"Adrienne Rich's poem: Living In Sin" Analysis

Categories: Poems

Analysis, Pages 8 (1809 words)

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Adrienne Rich's poem Living In Sin is a free verse poem about a woman's fairy tale dream of marriage versus the reality of the sin of not loving each other. The subject of the poem is a woman starting a life of hope and happiness in a perfect relationship only to learn the true reality of the relationship. The speaker of the poem observes the woman's life as sad and boring using the past tense versus the present, and short run on lines that set the hopeless mood of the poem.

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Imagery and colorful language is also used to describe the unhappy relationship throughout the poem. Living In Sin shows a woman's life without rhyme in four meaningful images and as the tone changes she sees the relationship/marriage she expected and the relationship as it actually is.

To begin with the speaker uses run-on lines, past tense and tone to illustrate the first image. "She had thought the studio would keep itself.

.." shows that in the beginning of the relationship she pictured a fairy tale marriage like Cinderella. There would be no chores, no dusting, everything would be a perfect marriage. The use of past tense means she is thinking of what is not. The lines are also short and choppy making everything sound hopeless. The next line, Half heresy... the speaker comes back to the present tense of the leaky faucet, noise and dirty windows. The mood then shifts again and she paints a pretty picture of her home with fruit and happiness on the table, a piano with an expensive shawl, and a cat as a nice pet.

The short, choppy run on lines makes the woman's life appear hopeless and tired of doing this day after day.

The next image the speaker speaks about is the dinner from the night before. By using the past tense again, Not that at five.... shows the image of a romantic dinner that never was. The poem looses this imagery with the sound of the milkman waking her up as the cold morning dawns only to ruin her fantasy dream of the frustration of cleaning up from the night before. The use of language to describe last night's cheese is a metaphor to show how sour their relationship really is. The speaker also uses three sepulchral bottles, sepulchral meaning burial or tomb, as a metaphor or image of the bottles lined up as dead soldiers from the night before of drinking and partying. The woman feels as if she too has died inside and is living in a tomb. The bug, a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own--, is another example of an image of what the woman doesn't expect from life as she writhe under the milkman's tramp...personifies her bending in pain.

Finally the man in her life is introduced. Again run on, choppy lines are used to describe him in only four lines shows he is not in her life very often and she is frustrated and angry at him. He is described as yawning which shows that he is ignoring her and just goes on with his on self absorbed life. He then plays the piano which is out of tune like their relationship is in need of help. Next he shrugs at the mirror and leaves for a cigarette suggests he doesn't care about her. Then the reality, using past to present, as the woman realizes by the minor demons, her inner thoughts of the fantasy versus the reality of the house work he left behind for her to do.

The woman goes back to making the house look perfect on the outside to keep up the idea of a fairy tale life that she once thought she might have. The image of the coffee-pot boil over on the stove shows that even though she is going on like nothing is wrong, inside she is boiling. Comparative imagery is used to show life then and now in the the pears are now last night's cheese, the cat is now a beetle-eye bug, a piano with a Persian shawl is now an out of tune keyboard, and no dust upon the furniture of love is now a dusty table-top. The illusion of a fantasy and now the reality of her life.

The final image ends with By evening she was back in love again, shows the fantasy versus the reality of waking to feel the daylight coming when she can start all over again. Like a relentless milkman up the stairs, she has to wake up and do the same thing day after day like the milkman waking up and starting all over again to deliver the milk. The woman goes back to her job that life will get better and someday will have a fairy tale ending, but until then she has to live in her tomb of a relationship, hence, living in sin of not being happy with what she has.

Adrienne Rich's poem does an interesting job of describing the miserable life of a woman looking for love. She uses colorful language and imagery to show the dark, unhappy life of this woman. There is a lot of emotion and feelings throughout the poem. The words like, grime, writhe, coldly, sepulchral, beetle-eyes, jeered, and demons all give a feeling of the sadness that this woman feels every day. The poem is easy to read and feel the loneliness this woman has in four, choppy run on images. In conclusion, Living in Sin paints a picture of a woman finally realizing that her marriage is not a fairy tale ending. Through imagery, run on lines, and tone the sin is in the guilt from not living in the present and not being in love with her husband, who's not in love. This was an interesting poem on the sin of not loving each other and accepting each other for who they are.

Analysis Poem “Living in Sin” by Adrienne Rich

The poem tells the story of the lovers that starts just after the fairytale of their lives has ended. Actually, it reveals the continuation of relationship where fairytale usually cuts the story at the kisses and declaration of love followed by “The End” (a story of a Princess which has to wash dishes on a day after a romantic ball). It is important to point out that the speaker is not actually the woman spoken of in the poem.

The narrator here depicts the events in this couple’s daily life. Yet, it is obviously a woman, due to the tone of the poem: how she sees the careless husband and notices household disorder. Being in variance with many modern text analysts, I must say that the poem ‘Living in Sin’ is completely autobiographic. It has been written by Adrienne Rich during the first months of her own marriage and conveys her own disappointment in what is left after the romantic prelude.

To understand the poem one must notice that it is wholly built on the contrasts the author uses from sentence to sentence. The most evident contrast resides in the mood of the heroes: the indifferent, careless husband (‘he, with a yawn…’) who seems not to notice the miserable surroundings and only shrugs his shoulders at the mirror admitting the piano out of tune, and the pensive and sad wife who is distressed with the routine circle of everyday cleaning and watching the back of her lover leaving each morning for the trivial cigarettes: “ [he] rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the table-top…” .

Adrienne Rich has been influenced by the popular image contrast of artist and his woman (generally, a family). Their married life goes in the studio, a huge room without walls or borders, without anything to confirm one’s privacy. Here we obviously see a family of artists where the woman has to play the subordinate role imposed by the society. As means to manipulate women into submitting to housekeeping roles, society promotes a male-dominant view. Most traditional societies expect all women to feign fulfillment in this biological role of a domestic apparatus. Therefore, like the woman in the poem, many women in society accept (although, quite reluctantly) this role of a home caretaker.

The images of dusted furniture, dried cheese and empty bottles, overboiled pot etc. produce low, pessimistic tones of the poem – all these trifle seems to be powerful enough to spoil woman’s life and even to kill love: “By evening she was back in love again, though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs”. Here appears another pair of contrasting images: Day and Night that are parallel to Reality and Dream.

This woman actually lives double life, enjoying night demonstrations of love and being not able to change the obtrusive tedium of the day which comes like the “relentless milkman” upon the creaking stair and ruins the fragile dreams of the romantic supper. The piano (summoned by him) seems to be out of tune just like their love. The grime at their window panes is as hard to remove as to bring back the brightness and romantics to the life. Comparatively, each of the household items is dingy. Everything illuminated by the day is out of this light in a paradoxical way - on the contrary, it strives for the night unconsciousness and inempiricalness.

So, now it is possible to explain the name of the poem. “Living in Sin” means to face the day and not to do anything about it, just to see the things go on and to be afraid to make any changes. The woman submits to this role of absolute responsibility without resistance, keeping her resentment and anger to herself. Her constant expenditure of energy with no satisfactory results leads to disappointment. The heroine of the poem is completely unsatisfied but what with she is not quite sure… We, as a reader, can only guess what exactly bothers her: a bunch of disappointing details or the whole picture of their relationship.

I think that the last thing does. Everyday dusting, which she has to take around the studio, symolizes the ‘dusting’ of the relationship that is also needed to keep the love alive. Undoubtedly, family life needs refreshment not to be sepulchered by the lay of ‘dust’ and similar days. The woman’s futile efforts result in her "living in sin". She sinfully accepts what society dictates and does not try to escape and improve her circumstances. By lettig this miserable life to continue, she denies herself and her individuality. And such self-sacrifice is the biggest sin for an artistic and thoughtful woman.