"Mrs Sisyphus" is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, which is written from the perspective of Mrs Sisyphus from the Sisyphus story. Sisyphus appears as a cunning character who hid from Death, and his struggles and actions are expressed in detail in the Greek mythology. However, the thoughts and feelings of his wife, Mrs Sisyphus, is not mentioned in the story because she was considered as a subordinate character.
In The World's Wife (1999), Duffy took stories and myths which focus on men, and turned them into poems written from the subordinate female characters in order to inform the public about how women were obscured behind the men.
"Mrs Sisyphus" is included in The World's Wife, which is the reason why the content of the poem shows a feminist side of Duffy, by foregrounding the female character. The poem is also anachronistic because although the characters are taken from ancient Greek mythology, Mrs Sisyphus still uses modern British colloquial language such as "feckin'" or "bollocks". I think Duffy used anachronism in order to make it easier for the audience to build an emotional connection with Mrs Sisyphus by evoking empathy.
I found it very interesting how Duffy explores and expresses the mind of Mrs Sisyphus to the audience so well, by using literary techniques such as masculine rhymes throughout the poem. Ironically, although the main character of this poem is a female, almost all of the lines in the poem contains masculine rhyme in the end, such as "kirk" and "irk". I think this is because Duffy wanted to show the audience about how angry Mrs Sisyphus is because of Sisyphus, who is a workaholic, by repeating short, strong words that are being spitted out by Mrs Sisyphus.
In addition, The meter structure of the poem contributes to help the audience's understanding of Sisyphus' action.
I realised that the structure of the poem has a correlation with Sisyphus' action because the length of the first and the last lines are about the same, whereas the length of each line decreases as it reaches line 16 and starts to increase again. This is similar to Sisyphus slowly pushing up the stone in the beginning, the reaching the peak, and the stone rolling down the other side of the hill, increasing its speed.
I personally think that Duffy also wanted to show how not only Sisyphus but also Mrs Sisyphus was punished by Hades from hiding from death. Although Sisyphus was punished physically, Mrs Sisyphus had a worse emotional and mental stress from watching him working continuously to complete an impossible task. The poem is criticising men for being ignorant and unknowledgeable about what their wives feel and think, by using Mrs Sisyphus as the poetic voice who expresses her disgusted feelings.