Pilate's Wife Essay Questions

Analyze one instance each of alliteration and assonance in this poem.

Duffy makes use of assonance and alliteration to mimic the sounds of her speaker's physical environment, as well as to play with time, creating suspense and drama. In the poem's first stanza, she writes that Pilate has "Camp hands that clapped for grapes." The alliterative C sounds used here, as well as the clipped rhythm of the line's diction, echoes the sharp, abrupt sound of clapping. Later, Duffy will write that Pilate "slowly washed his useless, perfumed hands." The assonant U sounds of this line lengthen it, creating a sense of time slowing down. This induces suspense and impatience in the reader, cleverly simulating the torment that the speaker feels in this scene.

Discuss the character of the maid.

Though she is electrified by her meeting with Jesus, it is the maid who offers the speaker companionship and help throughout the length of the poem. Through this relationship, Duffy pays tribute to the support networks of women, suggesting that in patriarchal societies friendships among women offer refuge and safety. The speaker and her maid sneak out together to circumvent boredom, and later witness the execution of Jesus together—in fact, the speaker defers to her maid's memory of these events, as if falling back on this friend in a moment of mental distress. However, the maid is unnamed, and clearly has an even lower status than Pilate's wife herself. This imbalance introduces another layer to the poem's analysis of gender, hinting at the complex power relations among women in this world.