Only
the soldered mouth can tell
Try
– can you stir the awful rivet –
Try
– can you lift the hasps of steel!
Stroke
the cool forehead – hot so often –
Lift
– if you care – the listless hair –
Handle
the adamantine fingers
Never
a thimble – more – shall wear –
Buzz
the dull flies – on the chamber window –
Brave
– shines the sun through the freckled pane –
Fearless
– the cobweb swings from the ceiling –
Indolent
Housewife – in Daisies – lain!
F238
(1861) 187
This
reflection on the death of a housewife is much more intense than the platitudes
in earlier poems such as “She died – this is the way she died” and “Glowing is her bonnet.” The poem is packed with powerful words,
evocative words, that suggest nightmarish scenes: the “low feet” stagger, and
here we are reminded of Jesus staggering beneath the weight of the cross; the
dead mouth is soldered shut – a harsh image of the implacable silence of the
dead; the body is stiff, an “awful rivet” – again the machine imagery as if the
body has become an inert rod; the rib cage becomes “hasps of steel.”
This
first stanza has no peace or resignation; no hint of womanly virtues. Death has
not come like the gentleman caller of a later death poem, “Because I could not
stop for death,” or other poems where angels and parades of Saints welcome the
newly departed “home.” Instead, some process surely begotten by the Industrial
Revolution has brutalized a once soft and living body into something hard and
soul-less.
This would be a nice place for the Housewife |
The
poet directly addresses the reader: “Try,” she urges, to make the “rivet” move,
try to get the ribs moving again as the lungs draw breath. But this is a
sardonic urging. It is clear she means that nothing can be moved. She goes on
in the second stanza and softens the imagery. The forehead is “cool” where once
it burned with fever. This is a very human and not metallic image. The hair is “listless,”
because life has left it, too. But she distances herself from the reader when
she inserts the “if you care” qualifier in the suggestion that “you” lift the
hair. The machine image from the first stanza is still echoing. People wouldn’t
care, the poet suggests, to handle the hair or stroke the forehead of a
lifeless body. You might as well stroke the head of a rivet. If one cared, one
could also pick up the “adamantine” hand. “Adamantine” means as hard and
impenetrable as possible. The fingers have turned to stone.
The
third stanza is located in the near future. The poet writes as an apostrophe,
as if adopting the third-person narrative voice more typical of poetry. We now
see the house empty of its housewife. The “dull flies” buzz against the
windows. The windows need washing – the sun has to be “brave” to shine though
all the freckled dirt. The spiders no longer have to hide: their old webs hang
from the ceiling, swaying with every movement of air. This is portraiture
through absence. We get a sense of the departed woman by the signs of
housewifely neglect that develop. She was not one to have allowed them while
she was living.
The
last line is deliciously ironic, and here the poet addresses the dead woman
directly. “Lazybones,” she might have well said. “Lying around in the daisies
when your house is so dirty.” Clearly only death would separate this woman from
her dust broom.
Another
bit of meaning achieved through absence is the absence of any reference to
heaven or the afterlife. The body is now just mechanical detritus and what else
there might be is, hopefully, lolling about the flowers taking it easy for a
change. Even the bit of teasing at the end of the poem doesn’t erase the sense
of almost horror at contemplating the dead body.
In
keeping with the heaviness of the imagery Dickinson employs spondees and
trochees to reinforce the lifeless weight of the corpse. The poem begins with
by showing the dead woman as having been sick, her “low feet staggered.” The three adjacent accented syllables
give a heavy stagger to the line. The repetition of “Try – can you” draw out the effort. The pattern is echoed
in the final stanza with “Buzz the dull flies,” “Brave – shines the sun,” and “Fearless
– the cobweb.” It’s not a comforting poem in conventional terms (gone to a
better life, etc.), but the last image of the “Indolent Housewife” amid the
daisies is quite triumphant in a way: she has triumphed over her daily drudgery
and over the “riveting” experience of death.
As I read about the rivet and hasps , I am reminded of a casket.
ReplyDeletecongratulations
ReplyDeleteWhar an interesting and useful website - a revelation in understanding of Dickinson
ReplyDeleteThe description of the housewife could be close to her mother, a woman who was always close to her place in life of domestic chores, and cleaning. This is further confirmed by the poet's rather distant, unflattering feelings for the departed. Was this poem written after her mother became sick?
ReplyDeleteI don't think her mother was particularly sick. She became bedridden in the 1870s after Edward Dickinson, her husband, died. I think, without checking references, that she did have spells of nerves that laid her up a bit.
DeleteHowever, I get a feeling that the housewife of the poem is a women from a household not nearly as well off as the Dickinsons. By this time they had a maid, and I can't imagine Mrs. Dickinson working so hard she would be staggered.
I so appreciate your insights as I slowly work my way through ED's poems. My version of this one has it as "Lift, if you CAN, the listless hair". That offers a different cast than "if you CARE" in your commentary above. I'm thinking about the different directions each word pulls us.
ReplyDeleteYou're right -- very different poem with 'can' vs 'care'. Christanne Miller in her 'Emily Dickinson's Poems As She Preserved Them' goes with the chilling 'care'. Where is your version to be found?
DeleteThank you for sharing this. It draws me in to ED considering the two words and the different directions they send the poem.