Afternoons Flashcards
(10 cards)
context on Phillip Larkin
• PM had declared Britain was in a state of prosperity - investment in parks and televisons
• During the 1950s and 1960s, married women commonly assumed the roles of housewives and mothers while fathers were employed and busy
• He had multiple realtionships with women yet remained unmarried - complex personal life influenced his poetry
summary of poem
A scene of mothers and children playing in a park at the end of summer
Women’s lives are presented as restricted by chores
Their lives have changed and they are no longer in control
form
3 equal stanzas - standard and dull lives with little variation
Absence of rhyme scheme - lack of excitement in life
structure
explores the present and past identities - readers can contrast the women’s lives
final stanza describes the fading of there beauty - lack of optimism
language
nature is used to mirror change in people’s lives
domestic imagery - reinforces gender roles & shows how love is ordinary
key quotes
‘In the hollows of the afternoon’
‘An estateful of washing’
‘their beauty has thickened’
Mood
sympathy - imagery of dull and repetitive life
melancholic - relflects the subject of marriage - neglected by their husband and bound to the duty of children
‘In the hollows of the afternoon’
- loneliness and emptiness
- emotional emptiness in the lives of the women
- detached from previous lives, burdened by everyday tasks
- Theme of lost youth and unfufilled potential
‘An estateful of washing’
- metaphor
- their lives are dominated by domesticity
- alludes the overwhelming chores
- ‘Estateful’ suggests there is no escape - surrounded by chores
- entrapment in routines
‘their beauty has thickened’
- ‘Thickened’ is harsh way of saying they have aged
- impact of time emotionally and physically
- brief - readers consider it more deeply
- shortest sentance in the poem = important
- loss of beauty and vitality
