Ezra Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter," a dramatic 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 wife's ease of mind. It pains the speaker to see the symbols of time passing. The speaker seems painfully aware that her husband is not present to witness these changes with her. "The River-Merchant's Wife Study Guide." The poem is concerned with love between a husband and wife that is complicated by the distance that now separates them. Have study documents to share about The River-Merchant's Wife? This question suggests that, while she chooses not to exercise it, she has the option of searching for other lovers. 2020. 13 Nov. 2020. Retrieved November 13, 2020, from https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-River-Merchants-Wife/. Order our The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter Study Guide, teaching or studying The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter. 20 Mar. In this stanza, we're able to definitively establish a timeline for the speaker, placing her husband's departure in March, five months before August, when summer gives way to fall. In the context of the husband's absence, the images of the moss on the gate and the leaves falling seem to suggest an agony of waiting. This Study Guide consists of approximately 28 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - She goes on to describe "the paired butterflies ... already yellow with August." Course Hero. See in text (Text of the Poem). Nevertheless, she ends her letter with hope of reunion. The speaker's decision to highlight the lack of "dislike" and "suspicion" in her childhood suggests she will experience both feelings later. However, it seems likely that the wife, drifting through months of waiting for her husband's return, wonders if she may already be a widow. The use of the passive tense, making bangs the subject, helps create the world from a child's perspective, not actively involved in decisions... Get The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter from Amazon.com. It's unclear if he'll ever come back. Although the moment she describes sounds happy and sweet, the tone carries a note of regret. Join for Free In spite of all the conflict and sadness it contains, "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is a love poem. Browse Library, Teacher Memberships As the poem progresses from the speaker's marriage at age 14 to her discovery of love at 15 to her first taste of loneliness at 16, the river-merchant's wife is aging before the listener. This is the thought process of a teenager first experiencing love and who cannot imagine anything beyond this deep feeling. In line 22 the sadness of the river-merchant's wife is again reflected back to her by the natural world, by the falling leaves and wind of autumn. The River-Merchant's Wife Study Guide. Copyright © 2016. Each passing year brings tremendous change along with it, so that the woman at the end of the poem is completely transformed, barely recognizable as the same person she was a year or two—or three—before. "The River-Merchant's Wife Study Guide." Although she does not openly question his faithfulness or suggest she loves him less now than before, it seems possible her confidence in her relationship is shaken by her husband's absence. Now the wife is deeply cognizant of the fact that she will not always remain the same. The wife does not specifically say she regrets the first year of her marriage, but Pound includes them in the same stanza as the lines about childhood. Ezra Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter," a dramatic 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 wife's ease of mind. By the end of the poem the speaker's love seems to have matured. Because of this, the thematic content of the poem is very much brought to the poem by the listener. | Also, the line suggests that in spite of her love for her husband, the wife is reluctant to stand watch, waiting for his return. For example, she describes an idyllic scene from her childhood in which she and her future husband play together as "two small people, without dislike or suspicion." Course Hero. Course Hero, Inc. As a reminder, you may only use Course Hero content for your own personal use and may not copy, distribute, or otherwise exploit it for any other purpose. In view of this, her final sentiments in the poem could be read as a willful attempt to see the future changes in her life as pleasant ones. As the poem progresses the wife lingers over her thoughts of her husband's departure, his long absence, and his dangerous journey. Course Hero. Accessed November 13, 2020. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-River-Merchants-Wife/. As she watches the butterflies, she is both aware of her present pain and conscious of the changes she will continue to experience in life. She comments, "The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead," as if her environment reflects her sadness. This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife to her husband who has been away for work for five months. She may long for simpler days when she did not yet understand adult problems. She expresses this idea with utmost simplicity: "They hurt me. Another possibility is that the wife regrets her behavior in the first year with her husband, before she found out how difficult it would be to live without him. Grief and regret play a central role in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter." It explores themes of love, loss, and separation. (2020, March 20). The opening lines of the poem read, "While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead / I played about the front gate, pulling flowers." In keeping with the imagist principle of focusing on a "direct treatment of the 'thing,'" Ezra Pound (1885–1972) does not explain or interpret the images he presents in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter." Near the end of the poem, the speaker focuses on concrete nature imagery in a way that conveys the changing of the seasons and the passage of time. Web.
. In the opening lines of the poem, the wife recalls her childhood when her husband was simply a playmate, a companion. Their form, style, and use of language were all new, something that Pound strived for throughout his career. Themes in The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife to her husband who has been away for work for five months. This distance causes the narrator feel isolated and lonely as she awaits her husband’s return. Alternatively, she may be clinging to her memory of her heady, girlish love, so much so that she finds it more painful to behave like a lonely, left-behind wife. School Memberships, © 2020 OwlEyes.org, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Perhaps she is angry with him for staying away so long or suspicious of his actions while away, and she does not want to watch for him. / I grow older." This subtly suggests a link between them, perhaps because they are both periods of ignorance when the wife did not know how deeply she could love or grieve. "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter," for example, communicates with depth and poignance the human experience of sorrow at separation, the human experience of love. The playing child, the reluctant bride, and the enamored teenaged wife all seemed caught up in the moment, unaware of the changes that will occur to each of them. She anticipates her husband's return, and she plans to travel to meet him. I grow older..." But because Pound presents the poem as a letter, it is clear the lovers are currently separated. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university.
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