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“Work” Introduction
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"Work," by British poet Carol Ann Duffy, links the exploitation of women's labor to humanity's exploitation of the earth. The poem follows a woman working tirelessly to provide for her growing brood, taking on new jobs that chart the development of human civilization—from the advent of agriculture and industry all the way up to the internet age. As the woman's children eventually number in the billions, she comes to represent all women throughout history as well as the earth itself. The woman eventually works herself to death, her attempts to provide for her offspring having drained her "to the bone." In this way, the poem becomes a metaphorical warning against both the relentless expectations of care historically placed on women and against environmental destruction caused by capitalist consumption. "Work" first appeared in Duffy's 2002 collection Feminine Gospels.
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“Work” Summary
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The woman was able to provide for one child by taking on housework: things like washing dishes and tending to clothes. She had only a single, tiny mouth to feed, requiring just a spoonful of food at a time. Life was wonderful.
In order to provide for two children, the woman had to take on work outside of the home. She planted, carefully tended to, and harvested crops. She then gave birth to twins, meaning she suddenly had four people to care for.
She took on even more work, getting a second job at a pub in order to put food in the pantry and on the table. She was still up to the task; she was capable. But feeding 10 children was an entirely different story.
The woman took a job at a factory, where she had to arrive at dawn and deal with the noise and grease of industrial production. Providing for 50 people meant exhausting physical labor, working through the night, hauling and hoisting heavy things.
When there were a thousand people to care for, the woman constructed roads, and when there were two thousand to care for, she built tall apartment buildings. As cities rose up around her, the number of her children doubled, filling up skyscrapers with people. Then her family grew three times as large.
In order to provide for her ever-increasing children, she dug subway tunnels and train tracks and then operated the trains herself. Her family quadrupled in size, and she made airplanes that flew faster than the speed of sound. She was now the mother of a million people.
So she sold televisions, built computers, and made illegal copies of music and movies to hawk. She worked relentlessly. Every day and every night she toiled away at buying things on the Internet.
When her children numbered a billion, the woman used nets to vacuum up all the fish in the sea. She chopped down trees and put cattle out to pasture. She sold inexpensive fast food and worked 90 hours a week. Her children kept multiplying.
She provided for the entire world. Her tears were the rain that watered the earth, and she used her own teeth as seeds, scattering them over the land to grow more crops. She ran her tongue through rivers to create more fish. Then she grew ill, died, and was buried, her body having been utterly sapped of life by nonstop work.
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“Work” Themes
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The Relentless Nature of Women's Work
"Work" confronts the relentless pressure placed on women to care for those around them. The poem begins with a woman happily taking care of a baby. As her family grows, however, the woman must take on more work in order to "feed" more mouths. Eventually, she's working day and night to support a "billion" people, a clearly impossible task. The woman dies at the end of the poem, having worked so hard that she has nothing left to sustain herself, let alone anyone else. "Work" thus critiques the seemingly endless burdens placed on women's time and energy, as well as the way society often expects women (and particularly mothers) to care for others at their own expense.
The woman is happy enough caring for a single child, presumably because she has some balance in her life. Having only "One small mouth" to feed, the speaker says that the woman's "life was a dream." This suggests that because the woman's responsibilities are proportional to her capacities, she's able to meet them while also enjoying her life.
But as the number of people to feed keeps growing, it becomes clear that her work never ends. In order to feed another child, "she worked outside," where she "sewed seeds, watered, / threshed," etc. More children mean she's forced to take on a "second job in the alehouse" and then a third job at a "factory." She ends up feeding "a thousand," then "millions," and finally "a billion" people.
Obviously, this is too much for one person to handle. The poem is stepping into the world of metaphor here: it links each jump in the number of mouths to feed to a new era of history—from the dawn of agriculture to the industrial revolution, all the way up to the modern age with its "Internet shopping" and "cheap fast food." This suggests that, regardless of humanity's endless innovations and increasing convenience, women remain the ones expected to shoulder the weight of supporting and caring for others. In this way, the poem goes from being about an individual woman to being about the plight of women more generally.
The poem also conflates the woman with the earth itself, suggesting that the historical exploitation of women's labor is akin to humanity's exploitation of the environment. In order to feed "the world," the poem says the woman "wept rain" and "scattered the teeth in her head / for grain." These images suggest the impossible lengths the woman is expected to go to care for others—even to the point of sacrificing her own body.
The woman's offspring take and take from her until she's given all she has to give, and the poem ends with the woman sick and dying as a direct result of this "twenty-four / seven" work. In trying to provide for others all day, every day, the woman is left with no time or energy to care for herself.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-4
- Lines 5-12
- Lines 13-20
- Lines 21-28
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Capitalism, Greed, and Humanity's Exploitation of the Earth
"Work" can be read metaphorically as a commentary on humanity's relationship to the natural world. Each stanza represents a new era in human history, moving from before the dawn of agriculture to the modern-day, while the woman in the poem represents "Mother Earth." As the population booms and people start exploiting the land for their own profit and convenience, they upend the delicate balance between humanity and nature and began to destroy the very "Mother" they depend on. The earth gives generously, the poem implies, but, eventually, humanity's selfishness and greed will destroy it.
Just as the woman happily provides for a single child with a “soup-filled spoon,” the poem implies that the earth, too, was once more than happy to provide for human beings. Life was simpler in the beginning; there were fewer people, and those people took only what they needed, resulting in a harmonious relationship between earth and its "children."
Yet as people multiplied, the desire for convenience over sustainability shifted the scales. More mouths to feed meant more wild land converted into fields, factories, and roads. People went from "gather[ing] barley, wheat, [and] corn" to "buil[ding] streets" and "high-rise flats." Humanity's hunger for shiny new products—"TVs," "PCs," "CDs," "DVDs"—stripped the earth of its resources.
As the earth's human population reached "A billion," it became extremely difficult and taxing to meet humanity's needs. People "trawled the seas, hoovered fish, felled trees, / grazed beef, sold cheap fast food." In other words, they devasted their surroundings for their own convenience, and their increasing demands left little behind for the earth to replenish and sustain itself. Eventually "worked, to the bone," the earth had ing left to offer, "sickened," and "died." In this way, the poem reads as a dire warning of the consequences of human greed and exploitation of the planet.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-36
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Work”
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Lines 1-4
To feed one, ...
... was a dream.The poem begins with the speaker describing an anonymous woman, saying that in order "To feed one" child, "she worked from home." There, she "took in washing, ironing, [and] sewing" to make ends meet. With only a single "small mouth [to feed]," the speaker says that the woman's "life was a dream."
The poem suggests that because the woman's "Work" is manageable and leaves her time to actually enjoy her life, she doesn't mind doing it. Her life feels balanced. The fact that she's able to "work[] from home" while caring for a young child also suggests the way that her work fits into her life rather than the other way around.
The poem's nine quatrains (or four-line stanzas) each correspond not only with a segment of this woman's life and work but also with an era of human history. The poem can thus be read as being about a single woman feeding her children while simultaneously working as an extended metaphor for the relationship between human beings and the planet.
In this metaphor, the woman can be thought of as representing "Mother Earth," while her children represent humanity. The opening stanza suggests the beginning of human history, when people lived in small communities, taking only what they needed from the earth. Back then, the poem implies, the earth was happy to provide for her "children."
Notice the use of asyndeton in line 2:
took in washing, ironing, sewing.
The lack of any coordinating conjunctions between "ironing" and "sewing" indicates that the list isn't meant to be complete. That is, these three tasks—"washing, ironing, sewing"—suggest the sort of work the woman generally does to provide for her child. There are other tasks along these lines that she also performs, but the speaker doesn't need to list them all out separately—this short list implies them.
The poem is written in free verse, allowing it to feel natural and conversational. And while it does not follow a set meter or rhyme scheme, it contains plenty of musicality, such as the burst of /oo/ assonance, /s/ alliteration, and /p/ consonance in line 3:
One small mouth, a soup-filled spoon,
The sounds in this line are harmonious, working together to evoke the simplicity of the woman's life caring for only one child. These smooth sounds also suggest the balanced and proportional relationship between earth and her "children" in the early days of humanity.
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Lines 5-8
To feed two, ...
... To feed four,
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Lines 9-12
she grafted harder, ...
... a different kettle, -
Lines 13-16
was factory gates ...
... shift, schlepped, lifted. -
Lines 17-20
For a thousand ...
... feed more, more, -
Lines 21-24
she dug underground, ...
... to millions now, -
Lines 25-28
she flogged TVs, ...
... at Internet shopping. -
Lines 29-32
A billion named, ...
... offspring swelled. She fed -
Lines 33-36
the world, wept ...
... fingers twenty-four seven.
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“Work” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Assonance
"Work" is overflowing with assonance, which—along with the related devices of alliteration and consonance—calls attention to important moments and generally ramps up the intensity of the poem's language.
In fact, these sonic devices often overlap. Take line 3, where there's /oo/ assonance, /s/ alliteration, and /p/ consonance:
One small mouth, a soup-filled spoon,
The sounds of the line blend together, evoking the simplicity and ease of the woman's life when she was caring for a single child.
As the woman's work intensifies, however, so do the poem's sounds. Listen to lines 7-11, for instance:
[...] gathered barley, wheat, corn.
Twins were born. To feed four,she grafted harder, second job in the alehouse,
food in the larder, food on the table,
she was game, able. [...]Though the poem doesn't follow a steady rhyme scheme, the combination of assonance and consonance creates many full or slant internal rhymes. Here, note the full rhymes between "corn" and "born," "harder" and "larder," and "table" and "able," as well as a slant end rhyme between "corn" and "four."
Again, these emphatic sounds seem to multiply along with the woman's children. In lines 22-23, listen to the shared long /ay/ sounds of "trains," "came," and "planes" (with "trains" and "planes" again creating an internal rhyme). There's then another slant end rhyme between "sound" and "now" in lines 23-24.
The sounds only grow more intense in stanzas 7, where incessant long /ee/ assonance ("TVs, / designed PCs, ripped CDs, burned DVDs) evokes the endless nature of the woman's work. And this sound continues into stanza 8:
she trawled the seas, hoovered fish, felled trees,
grazed beef, sold cheap fast food, put in
a 90-hour week. [...]Note, too, the /f/ alliteration and consonance here ("fish," "felled," "fast food," "beef"), as well as the internal rhyme of "seas" and "trees." Overall, these sounds feel relentless, thereby suggesting humanity's seemingly unstoppable greed and exploitation of the earth.
In the last stanza, /ay/ assonance ("lay in a grave"), /s/ alliteration ("scattered," "swam," etc.), /w/ alliteration ("world, wept") and an internal rhyme between "rain" and "grain" adds intensity to the imagery of the woman sacrificing herself for her children.
Where assonance appears in the poem:- Line 3: “soup,” “spoon”
- Line 7: “corn”
- Line 8: “born,” “four”
- Line 9: “harder”
- Line 10: “larder,” “table”
- Line 11: “game,” “able”
- Line 14: “oil,” “noise”
- Line 15: “toiled,” “sweated,” “went”
- Line 16: “shift,” “schlepped,” “lifted”
- Line 18: “that,” “high-rise,” “flats,” “grew”
- Line 19: “brood”
- Line 22: “trains,” “came”
- Line 23: “planes,” “sound”
- Line 24: “now”
- Line 25: “TVs”
- Line 26: “PCs,” “CDs,” “DVDs”
- Line 27: “stopping,” “slogged”
- Line 28: “shopping”
- Line 30: “seas,” “trees”
- Line 31: “beef,” “cheap”
- Line 32: “week”
- Line 33: “rain”
- Line 34: “grain”
- Line 35: “lay,” “grave”
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Repetition
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Asyndeton
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Extended Metaphor
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Alliteration
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“Work” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Threshed
- Scythed
- Grafted
- Alehouse
- Larder
- A different kettle
- Schlepped
- Brood
- Trebled
- Flogged
- Slogged
- Trawled
- Hoovered
- Felled
- Spawn
Threshed-
(Location in poem: Lines 6-7: “she worked outside, sewed seeds, watered, / threshed, scythed, gathered barley, wheat, corn.”)
To thresh is to remove the grain or seeds from a plant.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Work”
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Form
"Work" consists of 36 lines of free verse, broken up into nine quatrains (four-line stanzas). Otherwise, the poem uses free verse, meaning it doesn't have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
These quatrains essentially chart the development of human civilization and thus suggest that the poem can be read as a commentary on the exploitation of the earth:
- Stanza 1 suggests the early days of humanity, when people lived in small communities in harmony with the land.
- Stanza 2 represents the dawn of agriculture, when people started taming the land in order to feed larger groups.
- Stanza 3 represents the industrial revolution and the beginning of factory work.
- Stanza 4 and 5 represent the subsequent urbanization of society and the development of densely populated cities.
- Stanza 6, 7, and 8 represent the modern era of cheap mass production, the birth of the internet, and factory farming.
- Stanza 9 then leaps into the future, when the earth will no longer have enough to sustain both humanity and itself and will die.
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Meter
As a free verse poem, "Work" doesn't follow a set meter. This is true for most contemporary poetry and for Duffy's poems more specifically. In "Work," the lack of meter allows for more natural and conversational rhythms to emerge. In this way, the poem feels not just more modern, but more realistic and intimate as well. It sounds the way people actually speak.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Work" is a free verse poem, so it doesn't use a rhyme scheme. This keeps the poem's language sounding natural and modern.
That said, the poem does contain frequent internal and end rhymes. Listen to the rhyme between "corn" and "born" in lines 7-8, for example:
threshed, scythed, gathered barley, wheat, corn.
Twins were born. [...]There's another rhyme between lines 9-10:
she grafted harder, second job in the alehouse,
food in the larder, [...]And as the poem approaches its final moments, the rhymes become even more frequent. Listen to line 26:
designed PCs, ripped CDs, burned DVDs.
Lines 30-34 are also brimming with full and slant rhymes (plus more general assonance and alliteration):
she trawled the seas, hoovered fish, felled trees,
grazed beef, sold cheap fast food, put in
a 90-hour week. Her offspring swelled. She fedthe world, wept rain, scattered the teeth in her head
for grain, [...]The poem is extremely musical, and all these rhymes add intensity to the speaker's language. The fact that they're not arranged in any particular pattern, meanwhile, keeps things feeling flexible, unpredictable, and free.
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“Work” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a woman and a mother. At the beginning of the poem, she has one child whom she's happy to "feed." When she has more children, however, she's forced to take on additional, increasingly taxing work.
As the number of her children "multiplies" to unmanageable proportions, so too do her responsibilities. The poem suggests that her "offspring" take and take from her, leaving her no time or energy to care for herself. Eventually, she dies, having been "worked, to the bone." The woman comes to represent not a single person but women in general and throughout history, implying that society has long expected women to care for those around them at their own expense.
The poem can also be read as an extended metaphor for humanity's relationship to the earth. In this metaphor, the woman represents Mother Earth, who is generous and "able" to care for her "children" in the beginning but cannot sustain humanity's greed and exploitation.
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“Work” Setting
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The poem's setting spans all of human history. It begins with the woman caring for a single child from "home" before moving into the fields, then into an "alehouse" (a bar), an industrial factory, and a crowded city (complete with underground subway tracks, enormous skyscrapers, and people hawking illegal CDs and DVDs). Towards the end of the poem, the setting expands to encompass the depths of the ocean that people trawl and the forests they cut down.
The vast, ever-growing setting reflects the idea that woman's labor has been exploited throughout time, from the dawn of agriculture to the modern age, across the world. The poem's swiftly expanding scope also reflects the way that the growth of human civilization has led to the increasing devastation of the planet.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Work”
Literary Context
Carol Ann Duffy is one of the most well-known and highly-acclaimed contemporary poets in the UK. Born in Scotland in 1955 to working-class parents, in 2009 she became the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ person to be appointed poet laureate of the United Kingdom. Her influences include modernist poets like T.S. Eliot, Romantic poets like John Keats and William Wordsworth, and, most relevantly, free verse poets like Sylvia Plath, whose exploration of women's interior lives would prove foundational to Duffy's own poetry.
Duffy published "Work" in her 2003 collection Feminine Gospels. This collection explores the lives of women both historical and imagined, including Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana. Like Duffy's earlier collection The World's Wife, Feminine Gospels is known for its distinctly feminist themes, wit, and embrace of everyday, colloquial language.
Historical Context
Carol Ann Duffy's poetic career took off during the age of Margaret Thatcher, whose long tenure as Prime Minister of the UK was marked by class struggle, poverty, and the dismantling of post-war welfare institutions. Thatcher rose to power in the aftermath of the turbulent 1970s, and her 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. Many working-class people took a particular dislike to Thatcher for her union-busting and her failure to support impoverished families in industrial fields like coal mining.
Perhaps in response to a growing social conservatism, the '70s and '80s in England were also marked by 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 work, 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.
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More “Work” Resources
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External Resources
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Guardian Book Review of Feminine Gospels — Elaine Feinstein takes a close look at Duffy's 2002 collection, in which "Work" was published.
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An Introduction to Duffy's Life and Career — A biography of the poetry from the Poetry Foundation.
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The Exploitation of Women in Today's Global Workforce — A Human Rights Watch article discussing the various ways in which female workers continue to be undervalued and even abused.
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The Impact of Human Exploitation of the Earth — A Natural History Museum article explaining how human consumption is impacting the earth, what people can do about it, and what will happen if no action is taken.
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Duffy on Her Role as Poet Laureate — An interview with Duffy in which she discusses the importance of her responsibility as the first woman and LGBTQ+ poet laureate of the United Kingdom.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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