Maiden Name Flashcards
how does Larkin use structure, rhythm, and rhyme in Maiden Name to illustrate his messages?
- ABBACCA
- equal no. syllables per line
- reflects monotony and routines of marriage
analyse the quote ‘marrying left your maiden name disused.’ from Maiden Name
- ‘your’ direct address; suggests this is an apostrophe to winifred arnott
- ‘disused’ has connotations of forgotten, wasted, disregarded, useless; suggests she threw away her identity in an uncaring way - Larkin forges a connection between name an identity
- in disuse but not completely lost suggests her ‘name’ is still out there; speaker clings on to hope of being with her
- marriage is usually seen as a positive progression; the sense of abandonment almost personifies her name as she loses her identity suggesting marriage changes you into a new person and erases the past
- end-stopped line emphasises this as the end of something
analyse the quote ‘five light sounds’ from Maiden Name
- syllables of her maiden name
- ‘light’ has connotations of purity suggesting the speaker now perceives her as ‘weighed down’ by her new name and ‘impure’
analyse the quote ‘so thankfully confused / by law with someone else’ from Maiden Name
- ‘thankfully’ is almost a dutiful gesture of politeness to the new husband, undermined by irony (‘unfingermarked’)
- sarcastic/oxymoronic passive aggressive tone presenting marriage as manipulative and the woman as foolish (belittling)
- legal lexis has connotations of punishment and mistakes, emphasising negative permanence of marriage
- reduces marriage to a contract, removing the emotion; suggests her marriage is loveless and transactional - the speaker misconstrues the woman’s choice to continue perceiving her as naive and innocent
- recalls societal norms, suggesting marriage is just a convenience
- ‘someone else’ language of transformation
analyse the quote ‘that young beauty’ from Maiden Name
- ‘that’ suggests she has lost her sense of self
- marriage has aged her, speaker can no longer view here that way; she has become tainted, her femininity has been removed (male gaze and objectification of women)
analyse the quote ‘a school prize or two’ from Maiden Name
- childhood; her old self was notable and worthy of celebration vs her unremarkable married self
- asyndetic listing seems endless suggesting nostalgia and a mournful tone as her detailed, wide life is now just a list of things
analyse the quote ‘lying just where you left it’ from Maiden Name
- polysemic
- to be cast off; he feels abandoned
- untruthful; her marriage was ingenuine and she is lying to herself/her maiden name is lying and telling her to move on/get married
analyse the quote ‘then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly / untrithful?’ from Maiden Name
- volta - until now, mostly simple language (concrete words) and neatly end-stopped lines with clever and sprightly tone; now, a sudden serious hyperphora in a clumsy run-on line
- sibilance and the repetition of ‘less’ suffix suggests she is now lesser; marriage is characterised by loss
- ‘strengthless’ suggests that by giving herself to another she has been weakened
analyse the quote ‘no, it means you. or, since you’re past and gone’ from Maiden Name
- certainty vs uncertainty; speaker checks with himself and reaffirms his viewpoint
- suggests he is caught up in his thoughts/disoriented and is unable to accept reality
- semantic field of loss with ‘old’ ‘lying’ ‘scattered’ ‘past’ and ‘gone’ is mournful; emphasises how he is unable to access the previous woman
analyse the quote ‘it means what we feel now about you then’ from Maiden Name
- collective noun may be a distancing technique or the speaker trying to find support
- ‘now’ and ‘then’ solidifies the past as something she can’t return to; there is a metrical stress on ‘now’ and ‘then’
- the past is characterised by our inability to return to it
- emphasises the speaker’s feelings of desire and jealousy
analyse the quote ‘unfingermarked’ from Maiden Name
- reference to marriage ring suggestive of a figurative impurity; speaker feeds his own ego by creating the image of a tainted women
- could mean untouched (by time, by her husband, by societal expectations)
- reference to fingerprint; in his minds, she has completely transformed but in reality she is the same individual
analyse the quote ‘your old name shelters our faithfulness’ from Maiden Name
- suggests he finds home and safety in her past self; speaker feels affection and longing
- clinging to his only connection to her (maiden name)
analyse the quote ‘instead of losing shape and meaning less’ from Maiden Name
her maiden name has not lost its significance, but assumed greater meaning by embodying all his feelings for her now she is lost to him
analyse the quote ‘depreciating luggage laden’ from Maiden Name
- heavy alliteration of ‘l’ is distinctly unfeminine, unlike ‘light’ or ‘ribbon’
- her maiden name doesn’t depreciate like she does because it is still tethered to who she used to be
- metaphor for her new husband and so ‘depreciating’ means he will lose his novelty
- may mean she will lose her value
- may mean her married name is a burden (‘laden’ vs ‘light sounds’)
- ‘luggage’ connotes impermanence suggesting her marriage won’t last
