'afternoons' - philip larkin Flashcards
describe Larkin:
- home-schooled until 8 years old. few friends/close relationships in early stage of life
- could not serve in WW2, due to eyesight
- generally unsuccessful in love, at one point, in 3 relationships at once. sexist?
- solitary, fame-hating (declined chance to become poet laureate)
- observational poems with focus on everyday life and relationships. often called negative, miserable, melancholic
describe Britain in the 1960s:
- regimented gender roles: women were expected to stay at home, raise children, tend to domestic chores. men were expected to go out and work
- the Government was taking steps to get rid of run-down housing, replacing it with modern estates with plenty of green space
analyse the title:
- pluralisation implies all afternoons are the same. monotony
- afternoons are after noon, the peak of the day. the stage of a person’s life that could mirror this is the quieter, settling-down stage: 30s onwards?
analyse the first stanza:
structure:
enjambment means the poem seem relentless, just like the mundanity experienced by the people in the poem
imagery:
- ‘trees bordering the new recreation ground’. image of purposeful control, suburban life seems overcontrolling. even nature is controlled
- ‘setting free their children’ suburban life and its routines and mundanity is like a cage
language:
- opens with declarative sentence, ‘summer is fading’. neutral, observational tone, outsider?
- ‘young mothers’ the women’s identities are rooted in their motherhood, lost individuality. regimented gender roles in 1960s
analyse the second stanza:
imagery:
- caesura reinforces idea of distance between husbands and wives. Larkin seems critical of married life, reflecting his own unhappy romantic life?
structure:
- ‘an estateful of washing’ image emphasises how never-ending domestic work is. the women are trapped by domesticity
- wedding album ‘lying near the television’ image suggests that their love has mellowed and become taken for granted. wedding album (symbol of their love) discarded
language:
- ‘behind them’ prepositional phrase suggests not only physical but also relationship distance between husbands and wives
- ‘before them, the wind is ruining their courting places’ suggests women are powerless (too late, can’t do anything about it). can only stand and watch as something they care about is ruined
analyse the third stanza:
structure:
end-stopped lines create sense of finality. the mundanity of everyday life is inescapable
imagery:
- ‘their beauty has thickened’ Larkin criticises the women’s appearances as they grow older, sexist?
language:
- ‘(but the lovers are all in school)’ brackets make the line stand out the children of the young mothers are destined to do the same as their parents. life is monotonous. cynical tone
- ‘expect to be taken home’ mothers secondary and less important in their own lives. the children are more important and their needs are put first.
analyse the general structure of the poem:
three stanzas of equal length. everything is the same. normal, everyday life is boring, and this cycle cannot be broken
describe the meaning of the poem:
writes about lives of normal, working-class people, especially the women. first stanza = women taking kids to park, second stanza = glimpse of women’s home lives, third stanza = looks to the future and the next generation. bad view of domestic life, ‘setting free their children’
what is the poem’s mood?
initially observational, but the tone is negative and cynical in some places
what are the themes in the poem?
- power (women are powerless)
- love (mellowed and softened. the love has caused women to become secondary in their own lives. negative/cynical view of love)
- time (time in a person’s life. the afternoon)
- man (everyday people and their everyday lives)
