Chapter 8 The Twentieth Century

The Edwardian Age

The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the accession of Edward VII inaugurated not only a new century but a new milieu in art, an extension and development of the aestheticism that characterized the last decade of the 19th century. The Edwardian Age and the Modern Period which followed, roughly from 1910 through the end of World War II, differed sharply from the preceding age.

The elegance and extravagance of the aristocracy, led by King Edward VII, continued unchecked until World War I. However, underneath the ostentation so loved by the King sounded ominous warnings of unrest throughout Britain and the European continent. At the death of Edward VII in 1910, the British Empire also was dying as imperialism came under increasing criticism. Events such as the Boer War exposed the consequences of empire-building, and authors such as Joseph Conrad vividly portrayed for the British public a picture contrasting the supposed glory of empire. Even Edward VII himself criticized the British presence in India and the treatment of the country’s inhabitants.

Poet Thomas Hardy, often referred to as the great pessimist, depicted the new century as a time of uncertainty and disbelief, both in God and in the integrity of humankind. Cynicism and pessimism replaced Victorian optimism and confidence. Although science and technology continued their ever more rapid advancement with electricity, telegraph and radio, continued mechanization in workplaces, automobiles, and airplanes, society seemed to lack a solid center of reference, a core belief that held the uncertainties of life in check and gave life a sense of purpose and direction.

Hardy and Joseph Conrad bridge the 19th and 20th centuries, both in time and in the philosophy of their writing.

The Modern Age

The New Elizabethan Age and Postcolonial Literature

Upon the death of King George VI in 1952, Elizabeth acceded to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II. Her realm, however, looked quite different from that of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, who died only 51 years earlier.

By the end of the world wars, the British Empire no longer existed, replaced by the British Commonwealth. Countries that had been British colonies had over time become independent nations; many of those remaining colonies into the 20th century were granted their independence but remained dominions, rather than colonies, of Britain.

Postcolonial literatureLiterature written in the English language by residents of former British colonies. generally refers to literature written in the English language by residents of former British colonies. The subject matter of postcolonial literature typically addresses the oppression and exploitation of colonialism, the attempt to establish a national identity after independence, and the effects of colonialism and its aftermath on the individual. Emory University provides a Postcolonial Studies website that includes an introduction to postcolonialism, specific authors, themes, and issues typical of postcolonial discourse.

Among the questions raised about postcolonial literature is its place in studies of British literature. Does postcolonial literature belong in the category of “British” literature because the country of origin formerly belonged to the British Empire, or does the literature belong to the nationality which produced it? When the term English literature is used to designate literature written in the English language (rather than literature written in England or by English citizens), certainly postcolonial literature belongs in English literature studies, as would American literature, Australian literature, and the literatures of any other English-speaking countries. Some scholars therefore prefer the terminology “World Literature in English” to the word postcolonial that may, for some, perpetuate the paradigm of imperialists and their occupied victims. This term emphasizes the global view many scholars consider an important characteristic as well as a prime achievement of this literature. However, such an approach calls into question the inclusion in British literature studies of some writers traditionally considered British, such as Irish writers James Joyce and William Butler Yeats, both born in Ireland while it was a part of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1921) but both advocates of Irish independence.

Resources

Biography

“Hap”

Although Hardy repudiated the claim, he was labeled “The Great Pessimist.” Hardy, instead, described himself as a melioristA person who believes the world and individuals have the potential for improvement., a person who believes the world and individuals have the potential for improvement. Nonetheless, the pessimistic tone of modernism permeates his work.

In modernism, the proper response to fate beyond individual control is stoicism—an endurance of the pain and heartache of life with dignity and without complaint. Such stoicism is evident in Hardy’s poem “Hap.”

In “Hap” the title gives an important clue about the poem’s content: the word hap means chance.

The first two stanzas of the poem are just one sentence. It is important to note that the entire first stanza is an “if” clause. The speaker is not saying, “There is a vengeful god”; he is saying “If there were a vengeful god.” If there were a vengeful god that laughed at him, saying that his suffering provided pleasure for the vengeful god, then he would react as he describes in stanza 2.

If there were a vengeful god, then he would bear the suffering stoically, halfway finding comfort in the fact that at least there was some reason for his pain, at least some god was directing what happened to him.

Note the first short sentence of stanza 3: “But not so.” The monosyllabic words, each accented, emphasize the speaker’s conclusion. The “if” clause he proposes in stanza 1 is not so; in other words, there is no god, not even a vengeful one. This conclusion leads the speaker to ask why, then, he suffers in life—why are his hopes unfulfilled and his happiness ruined? The last four lines provide the answer to his question: it is simply chance. He personifies time, picturing Time rolling dice to see what will happen to him. It may be something good, or it may be something bad. Either way it’s simply a roll of the dice, a matter of “chance.”

“The Impercipient”

As in “Hap,” the title “The Impercipient” provides an important clue about the poem’s content. The word impercipient is from the same Latin root word as the words perceive and perceptive. The prefix “im” means not. Therefore, this poem is about a person who does not perceive or understand.

“The Darkling Thrush”

“The Darkling Thrush,” written at the beginning of a new century, is a statement of sharp contrast to the philosophy of the Romantic Period, one hundred years before this poem was written. Hardy dated the poem 31 December 1900, the eve of the new century.

The speaker recounts leaning on a gate leading into a coppice, a small wooded area, on a gray, frosty day. The world appears drab and dark (the “weakening eye of day” referring to the sun’s inability to penetrate the gloom). No people are out enjoying nature, as is often portrayed in Romantic poetry; they have all sought the warmth of human companionship around their household fires. The entire first stanza sets the stage with images of death.

In the midst of this description, Hardy draws attention to the bare, tangled branches, comparing them with the strings of a broken lyre. His image is chosen purposefully. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s image of the eolian harp (lyre) is one of the central images of Romantic poetry. “The Eolian Harp” was first printed in 1796, just over one hundred years earlier. The eolian harp symbolizes Romantic mysticism, a spiritual presence in the world (Coleridge’s “one Life, within us and abroad”) moving through nature, including human beings. Hardy says the eolian harp is now broken; that image no longer works. His universe is not spirit-filled, but lifeless and dried up. The land itself looks like a corpse.

Suddenly, in the midst of the frozen, dead world, the speaker hears the joyful song of a thrush, not a beautiful, vibrant bird like Shelley’s skylark, but a “frail, gaunt, and small” bird, worn out by storms.

In the final stanza, the speaker notes that the scene around the bird is bleak, certainly nothing to sing about, which leads him to state:

That I could think there trembled through

               His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

               And I was unaware.

For over one hundred years, critics have disagreed about how to interpret these last four lines. There are two possibilities and scholars who support each side.

Possibility 1: There is some “Hope” in the world. Things aren’t as bleak as they seem. The bird is aware of a reason for hope, even if the speaker is not.

Possibility 2: The last two lines should be interpreted, “The bird may think there’s a reason for hope, but I, the speaker, surely don’t know what it is.”

The title of the poem could be seen as supporting either interpretation. The word darkling means “in the dark.” That phrase, however, could be interpreted literally (the bird is singing on a dark, cloudy day—”in the dark”) or figuratively (the bird is clueless—”in the dark”—the bird doesn’t know what’s going on, how bleak the world really is).

“The Ruined Maid”

Hardy’s audience would have recognized the expression ruined maid although we no longer use the phrase. They would have known immediately that the poem is about an unmarried woman who has lost her virginity. “The Ruined Maid” is, in fact, about two women: one who is “ruined” in a moral sense and another who, though chaste, is living a life of hardship and poverty.

The dialogue of the two women soon reveals that Melia, the ruined maid, is living in town, wearing beautiful clothes and jewelry, living a life of ease. The country woman, though virtuous, wears tattered clothes, digs potatoes to eke out a living, and envies ‘Melia. In the last two lines of the poem, ‘Melia tells her friend that she can’t expect a life of ease; she isn’t “ruined.”

The poem is humorous in effect, but it makes a serious point. Hardy leads the audience to ask themselves about society’s values and the way society works. Isn’t something wrong when virtue leads to poverty and “being ruined” leads to prosperity?

“Drummer Hodge”

Before and after the turn of the century the British were involved the Boer Wars. In a portion of what is now the Republic of South Africa, Dutch farmers settled and farmed peacefully throughout much of the 19th century. The native African people had already been defeated and driven off their land by European settlers. When gold and diamonds were discovered, the British were no longer content to let the Dutch settlers rule the area, and the struggle for control of the region and its riches grew into a horrific armed conflict.

The British set up concentration camps (the first time in history this term had been used) to imprison women and children of the Boer farmers who continued to fight. Loss of life among the British, the Boer fighters, and the innocent families was staggering. Hardy personalizes the loss of life by introducing his readers to one individual. In “Drummer Hodge,” originally titled “The Dead Drummer,” Hardy laments a young boy sent for the first time away from home to fight and die in a land he knew nothing about for a cause that mattered little if at all to him.

Resources

Biography

Joseph Conrad was born in Poland. When his father was arrested on political charges and sent into exile in Russia, his wife and their young son Joseph accompanied him. The harsh weather and living conditions resulted in the early deaths of his parents and in health problems that plagued Conrad throughout his life. Conrad lived for a time with an uncle but in his teens began a career on the sea that took him on many adventures that later appeared in his writing. His voyage up the Congo River formed the basis of Heart of Darkness. One voyage took him to England where he joined a crew that included Englishmen from whom he began to learn the language. He eventually became an English citizen, married an English woman, and when his health forced him to retire from his maritime career, lived the rest of his life in England. Conrad had been writing throughout his life, but his retirement allowed him to devote the time and attention to his writing that he had desired.

Heart of Darkness

A story about Conrad’s childhood claims that he once randomly placed a finger on a far-away place on a map and stated that when he was grown up he would go there. The place was Africa. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad attributes this event to his narrator, Charles Marlow. In his novellaA work with the characteristics of a novel but shorter and less complex in plot., a work with the characteristics of a novel but shorter and less complex in plot, Heart of Darkness, Conrad draws on his own experience as a riverboat captain sailing up the Congo River.

Heart of Darkness was originally published serially in Blackwood’s Magazine, 1899. Uppsala University’s Conrad First website provides digital copies of the magazine.

Like Hardy’s work, Conrad’s writing bridges the end of the Victorian Era and the Modern Age of the early 20th century. His work, however, reveals characteristics that distinguish it as a modern work, distinctly different from the mores of Victorian literature.

Plot in Heart of Darkness is more mental than chronological and linear. Although we follow a chronology of events as Marlow experiences his journey to the Congo, that chronology is of less importance than Marlow’s mental journey of realization and awakening to the nature of the world. The reader reaches awareness about events and characters as the narrator does. The story takes the reader along with Marlow’s journey of discernment about life and human nature.

Characters often are not full drawn, realistic characters like those we might encounter in Dickens’s novels. Mental life, the life of the mind, Marlow’s mind, and then Kurtz’s mind, are the focus. Although Heart of Darkness pre-dates the important works of Freud and Jung, Conrad exhibits the interest in human psychology that would lead later modernist writers to study and reflect psychological studies in their works. Even the story’s religious and biblical imagery reinforces its rejection of traditional religious values and asserts the modernist tenet that there is no moral center. The basic depravity of humankind is no better than, often worse than, the instinctive behavior of animals. While humans may, as Darwin’s work suggested, work on instinct like animals, animals do not engage in the wanton, futile destruction depicted in Heart of Darkness.

The structure of Heart of Darkness uses a double narrator.

• At the beginning of the work, an unnamed narrator sets the scene in the story’s present time: on the ship Nellie on the River Thames in London in Marlow’s old age. This narrator is presumably, like Charles Marlow, a sailor on the Nellie; in the second paragraph he comments that the river Thames “stretched before us” and later notes that the men present have “the bond of the sea.”
• The main story is Marlow’s re-telling of his experience as a riverboat captain sailing up the Congo River. We don’t experience the events as they happen; we experience them through the filter of Marlow’s memory. As you read, watch for instances of the outer framework, the first unnamed narrator, breaking into Marlow’s story.

The themes of Heart of Darkness become apparent as we consider the title. The story is foremost a journey.

• In one sense, it is literally a story of a journey into the heart of darkness that is, in the view of many turn-of-the-20th-century Europeans, the African continent. Because they knew little about Africa, Europeans referred to Africa as “the dark continent.”
• At another level, Marlow’s initial desire for an adventure turns into a quest for Kurtz, the mysterious star of the company. He collects more ivory and therefore more money than any other company agent. Marlow hears about him at every turn. At this level, the story also functions as a criticism of European imperialism. Kurtz embodies the concept of robbing another country of its natural resources and laying waste, not just to its land, but its population. The basis of his fame is that Kurtz excels in making money from a land that does not belong to him.
• At its most important level, Marlow’s journey becomes a pilgrimage to the heart of humankind’s depravity. As he moves deeper into the literal darkness of the jungle and closer to Kurtz’s presence, he experiences an epiphanyA sudden moment of insight and revelation., a sudden moment of insight and revelation. Marlow’s epiphany is a realization that humankind possesses a core of evil, a heart of darkness. Although the story is not told primarily in religious terms, the presence of original sin, a person’s innate capacity for evil—a heart of darkness—is at the terminus of Marlow’s physical, mental, and spiritual journey.

Resources

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)

Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire, a rural area of England. He was interested in poetry, particularly Keats and other Romantic poets, and wrote poetry in his teens. When he failed to be admitted to college, he moved to France to work as an English language tutor. After World War I began, he moved back to England to enlist. In 1917, he was diagnosed with what was then called shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland for treatment. There he met Siegfried Sassoon. Both poets wrote some of their most well-known poetry while there. Owen returned to the front in the fall of 1918, won the Military Cross, and just days before the war ended was killed in battle. His family received the news of his death in the midst of celebrations on November 11, Armistice Day, 1918.

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)

Rupert Brooke also was fond of the works of the Romantic poets. He attended Cambridge University where he met and befriended members of the Bloomsbury Group whose literature was an important piece of British modernism. Brooke was commissioned into the Royal Navy, but in 1915 he died of sepsis onboard a hospital ship. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)

Although Sassoon grew up in a family divided by religious differences, his father was Jewish, his mother Roman Catholic, his background provided him enough wealth to live comfortably. He attended Cambridge University for a while, without taking a degree, preferring to live the life of a country gentlemen playing cricket and writing. Sassoon joined the British Army at the beginning of World War I; he was sent home from the front twice, once when he contracted a fever and once for shell shock, this being the occasion when he met Wilfred Owen. Sassoon survived World War I and continued writing until his death.

Resources

Biography

The Bloomsbury Group

Originating in friendships established at Cambridge University, the Bloomsbury Group consisted of writers, artists, and intellectuals who influenced Modern British literature and art. The name Bloomsbury came from the neighborhood in London where several members of the group lived and worked. Their work and their lifestyles were bohemian and controversial, affecting modern views on feminism and sexuality as well as literary criticism, art, and publishing. The circle of friends now known as the Bloomsbury Group included Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, writer Lytton Strachey, writer E.M. Forster, and economist Maynard Keynes.

A Room of One’s Own

In 1928, Virginia Woolf gave a series of lectures at Newnham and Girton Colleges, women’s colleges at Cambridge University. A year later, she published a revision of her lectures as A Room of One’s Own. Woolf’s premise that a woman must have “money and a room of her own” if she is to become a writer applies literally to becoming a career writer, but more broadly to the idea that women must have the independence and education to support themselves and the political freedom to assume such places in a society that gives preference to men. In speaking on this subject to women attending college, Woolf reminds them and future readers that women have had that right for only a brief time.

In one of the more well-known sections of her lectures, Woolf creates the fictional story of Shakespeare’s sister. What if, she surmises, Shakespeare had had a sister who was just as gifted and talented as Shakespeare himself? Would that sister, whom she calls Judith, have been able in the 16th century to become a writer like Shakespeare? Woolf tells a hypothetical story in which Judith attempts to follow her brother’s footsteps. Instead of being allowed to spend time reading and writing, Judith would have been beaten by her father and compelled to marry. She certainly would not have been allowed to attend school. Woolf describes Judith running away to London, where we know that Shakespeare himself had a successful career as an actor, the manager of a theatrical company, and of course a playwright. Judith, on the other hand, is unable, because of society’s restrictions on women, to do any of those things. Woolf’s hypothetical story is a reminder of what women have accomplished but also an appeal for women to continue to strive for equality.

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Biography

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Harvard University. After an additional year of education in Paris, he went to Oxford University and then back to Harvard. In 1914, he moved to and settled in England, marrying an English woman and working as a teacher and a banker. Here he met the American modernist poet Ezra Pound who encouraged Eliot’s writing. Eliot’s first publication, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” established him as an important modernist poet. Eliot began working at Faber and Faber publishing company, eventually becoming a director. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1927.

Eliot admired and helped foster a renewed interest in the 17th-century Metaphysical poets such as John Donne. Modernist poets appreciated their metaphysical conceits, striving to achieve hard images in their own writing, images that were clear and sharp due to precise, concise language.

Eliot also wrote verse dramas. Murder in the Cathedral recounts the martyrdom of Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. The work was first performed in the Chapter House at Canterbury Cathedral, only steps from where Becket’s murder took place.

In 1948, Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature. He remarried later in life, and on his death in 1965, his second wife worked to compile and edit his papers and manuscript drafts of his work.

Eliot’s ashes are interred at East Coker Church, a small village in southwest England that was home to his ancestors.

He also is honored with a commemorative stone in Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Analyses of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” often consist of as many questions as statements. The poem uses the modernist stream of consciousness technique, an effort to demonstrate the workings of the human mind. Knowing we are, in a sense, listening to an individual’s thoughts, leaves questions because we are not presented a consciously constructed narrative.

The title itself seems paradoxical with the pairing of the idea of a love song with a name as prosaic as J. Alfred Prufrock, a name Eliot suggested he may have remembered from the name of a furniture company in his native St. Louis.

The epigraph to “Prufrock” is from Dante’s Inferno. The epigraph’s speaker states that if his listener were returning to earth and therefore could repeat his story to others, he would not speak; however, since no one can return from Hell, he can speak his words. The epigraph leads readers of “Prufrock” to wonder if they are reading a dramatic monologue, in which the speaker addresses a specific listener, whether the readers are the auditors, or whether we are overhearing the workings of a human mind of which we ordinarily would not be aware. Are these words, like the epigraph speaker’s words, that are not meant to be heard by others?

This dilemma calls into question the reality of all the events of the poem. Is the speaker actually walking somewhere, or is he only rehearsing this possibility mentally? Is he imagining something that will happen, remembering something that has happened, or actually experiencing the event?

The first three lines of the poem provide the type of unusual, unexpected comparison reminiscent of metaphysical conceits. In this love song, with the picture of a couple walking in the evening, the scene is compared to a patient under sedation upon an operating table, hardly a romantic image. The meter also emphasizes the incongruity of the simile: the first two lines are regular in meter, but the smooth rhythm stumbles with line 3.

In lines 26–28, the speaker talks of preparing a face to meet other faces, of assuming a mask, a façade, to meet other people who are just as artificial, as counterfeit, as the speaker.

The references to the taking of toast and tea in a room where “women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” suggest that the speaker is on his way to an afternoon tea attended by insincere people talking about topics intended to impress others. Here, too, however, we are left with the uncertainly of whether we are experiencing the events as the speaker does or whether the speaker is recalling or anticipating the occurrence.

The speaker imagines the crowd whispering about his inadequacies from his bald spot to his thinness until he feels like a bug specimen pinned under a scientist’s microscope. And all the time he wonders if he dares to “disturb the universe” by breaking out of the pattern of expected behavior.

In lines 73 and 74, the speaker states he should have been a pair of claws, a crab, on the floor of the sea, silent and far away from the world, from the critical eyes, living strictly by instinct with none of the angst resulting from his current situation.

Lines 75 through 110 present the speaker wondering how things might have been, or might be in the future, different if he had the courage to force the moment from the triviality of everyday life to the important questions. At the same time, he knows he did not, or will not, have the courage to speak his convictions or to pronounce the ideas which are important to him. The following lines provide the reason:

He is too afraid to step out from behind the mask he prepared, the face he shows the world, the façade of conformity that makes him act like the rest of society safely behind their masks. The meaningless ritual in which he and those around him indulge characterizes the modernist view of life. Having realized that he will never address the important questions, the speaker rationalizes his behavior with the thought that in life’s drama he does not play a leading part, such as Hamlet, but only a bit part.

With the realization that he will never address the important issues of life, the speaker begins to imagine the rest of his life, sinking into an ever-more-powerless old age. The speaker claims in lines 124–126 he has heard mermaids singing.

In British folklore, mermaids are often evil omens, sirens luring sailors to their deaths. In this context, the mermaids seem to represent something beautiful denied to the speaker. On the other hand, the following lines picture the speaker at the bottom of the sea with the mermaids, again, as when he pictures himself as a crab, isolated from human contact. The sound of human voices drowns him.

Whatever the specifics of Prufrock’s situation, the despair, the inability to shape his own circumstances, the lack of free will to make his desires reality all reflect the modernism of the early 20th century.

The Modern American Poetry website from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides a summary of seminal commentary on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Four Quartets: “East Coker”

Eliot wrote what would become the first of the Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton” and published it separately from the other three poems in a poetry collection in 1936. The other three poems, “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and East Giddings” were written during World War II, but the four were not published as a whole until 1943.

In music, a quartet consists of four different voices, the title thus suggesting multiple voices in each poem, each quartet. Although the more typical form for musical quartets, particularly string quartets, is four movements, notably Haydn’s quartets and Beethoven’s later quartets often have five movements. Each of Eliot’s poems consists of five parts.

The Four Quartets are often interpreted as representing the medieval idea of the fours elements: air, earth, water, and fire.

The connecting theme of the Four Quartets is time, specifically the continuity of time and eternity and the role of human life and death in this continuity. Eliot conveys this theme through religious imagery. In “East Coker” humans are offered a chance to glimpse an ancient time, still present for those willing to see the continuity of life through eternity.

Resources

Biography

Poet and novelist Philip Larkin, born in Coventry, England, graduated from St. John’s College, Oxford and worked as a librarian. After his first publication in his boyhood school magazine, Larkin wrote and published poetry, novels, essays, newspaper book and jazz reviews, literary criticism, as well as editing The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. His acceptance of the librarian’s position at the University of Hull, which he held from 1955 to 1985, coincided with the publication his poetry volume The Less Deceived, the first of his works to receive critical acclaim. His next significant book of poetry The Whitsun Weddings was not published until 1964; however, it secured his position as one of the most significant of later 20th-century British poets.

In 1984, Larkin was offered the position of poet laureate but declined, reportedly due to his dislike of publicity and, according to Anthony Thwaite, one of Larkin’s literary executors and editors, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, because he felt his “gift as a poet had come to an end.”

Although Larkin’s poetry displays a pessimistic, sorrowful tone common in modern poetry, his work evinces more traditional meter and rhyme. The British magazine The Spectator, in 1954, used the name The MovementA group of poets who used more traditional forms in opposition to the experimental structures of modernist poets. to describe a group of poets who used more traditional forms in opposition to the experimental structures of modernist poets. The Movement, including Larkin and his friend from Oxford student days and fellow writer Kingsley Amis, was criticized for its reaction against modernism in literature. Larkin’s selections for The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse garnered criticism for his perceived bias in choosing poetry in a traditional vein rather than works with modernist characteristics. Thomas Hardy, for example, whose work Larkin admired, is heavily represented in the volume.

“Days”

Published in his highly successful volume The Whitsun Weddings, Larkin’s short poem “Days” addresses a theme prevalent in modernist poetry: time. Indeed, the theme of time and the brevity of life commonly appears in poetry of all centuries. With a hint of the modernist trait of twisting time out of its usual linear construct, the speaker of “Days” at once questions both the actuality of the concept of a day and the purpose of a day.

“Days” is a question and answer poem, proposing two questions and answering both.

The language of “Days” is simple and colloquial, typical of Larkin’s diction but without the crude edge of some of his poetry, perhaps most famously “This Be the Verse.” The first question seems a simple, almost childlike one: “What are days for?” The answer, however, broaches the most profound, and at the same time the most hackneyed, of philosophical topics: “Days are where we live.” Days are where all the meaning and the only meaning of our lives can exist. Both natural and manmade, the concept of a day enfolds all the thought and action that comprise human life.

The second question appears at the end of the first stanza, emphasizing the answer through its placement in a separate stanza.

The second stanza may be a second speaker, answering the first speaker’s questions. Or the second stanza may more likely be the same speaker answering the rhetorical question, perhaps using the common conversational convention of repeating a question before giving the answer. “Where can we live but days?”

The answer includes no sentimentality about how one’s days are spent, about accomplishments or relationships; there is only the brutal fact of a limited number of days allotted to each individual and then inevitable death.

“The Whitsun Weddings”

An example of Larkin’s interest in regular meter and rhyme, “The Whitsun Weddings” consists of 8 stanzas of 10 lines rhyming ababcdecde. In each stanza, lines 1 and 3 through 10 are iambic pentameter, while line 2 consists of 4 syllables with 2 stressed syllables (iambic dimeter).

In Britain, Whitsun is the name for Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter. At the time this poem was written, the Monday after Whitsun was a holiday. The combination of the long weekend, the religious significance, and the springtime date made the weekend a popular one for weddings.

The speaker describes the beginning of an ordinary train journey to London on a hot spring Whitsun Saturday afternoon. Gradually he begins to notice that at each station a celebratory group crowds the platform and realizes that these are wedding parties, seeing off a newly married couple on their honeymoon journey.

With the speaker’s description of the surroundings, beauty is juxtaposed against the ugliness of the background even as the reader is led to question whether the beauty exists at all. The obvious, anticipated joy of a wedding clashes with the common and mundane. A wedding, a beginning of new life, love, and joy, is placed in the midst of everyday’s common, routine continuity.

“Aubade”

An aubadeA song or poem greeting the dawn. is a song or poem greeting the dawn. Traditionally, an aubade portrays lovers who must part at dawn, so the song laments the anticipated separation. In Larkin’s “Aubade,” there are no lovers, only one individual, the speaker, but the poem still anticipates a separation: the speaker’s separation from existence through death. Each morning the speaker realizes that he is one day closer to death.

The poem’s five stanzas rhyme ababccdeed. In each stanza, the abab lines are regular iambic pentameter, but when the rhyme scheme deviates from the abab pattern, the meter becomes irregular. In stanza one, the disintegration of the regular rhyme and meter reflect the speaker’s descent into fear and turmoil as he contemplates the non-existence death will inevitably bring.

In the first stanza, the speaker describes the sunlight beginning to come into the room around the edges of the curtains until “then I see what’s really always there.” And then the speaker tells us it is “unresting death,” always present but intruding into his thoughts in the quiet aloneness of dawn.

As the light strengthens, the fear of death “stays just on the edge of vision,” replaced by the mundane realities of life. The fear, however, never goes away. Reiterating the idea of the first lines of the poem, the speaker admits that the presence of other people or drinking may temporarily push the fear to the sidelines of his thought, making the lonely dawn the time most susceptible to the encroaching fear.

Resources

Biography

The current British poet laureate is the first woman, and the first Scot, to hold the prestigious position, Carol Ann Duffy. Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1955, Duffy was educated at Liverpool University and now heads the creative writing program at Manchester Metropolitan University. She was appointed poet laureate in 2009. Noted primarily for her poetry, Duffy also writes plays and children’s literature.

Duffy’s poetry uses direct, colloquial diction. In an article from the British newspaper The Telegraph, Duffy is quoted as approving of texting and social networking sites because she believes it helps young people develop their poetry skills by forcing them to be concise, condensing their ideas into fewer words, traits found in her poetry. Her poetry also uses rich, vivid imagery in the tradition of the Metaphysical poets and the modern Imagists.

Duffy’s poetry is often cited as belonging to the category of post postmodern literature. She uses traditional forms such as the sonnet and the ballad as well as free forms and makes use of traditional genre such as the dramatic monologue. Her volume The World’s Wife is a collection of dramatic monologues in which the wives of well-known historical figures are allowed to tell “their side of the story.” Her poetry has a strong feminist voice, but she speaks as well on both personal and political topics, often giving voice to the oppressed and disadvantaged.

“The Thames”

In her position as poet laureate, Duffy created an online collection of 60 poems by 60 poets, including her own poem, “The Thames,” representing 2012, to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. 60 Years in 60 Poems is a multimedia website featuring text and audio of the poems with BBC footage from key historical events and designs appropriate for each poem.

“Syntax”

The poem “Syntax” is an example of Duffy’s writing about language. Playfully rearranging the word order of archaic words “thou” and “thee,” the speaker considers how the organization of the words affects the meaning of her expressions of love. The concluding couplet, however, recognizes the danger that language sometimes fails to convey the intentions of the heart.

“Atlas”

In one of the first poems written in her role as poet laureate, Duffy addresses the contemporary issue of the environment. Picturing the mythological Atlas, the poem declaims the difficulty of maintaining the earth.

“Anne Hathaway”

From her poetry collection The World’s Wife, Duffy’s poem “Anne Hathaway” is a dramatic monologue in which the wife of William Shakespeare describes their intimate moments in the well-known “second best bed.” A favorite item of Shakespeare trivia is the fact that in his will, located in the UK National Archives, Shakespeare leaves to his wife Anne Hathaway his “second best bed.” In warm, imaginative language, Anne Hathaway compares their lovemaking to Shakespeare’s writing. She also, in a humorous touch, accounts for her husband’s leaving her the second best, rather than the best, bed: the best bed was reserved for guests, whose love must have been so inferior to hers that it compares only to prose, not to the drama and romance of her experiences. In the last lines, the beauty of the images gives way to a harsh picture of the widow’s head as a casket, holding the living memories of her love.

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