Compose a well-structured essay that discusses how Duffy employs poetic techniques — including imagery, tone, structure, and point of view — to illustrate that love can embody both possessiveness and a sense of mourning. Back up your argument with detailed references to the text.

Guidance Notes

• Reflect on the importance of the second-person address ("you") and how it shapes the connection between the speaker and her mother.
• Examine how imagery of glamour and freedom (like Marilyn Monroe, dancing, high heels) stands in contrast to the domesticity often associated with motherhood.
• Investigate how the tone shifts throughout the stanzas — moving from celebratory moments to a more elegiac feeling.
• Think about the title's possessive phrasing ("Before You Were Mine") and what it implies thematically.
• Assess whether the speaker's love is depicted as selfless or self-focused, and take a definitive stance in your argument.

Write a well-structured essay in which you argue how Duffy employs various poetic techniques — including tone, imagery, structure, and point of view — to express the notion that motherhood fundamentally reshapes, and in certain respects diminishes, an individual's sense of self and freedom.

Your essay should:

• Present a clear, debatable thesis that takes a stance on how the poem's techniques support (or complicate) this central idea.
• Use at least three specific quotations from the poem as textual evidence.
• Analyze the impact of the poet's language choices, not just identify them.
• Consider alternative interpretations and address any complexity or ambiguity in the poem's tone (e.g., Is the speaker's nostalgia celebratory, mournful, or both?).
• Conclude by reflecting on the broader significance of the poem's exploration of identity, memory, and love.

Suggested Approach

• Introduction – Introduce the poem's central conflict between the mother's identity before motherhood and her role as a parent.
• Body Paragraph 1 – Analyze the speaker's idealized, almost possessive, vision of her mother's past self.
• Body Paragraph 2 – Explore how Duffy depicts motherhood as a kind of haunting or loss of the mother's previous freedom.
• Body Paragraph 3 – Discuss the complexity of tone — how love and guilt coexist in the speaker's voice.
• Conclusion – Reflect on what the poem ultimately reveals about the nature of memory, identity, and the parent-child relationship.