afternoons Flashcards
what are the themes of afternoons?
power, love, time and man
“Summer is fading:”
End-stopping – suggesting that a time of freedom is coming to an end.
“At swing and sandpit/ Setting free”
Sibilance – suggesting the mothers or married women are isolated and lonely and that symbolically they have lost the freedom that they once had.
“Lettered/Our Wedding, lying”
Italics – pushed aside and forgotten, what once was a joyful and exciting phase has been discarded and overtaken by mundanity.
“That are still courting-places”
Enjambment – wistfulness as a result of marrying and having children so young perhaps.
“Their beauty has thickened.”
Metaphor – suggesting that the young mothers have lost the freedom that they once have and that they are now more cynical as a result.
what is afternoons about?
The poem in observational. The persona describes an ordinary, everyday scene that
could be anywhere, as children are sent out to play and the mothers watch. Their husbands are mentioned, but it is ambiguous as to whether they are actually present. The observer paints a picture of the mothers’ routine and static life and how their lives have changed with domestication and their children’s expectations of them. Their identity has been pushed aside, and it seems that their children will also fall into the same cycle.
