etc.), whereas Faust seems to invest more in lust and violence. In general, though, the two Fausts make a well-matched pair; they're a satirically exaggerated version of a ruthless modern power couple.
The poem encompasses a variety of settings, because its main characters (Mrs. Faust and Faust) lead a fast-paced, jet-setting "lifestyle." They're members of the modern power elite, zipping around the world for business, pleasure, or supposed "enlighten[ment]."
The poem's many UK references indicate that the Fausts, like the poet, are primarily based in the UK. The couple buys "A second home in Wales"; Faust chases sex in "Soho" (the London entertainment district); and Faust becomes a member of British Parliament (an "MP") as well as a knight of the realm ("Right Hon. KG"). At the same time, they never stop "mov[ing]" and traveling. For example, Mrs. Faust goes to "China, Thailand, [and] Africa," while Faust, granted superhuman power, not only flies "around the globe" but visits "the moon" and "the Sun"! Mrs. Faust also mentions the digital realm, or "the Internet," which was still extremely new and cutting-edge when the poem was published.
The poem's satirical point is clear: being rich and powerful allows you to go wherever you want, whenever you want. Still, the Fausts never appreciate their destinations in any kind of depth; for instance, Mrs. Faust is breezily confident that she's seen all of Rome "in a day." And Faust's final destination—which opens up beneath the "Tuscan tiles" of one of their homes—is "Hell."
The Scottish-born Carol Ann Duffy (1955-present) is the first (and so far, the only) woman to serve as Poet Laureate of the UK. A working-class writer and an out lesbian, she brought fresh air and new perspectives to a laureateship historically dominated by (mostly) straight, white, middle-class men.
"Mrs Faust" appears in her collection The World's Wife (1999), which reflects on the joys and difficulties of being a woman in a sexist world. The poems in The World's Wife are monologues in the voices of mythical and historical women from Medusa to Mrs. Midas. By giving these largely silent figures their own say, Duffy offers feminist critiques of myth, history, and literature.
"Mrs Faust" alludes to the German legend of Faust, a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil (or his emissary, the demon "Mephistopheles") in return for some combination of knowledge, wealth, pleasure, and power. The legend originated with the Faustbuch (1587), an anonymously authored story collection that grafted older tales about magicians and wizards onto the reputation of a real-life Faust who had died around 1540. Faust has often been depicted as an older bachelor who, once corrupted, seduces an innocent young woman, but in Duffy's telling, he has a wife who shares his ambition and greed.
The Faust legend is the source of the idiom "Faustian bargain," meaning a corrupt deal with a very steep price. It has also inspired such famous literary works as Christopher Marlowe's 16th-century play Doctor Faustus (c. 1592, published 1604) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 19th-century play Faust (1808, 1832). Duffy's poem adapts details from both of these dramas. For example, both Marlowe and Goethe depict Faust's encounter with the mythical Helen of Troy, supposedly the most beautiful woman of all time and the "cause" of the Trojan War. Duffy's poem presents a salacious, modernized version of this encounter and echoes a famous quote from Marlowe's play (line 94):
FAUSTUS. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
In most versions of the story, Faust suffers eternal damnation as the price for his greed, lust, and ambition. Goethe notably broke from this tradition; his Faust ascends to Heaven thanks to the intervention of the girl he seduced (Gretchen). But in Duffy's poem, Faust is not only damned, he's gleefully and unrepentantly damned. He goes down to Hell with a "smirk[]" on his face, and his equally corrupt wife lives to tell the tale.
Carol Ann Duffy uses a number of contemporary details to bring the Faust legend up to date. However, she published the poem in 1999, and what seemed ultra-modern at the turn of the 21st century now seems somewhat "historical" as well!
At the time, personal "computers" and "mobile phones" were very much "The latest toys" (lines 14-15); they were only just becoming common consumer products. Mrs. Faust also splurges on a number of Western "lifestyle" trends from that decades and the decades prior: "yoga, t'ai chi, / Feng Shui, therapy, colonic irrigation" (lines 19, 26-27). These practices—several of them adapted, or appropriated, from Asian cultures and commercialized for affluent Westerners—are still part of contemporary life, but they're no longer quite so new and chic.
Likewise, Faust's "clon[ing] of sheep" and "surf[ing] the Internet" for a lover (a "like-minded Bo Peep") would have placed him on the cutting edge of the 1990s. The world's first cloned animal was a sheep named Dolly, born to global media attention in 1996; the first online dating services, such as Match.com, emerged in the middle of the same decade.
Duffy's poetic career took off during the age of Margaret Thatcher, whose long tenure as Prime Minister of the UK (1979-1990) was marked by class struggle, poverty, and the dismantling of post-war welfare institutions. Thatcher's libertarian economics and conservative social policies, as well as her prominent role as the first woman Prime Minister of the UK, made her a divisive and much-reviled figure. But in response to growing social conservatism, the '70s and '80s in England also saw a rise in feminist consciousness. Books like Susan Faludi's Backlash examined the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which society was reacting against the women's movement, and third-wave feminism, focused on identity and political power, began to emerge out of the second-wave feminism of the '60s.
Duffy's poetry, with its interest in women's inner lives and areas of female experience often neglected by the literary world, reflects the tumultuous political world in which she came of age.
The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of "Mrs Faust."
A Conversation with the Poet — Watch a discussion between two former UK and U.S. Poets Laureate: Carol Ann Duffy and the late Philip Levine.
"Mrs Faust" with Intro — The poet reads "Mrs Faust" with a brief introduction (20:20), as well as other poems from The World's Wife.
On Faust — Learn more about the legendary figure who inspired Duffy's poem.
The Poet's Life and Career — Read a brief biography of Carol Ann Duffy at the Poetry Foundation.