Afternoons Flashcards
Poet?
Philip Larkin
About?
Children play in the park. The women have routine chores and ordinary objects. The women’s lives have been restricted and they are no longer in control of their lives. Their children will also follow in their footsteps.
Context?
In the 1960’s Britain had very clear societal expectations of men and women and their roles.
Form and Structure?
Three equal Stanzas
Q - First line, change in seasons
‘Summer is fading’
Q - Imprisonment, domestic life is restricting
‘Setting free their children’
Q - Double meaning, women have no individuality or they are divorced/not together anymore
‘Behind them’
Q - The poem is about regular people
‘Stand husbands in skilled trades’
Q - Wasting time, nothing is achieved, lack of purpose
‘in the hollows of afternoons’
Q - Wasted youth, they are confined to gender stereotypes
‘Young mothers’
Q - Italics mimics the album and the woman could be reminiscing on times when their love was better.
‘lettered Our Wedding, lying near the television’
Q - Connecting past to present, emphasises how the women are restricted and have aged
‘their beauty has thickened.’
Q - Ending, the children are coming through and likely to follow the same path as their parents did.
‘Something is pushing them to the side of their own lives.’
Q - Children follow the same pattern as their predecessors, repetition after stanza break shows a pattern
‘the wind is ruining their courting-places // That are still courting-places’
Q - The children are demanding of their mothers which contribute to the restriction of the woman’s lives.
‘Expect to be taken home.’
