“The wind blew all my wedding day”
- Possessive determiner : potentially indicates the selfishness of the speaker as weddings are a joint commitment
- Lack of unity and romance which contrasts the purpose of a wedding
- Presents the power of nature as controlling
“A stable door was banging again and again”
- Repetition : sense of irritation, emphasises the power of nature
- Ironic : incongruous to a wedding as it undermines the romantic intention
- Farm : setting is incongruous to a wedding
“Leaving me stupid in candlelight”
- Enjambment emphasises the rush of feelings the speaker feels
- Irony : contrasts the purpose of wedding, self-deprecative
- Candlelight connotes romance and love yet this is undermined
“Seeing myself in the twisted candlestick”
- Motif of distortion and light : used to present a lack of identity
- Undermines the meaning of marriage as a source of losing individuality
- Criticises societal expectations
AO3 : Maiden Name, losing identity in marriage
AO3 : Lisa Jardine - “Casual, habitual racist and easy misogynist”
“I was sad that any man or beast that night should lack the happiness I had”
- Irony : previously not depicted as happy or shouldn’t be, paradoxial as she is upset
- Presents the speaker as naive emphasising her high expectations
- Pastoral imagery : emphasises the setting, genuine adoration for those around her
“Now in the day alls ravelled under the sun”
- Change in time : night to day emphasising a sense of clarity and realisation
- Emphasises the impermanence of marriage
- Mocks societal expectations as wedding is seen as messy and intangible
- Motif of surveillance through nature reinforcing the power of nature
“I carry a chipped pail to the chicken-run”
- Alliteration : shows the monotony of her activities, emphasises her naivity as she finds joy in the simplest of activity
- Sense of order and structure emphasising the repetitive nature of the activity
- Marriage is represented as mundane and repetitive critiquing societal expectations
“All is the wind hunting through clouds and forests, thrashing my apron and the hanging cloths on the line”
- Personification of the wind emphasises the power of nature
- Predatory imagery created and violence, emphasises the reaction to marriage that nature goes against
- Wind acts as an extended metaphor for change and its rapid irreversible affects critiquing the speed of marriage
“Can it be borne, this bodying-forth by wind of joy my actions turn on, like a thread carrying beads”
- Hyperbolic language : naivity of speaker, joy and change becomes tangible and omniscient in the environment around her
- Simile : implies marriage is an intricate process, delicate but can be beautiful
“Shall I be let to sleep now this perpetual morning shares my bed?”
- Rhetorical question : creates a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity
- Motif of light : presented as never ending emphasising the monotony of marriage
- Contrasts the excitement of the wedding night which was presented as a flurry of emotions
- Disappointing and mundane
“Can even death dry up these new delighted lakes”
- Rhetorical question : emphasises uncertainty and ambiguity of the speaker
- Motif of death is ironic and emphasises the rapid space between marriage and death undermining its ceremonial process
- Shift in speakers perspective : lack of naivity replaced with philosophical questioning however contrasts previous happiness in the poem, sentimental and existential questioning
“Our kneeling as cattle by all-generous waters?”
- Rhetorical question and collective : creates a biblical allusion to the garden of Eden through pastoral imagery provoked
- Animalistic imagery through the degrading of the speaker, becomes a simplistic life like animals as a result of marriage
STRUCTURE
- Shifts in time
- Dizain 10 line stanza : emphasises the rigid monotonous nature of marriage, lack of change
