The Whitsun Weddings Flashcards
About
-The narrative poem setting recalls a journey made by Larkin from Hull to Kings Cross Station London on the east coast mainline
- whitsun is the eighth Sunday after Easter
-when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples of Christ and instructed them to spread the gospel
- why can belonged to what is known as the movement a group of poets who rejected the various poetry styles that had developed since World War I and aim to return to a simple style?
-Like and present is the reader with a reductive view of weddings
Structure
-It’s one of Larkin’s most famous poems and it shifts from moments of intense lyricism to closely observed detail of the people. He passes on the platforms and speculation on their thoughts and feelings.
-T the poem is written in loose iambic pentameter
-With a shortened second line in each stanza giving it a deceptively conversational tone as does the extensive use of German and Czura
“ behind/ backs/ binding/breadth/ began”
-The lazy rocking of the train is conveyed here by the even rhythm of the ironic lines and the extended alliteration
“Slow/stopping/southward”
-The sibilance mimics the sound of the train
-Combined with lists of features like an observes
-The fast paced rhythm creates a sense of progress and moving forward
“Acres of dismantled cars” hedges dipped and rose’
-use the hyperbole to not just exaggerate the extent but also contrast this man-made disfigurement with the natural acres of feilds through which he has just travelled
-He may be commenting on the wastefulness and ugliness of modern progress
“ the weddings” “ grinning and pomaded girls” “fathers” “mothers” ‘coach-party”
-The narrative shift from Larkin Sunday’s reverie to the stations at which they stop
-The reason for this being the weddings
-He reveals the wedding significance over the succeeding stanza like unravelling a mystery
-Starting with the girls of the wedding party, then back to the parents and guests
-Then where the wedding party set out from
-Only further on instances at seven as the train approaches does he focus on the bridal couple as if gradually distancing them from their previous lives
“Grinning and pomaded girls” “ parodies of fashion” “ posed irresolutely”
-he’s less attractive attitude to the women are revealed
-He describes their wedding clothes as parody of fashion
-He suggests what he sees as vanity and self regard
-This is a reflection of liking misogyny
-The parodies indicate that Larkin is contemptuous of the sort of dressing up for weddings that people take pleasuring he’s detached and superior to such celebrations
-The final ‘posed irresolutely” suggest what liking season uncertainty as if these guests secretly share his contempt or fear of the enormity of what a wedding means”
“ waving goodbye” “ survived”
The stances are enjambed
- A wedding that can lead to troubled grief lead and lives or alternatively happiness -
-Waving goodbye seems to suggest pessimism that life is to only be survived and that the wedding is the beginning of something negative
“Fathers with broad belts/seamy foreheads” “mothers loud and fat” “uncles shouting smut”
-he presents the reader with the reductive view of weddings
-Weddings are normally celebrated of what can make life happy
-Larkin sees only pessimism
“ perms” “ lemons, mauves and olive ochres that…/“ “ jewellery substitutes”
“- he describes some less grossly but still with a mix of prurience and discussed
-Attitude to women who are sexually unattainable He depicts them all as fake.
-Their hair are unaturally permed
-their gloves, nylon a man-made fabric.
-The jewelry is not real. But substitutes
-in an echo of “ the large cool store” they wear the colours of sexual alert for Larkin suggesting an erotic exotic fantasy
-A contrast to the drop rounds and grade of post war Britain
-He finishes his sentence cross stanza propelling us forward
-he prefers not to acknowledge the post war poverty and hardship that people aspire to rise above in whatever way they could
-The fake jewelry crude jokes represent an effort to celebrate and at least for an afternoon cling to hope
-However he does not emphasise with these people he just describes them
“cafes” not restaurants “ banquet halls” not more expensive hotels “up yards”
Is depiction of these venues is again faintly disparaging and riddled with class distinctions
-Cafés not restaurants, banquet halls, not the more expensive hotels
-Banquet halls with somewhat anonymous high venues which may or may not provide catering which otherwise would be made at home
-they are up yards stressing their in poor areas
-In 1950s Britain weddings held in church in the morning would’ve been followed by lunch for the guests before the bridal cup of departed on their honeymoon
“ coach party annexes” “bunting”
-even less prepossessing are the coach party and exes rooms tacked on the end of cafés or restaurants that Katie specifically for large parties of people often passing through and thus not particularly choosy about their surroundings
-they attempt to put a cheerful face on this side venue with wanting stringing up little coloured flags
-The image is at one acutely observed and pathetic
“ fresh couples” “ frowned”
-The couples claim award the train fresh because they are nearly wet and you’re unattained by what marriage may bring
-he imagines how Those Left Behind are feeling about watching them leave their feelings written on their expressions
-This is of course lacking interpretation and Evelee tinged with his own feelings about marriage which were generally negative
“ fathers had never known Success so huge and wholly farcicall”
-Society uses marriage as some kind of success with both the married couple and particularly the father of the bride
-Like and sneezed at the idea of marriage seeing it as bicycle a joke or a ridiculous
-locking description of it as holy farcical is ambiguous however
-Is he laughing at the fathers or with them acknowledging that they probably see the absurdity of the occasion as well
“Happy funerals” “secret”
-The oxymoron presents the wedding as a happy occasion, but also a death
- Potentially an end of one life and the beginning of another
-It could be the death of virginal innocence replaced by something that the woman perhaps regard as better
- The secret shared by the women is likely to refer to sex bear in mind in the 1950s. Many girls were virgins on their wedding day.
“ grip their handbags tighter and started ” “ religious wounding”
-The girls who gripped their handbags are fascinated in fear about weight not just for the bride but potentially them-the loss of their virginity on marriage
-The oxymoronic phase makes this clear
-Marriage is a religious ceremony which celebrates loss a contradiction
-The sinister image of the religious wounding implies that marriage hurts or may hurt at some point a reflection of Larkins’s own views on love
“We were aimed” “ when changed “ loosened all the power” “
-Lock in opens stanza eight with the first of a series of images related to archery
-“ we were aimed” -the train being like an archer’s bow is still heading swiftly for London”
“ when changed is the change from being single to being married: energies released by a change from one state to another
-So the marriages have energy which is like to the potential energy of arrows when they are loosed
-The train slows as it enters the yards outside the station with a pull of the brakes like the pull back on a bow string
-Larkin feels the potential energy has been released
-The shower of arrows are transformed into rain
-Rain is a symbol of life it falls on part ground to bring new growth
-Here it is a symbol of the new life that these married couples may bring to the world through their children
“An arrow shower somewhere becoming rain” “falling” “sent” “ swelled”
-The metaphor and whether it’s positive or negative has brought much discussion
-It was inspired by a viewing of the Lawrence Oliver films version of Shakespeare Henry the fifth
-Well, longbow men loose flights of arrows towards the French Army
-These arrows brought death and this interpretation has been transferred by some to the poem
-However this interpretation is hard to believe given imagery in the proceeding stances and the delicacy with which Larkin handles his concluding image
-The movement in “swelled” and “falling” “ arrow shower” and “sent”
-And the hesitancy of “some where” as if he wants something so mundane the tacky weddings that he despise can become something miraculous
