"Warming Her Pearls" is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy that appears in her 1987 book Selling Manhattan. The poem uses the voice of a (likely) nineteenth-century lady's maid tasked with warming her mistress's pearl necklace by wearing it during the day so that it will not be cold on her mistress's skin when she wears it out in the evening. The maid fantasizes romantically about her mistress through the course of the day and evening. The pearls allow her to feel closer to the woman; their absence causes a painful sense of distance.
Key Aspects of Warming Her Pearls
Tone
The poem's tone is straightforward, but careful.
Setting
The poem seems to be set in nineteenth-century England.
