Literature

Themes Love and Passion Ezra Pounds The River-Merchants Wife: A Letter, a salient monologue written in the form of a letter, is a poignant plea from a wife to her husband, a merchant whose journey has lasted far too long for the wifes remedy of mind. The poetry honors constancy and faithfulness as the wife reflects on the development of their life together and expresses her growing sorrow as she anxiously awaits his return. One important theme in the poetry reveals the process through which the love between the man and fair sex develops. In the opening lines of the poem, the wife recalls her childhood when her husband was only if a playmate, a companion. The first line gives a undimmed picture of the wife as a child. The use of the unresisting tense, making bangs the subject, helps create the world from a childs perspective, not actively involved in decisions about what to wear or how to look. This creates both a clear physical portrait, as healthful as indicating the passivity of childhood with its lack of involvement in things other than play. Notice that the consequence line begins I played. This in like manner foreshadows the lack of input she will have in her marriage. The poem then moves on to describe the carefree merriment of the talker and her future husband.

The wife reinforces this picture of innocent pleasure with her comment, deuce small people, without dislike or suspicion. In the second stanza, the lector learns of her marriage, at the age of fourteen. The wifes description clearly suggests that it has been laboured upon her, and she is both shy and uncomfortable with her husband. The formality of the phrase, I get married My Lord you, not only indicates the proprieties that would be common in China during that period, but, for the modern reader, emphasizes the emotional distance in the marriage. Her financial statement that she never laughed contrasts jarringly with her earlier picture of the two companions at ease in their world. In the fourth line of the second stanza, the... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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