What’s Up With the Title?

The poem "Anne Hathaway" is spoken by, that's right, Anne Hathaway. Using the speaker's name as the title lets us know right away that Carol Ann Duffy, the poet, is not the one speaking. Instead, she's imagining the poem as spoken by a fictionalized version of a real historical figure (that means Anne Hathaway was a real lady, but Duffy is clearly giving her a particular personality here.)

"Anne Hathaway" comes from a collection of Duffy's poems titled The World's Wife. In this collection, Duffy imagines the voices of many women (both real and imagined) who didn't have the opportunity to speak for themselves, or who were overshadowed by their husbands. She writes, for example, about Mrs. Darwin, Mrs. Freud, and Odysseus's wife, Penelope. Anne Hathaway is just one of the many women who get the final say through Duffy's poetry.