Laughter is a poem which teaches that female voices can lift each other up and liberate. This is shown through the teachers who start to follow their dreams by the end of the epic poem as they are inspired by the girls' laughter.
"the sound of the laugh of Emily Jane was a liquid one, a gurgle, a ripple, a dribble, a babble"
Flows, fluidity, getting stronger
Difficult to control
Natural rebellion
"the school sank in her mind, a black wave taking it down"
Laughter overpowers the school
Rebellion overrides the institution
"till the firm waves lifted her under her arms and danced her away like a groom with a bride"
Mrs Mackay is free from her unhappy marriage - simile presents how a peaceful death is what truly makes her feel that happy, honeymooning feeling
Water personified
The waves overpower her, but do they also empower her?
"a percussion of trills and whoops filling the room like birds in a cage"
Beginning of laughter - freedom and liberation
Birds are a commonly used metaphor in feminist literature
"First years chirruped and trilled like baby birds in a nest at a worm"
Maternal relationship between the older and younger girls
Younger girls need feeding, protecting, and are reliant upon nurturing
Rebellion is achieved through unity and sisterhood
"the seagulls like schoolgirls laughed"
As Mackay goes out to sea, watched over by the girls - protection
Her death is not sad or tragic for her, she is pleased and at peace
"closed bud of a kiss to the daisy chain of a grin ... blooming rose"
Geraldine Ruth gains confidence from her laugh
She is empowered and "blooming" - changed
"Daisy chain" - the girls are connected
"something inside her opened and bloomed"
Diana Kim grows to be something more than she was, improvement, evolution
Miss Dunn encourages her - like a mentor
"anarchy roared in her face like a tropical wind"
Loud, triumphant
Mackay cannot ignore it
"Tropical wind" is warm and inviting - they urge the teachers to join
"the sound was like distant thunder, the opening chord of a storm"
Storm approaching, foreshadowing of the destruction of the institution
Natural, cannot be stopped but are warned of it
"Chord" - musical, positive
"silently virtuous love"
1960s lesbian love
Cannot be overt with their love
Despite it being hidden, it still blossoms
"Mrs Mackay with her husband of twenty-five grinding, childless years"
She is unhappy in her relationship
Trapped
"as though the clouds were being slowly torn up like a rule book"
Rebellion has changed nature, suggesting that it can change the natural order of society too
Simile, disregarding rules for rebellion instead
"how they could hope to grow to be the finest of England's daughters and mothers and wives"
Tradition for women to be a branch of the men they are with, or the children they bear
Resistance of this ideology - they are more than that by themselves
"Miss Batt flung her head back and laughed, laughed like a bride"
A rapidly blossoming love
Joy reminiscent to a wedding day, despite the fact that Batt and Fife cannot be married
"its desks the small coffins of lessons"
Power of the establishment is gone
Death of education
Semantic fields of death and decay
"They drank in a bar where women danced, cheek to cheek"
Escaping the regime
Finding their own place
Intimacy between women is accepted here
"She wrote her maiden name with a stick in the sand"
Impermanent, to be washed away by the waves, like it was in her lifetime
Renouncing her married name - freedom, liberation
Her legacy, despite it being washed away
This poem is the turning point of the collection, as the poems start becoming more personal to Duffy herself.