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Character analysis

Marilyn Monroe

in Before You Were Mine by Carol Ann Duffy

In Carol Ann Duffy's dramatic monologue "Before You Were Mine," Marilyn Monroe serves not as a traditional narrative character but as a radiant symbol—representing glamour, freedom, and unrestrained femininity that the speaker projects onto her mother's life before becoming a parent. Monroe never appears directly in the poem; instead, she is evoked through the speaker's imagination while reflecting on an old photograph of her mother laughing in a polka-dot dress with friends outside a dance hall. The mother's pose, laughter, and carefree spirit remind the speaker so strongly of Monroe that the icon turns into a kind of alter ego for the woman her mother once was.

Monroe's role is purely metaphorical but carries significant weight: she embodies the life of desire, spontaneity, and self-assertion that motherhood—specifically, the speaker's own birth—overshadowed. The speaker envisions her mother practicing Monroe's famous walk on the pavement, taking in the star's captivating confidence. This detail positions Monroe as an aspirational reflection, a figure of popular cultural fantasy against which ordinary young women of that time often gauged themselves.

Within the poem, Monroe experiences a decline: as the mother embraces parenthood, the glamour reminiscent of Monroe fades, lingering only in a pair of high-heeled red shoes tucked away in a wardrobe. Thematically, Monroe encapsulates the poem's core tension between possession and loss—the speaker's painful understanding that her own existence came at the cost of her mother's dazzling, Monroe-like freedom.

About this character

Form
Short story
Author
Carol Ann Duffy
First published
1993

The person01–03

01·Who they are

Who is Marilyn Monroe?

Marilyn Monroe never speaks, never enters a scene, and never acts in "Before You Were Mine"—yet she dominates the poem's imaginative landscape. Duffy deploys her as a floating cultural signifier: the mid-century embodiment of feminine confidence, erotic self-possession, and unapologetic pleasure. The Monroe evoked here is specifically the public Monroe—the one ordinary young women watched on cinema screens and copied in mirrors—rather than the biographical figure. She exists entirely inside the speaker's retrospective imagination, conjured from a single old photograph of the speaker's mother laughing outside a dance hall in a polka-dot dress. Because she is projected rather than present, Monroe functions as a kind of collective mirror in which post-war young women saw amplified versions of the selves they wanted to be.

02·Arc & motivation

What is Marilyn Monroe's arc and motivation?

Monroe's trajectory in the poem follows the mother's own arc, which is the point. At the poem's opening she is vivid and immediate: the mother is Monroe-like, practicing "the walk" on pavement, radiant and claiming public space with ease. This early invocation carries Monroe at her cultural peak—glamorous, desiring, free. But as the poem moves toward the speaker's birth ("I'm not here yet"), Monroe begins to recede. The high-heeled red shoes "relics" in the wardrobe mark her final, diminished appearance—glamour preserved but unwearable, archived rather than lived. Monroe's implicit "motivation," if the metaphor can be extended that far, is simply to be freedom: she does not strive for anything within the poem because she is the thing that is striven for and then relinquished.

03·Key moments

What are Marilyn Monroe's key moments?

The most charged invocation comes in the second stanza, where the speaker imagines the mother "practis[ing] a furore of steps on the way home" in explicit imitation of Monroe's walk. The word "furore" is telling—it suggests passionate, even reckless energy, the body insisting on its own pleasure. This is Monroe at her most potent: an active, contagious influence on how real women moved through real streets. The contrast arrives quietly in the final stanza, where the red shoes in the wardrobe represent what remains of that Monroeesque self after motherhood has reorganised the mother's identity. The shoes are not thrown away—they are kept—which suggests the glamour is not destroyed but merely sealed off, belonging now to the speaker's nostalgic imagination rather than the mother's living body.

The cast04–05

04·Relationships

What are Marilyn Monroe's most important relationships?

Monroe and the mother form the poem's central symbolic axis. The mother does not merely resemble Monroe; she inhabits the same cultural fantasy, practising her walk and presumably measuring her own allure against that standard. Monroe is the mother's aspirational double, the version of uninhibited femininity the mother could briefly approximate before the speaker's birth restructured her life entirely.

Monroe and the speaker-daughter carry the poem's emotional weight. The speaker's guilt is inseparable from Monroe: to acknowledge that her birth displaced Monroe-like freedom is to admit complicity in a kind of theft. The speaker addresses the mother directly ("before you were mine"), and Monroe haunts that possessive grammar—the mother was also, in some sense, Monroe's, belonging to a glamorous collective fantasy before she belonged to a child.

Monroe and Maggie and Jean extend the symbol outward. The photograph is not of one woman but of a group; Monroe's image retrospectively colours all of them, framing their laughter and dancing as participation in a shared mid-century feminine ideal. Monroe becomes generational shorthand for the desires of a whole social cohort, not just one individual mother.

05·Connected characters

How is Marilyn Monroe connected to the other characters?

The Mother

Monroe is the speaker's primary imaginative lens for understanding the mother's pre-maternal self. The mother's laughter, pose, and practised walk are explicitly likened to Monroe, making the icon the symbolic double of the woman the mother once was before the speaker's birth claimed her.

The Speaker (Daughter)

The speaker invokes Monroe to articulate her own complex guilt and longing: she recognises that her birth displaced the Monroe-like freedom her mother enjoyed. Monroe thus mediates the speaker's retrospective relationship with a version of her mother she never knew.

Maggie

Maggie appears in the photograph alongside the mother, part of the same carefree, glamorous social world that Monroe symbolises. Monroe's image retrospectively colours the entire group, framing Maggie and her companions as participants in a shared fantasy of mid-century feminine allure.

Jean

Like Maggie, Jean is one of the mother's dancing companions in the pre-maternal scene. Monroe's symbolic presence extends to Jean as well, representing the collective aspirations of young women in that era who modelled themselves on such icons of glamour and independence.

Study06–07

06·Questions

Questions readers ask about Marilyn Monroe

Why does Marilyn Monroe appear in 'Before You Were Mine'?

Monroe appears as a symbolic reference point, not a literal character; she is never directly present in the poem. Duffy invokes her because the speaker's mother, laughing in a polka-dot dress outside a dance hall, radiates the same carefree, glamorous confidence that Monroe embodied for ordinary young women of the mid-century. Monroe becomes the cultural shorthand for the uninhibited femininity the mother possessed before the speaker's birth.

How is Marilyn Monroe connected to the speaker's mother?

Monroe serves as the speaker's primary imaginative lens for understanding her mother's pre-maternal self. The mother's laughter, pose, and practiced walk are likened to Monroe, making the icon her symbolic double — the amplified, aspirational version of the woman she once was. The mother does not merely resemble Monroe; she inhabits the same cultural fantasy, measuring her own allure against that ideal standard.

What does it mean that the mother practises Monroe's walk in the poem?

It signals that Monroe was an active, contagious influence on how real women moved through real streets, not just a distant screen image. The speaker imagines the mother practising "a furore of steps on the way home," with the word "furore" suggesting passionate, even reckless bodily energy. Monroe at this moment is at her most potent in the poem — a living model of self-assertion that the mother physically tried on for herself.

What happens to the Marilyn Monroe symbol by the end of the poem?

Monroe fades and is archived as the poem moves toward the speaker's birth. Her final, diminished presence is the pair of high-heeled red shoes tucked away in the wardrobe — glamour preserved but unwearable, sealed off from the mother's living body. The shoes are kept rather than discarded, suggesting Monroe-like freedom is not destroyed but merely locked away, belonging now to the speaker's nostalgic imagination.

How does Marilyn Monroe relate to Maggie and Jean in the poem?

Monroe's symbolic presence extends to the whole group, not just the mother. Maggie and Jean appear in the same photograph, laughing and dancing in the same carefree world, and Monroe's image retrospectively colours all of them. Duffy frames the friends as participants in a shared mid-century feminine ideal, making Monroe generational shorthand for the collective desires of a whole social cohort of young women.

Why does Marilyn Monroe make the speaker feel guilty?

Because invoking Monroe forces the speaker to acknowledge complicity in a kind of theft. To recognise that her mother once possessed Monroe-like freedom is to admit that the speaker's own birth displaced it. Monroe haunts the poem's central possessive grammar — "before you were mine" — implying the mother also belonged to a glamorous collective fantasy before she belonged to a child.

Is Marilyn Monroe portrayed as a figure of male desire or female aspiration in the poem?

Duffy deliberately reframes Monroe as an object of female identification and self-fashioning, not male desire. The women in the poem — the mother, Maggie, Jean — look to Monroe as a model of confidence and bodily self-possession that they want for themselves. This positions Monroe as a symbol of feminine agency, a mirror in which post-war young women saw amplified versions of the selves they aspired to be.

Does Marilyn Monroe represent something positive or negative in 'Before You Were Mine'?

Monroe embodies both, which is the source of the poem's tension. She represents the mother's most radiant, desiring, free self — something genuinely valuable and joyful. However, since that self is lost to motherhood, Monroe also becomes the measure of what the speaker's own existence cost. She embodies the poem's core conflict between possession and loss, making her simultaneously a celebration and an elegy.

07·Essay angles

Use this in your essay

Tool · Essay angles

  • Possession and loss: Argue that Monroe functions as the poem's measure of what is lost when the speaker is "claimed"—how does Duffy use the Monroe motif to complicate the idea that a child's birth is straightforwardly joyful?

  • The male gaze versus female aspiration: Monroe is typically read as a figure constructed for male desire; examine how Duffy reframes her as an object of *female* identification and self-fashioning, and what this reframing suggests about feminine agency in the 1950s.

  • Memory, imagination, and cultural myth: The speaker never knew this version of her mother, so Monroe mediates a relationship with someone who cannot be directly accessed. How does Duffy use a cultural icon to fill the gaps of personal memory?

  • The body as site of identity: Trace the poem's physical imagery—the walk, the shoes, the polka-dot dress—and argue that Monroe's decline in the poem maps onto a broader suppression of the mother's bodily selfhood after childbirth.

  • Time and the dramatic monologue: Consider how the poem's reverse chronology (moving from the photograph to the birth) shapes the reader's understanding of Monroe as symbol—does placing the loss at the poem's end intensify or complicate the elegiac tone?

Before You Were Mine

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