Frances Cornford
Frances Cornford, granddaughter of
Charles Darwin, was born in Cambridge, England, in 1886, where she also died,
in 1960. She was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1959.
‘Childhood’ explores a dual
perspective on the ageing process. On the one hand, it is a child who watches
‘through the banisters’ and is ‘helplessly young’, but the whole poem is a
memory – ‘I used to think’. Between the lines, the reader understands that the
crafting narrator is moving towards old age. Both young and old are ‘helpless’
in the progression of time.
These wider considerations are
based on precise, particular memories and observations. The first section
vividly describes the physical features of old age, while the second centres
around the moment of realisation about ‘My great-aunt Etty’s friend’ and her
rolling beads from a broken necklace.
Though written in one stanza,
consider the effects of Cornford’s use of short lines. The first serves to
complete the childish observation before the epiphany in the poem’s second
section, while the final short line provides the ambivalent conclusion. Note
the way too that the couplets, established in the early part of the poem, break
up in the last four lines.
Childhood
I used to think that grown-up
people chose
To have stiff backs and wrinkles
round their nose,
And veins like small fat snakes
on either hand,
On purpose to be grand.
Till through the banister I
watched one day
My great-aunt Etty's friend who
was going away,
And how her onyx beads had come
unstrung.
I saw her grope to find them as
they rolled;
And then I knew that she was
helplessly old,
As I was helplessly young.
Analysis
The speaker of this poem is looking back on
an occasion in her life when she first realized that both young and old people
are helpless against the aging process. In the first four verses she tells us
that she used to think grown-ups "chose" those physical defects that
marked them as old, but the speaker also thought they chose them "to be
grand." This thought indicates that the speaker was very young, since she
thought stiff backs, wrinkles, and veined hands were "grand."
The lines 6-10 contain the reason for the
speaker's changed opinion about aging grown-ups. She had told us that she used
to believe that the grown-ups "chose" those aging qualities until she
observed her great-aunt's friend groping helplessly for her beads. The speaker
realizes that it is not likely a person would choose to have such difficulty
just retrieving some loose beads, so she then realizes that they probably don't
choose those visible physical defects either. This observation led the speaker
to change her perspective: the adults were just helpless as they acquired those
old-age characteristics, and their helplessness paralleled her own, the
helplessness of being young.
The rime scheme in this poem is AA, BB, CC,
DE, ED. An interesting rime scheme, but as I mentioned earlier, I believe the
rime scheme interferes with meaning. Take "wrinkles round their
nose," for example; wrinkles usually form around the eyes and mouth. Even
in a very old person, wrinkles are seldom noticeable around the nose. In line
six the friend "is going away"; while "away" provides a
nice rime with "day," it is vague. Perhaps the speaker wants us to
infer that the friend was dying, but "going away" does not clearly
convey that message.
Source
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