Analysis of "Living In Sin"
...ust upon the furniture of love,” symbolize how the woman visualizes her relationship between her current partner to whom she is committed. For some reason she feels the need to stay with him, but she knows there is no spark between the two of them so, she looks for the “milkman” every night to fulfill her urgings. The title of this piece, “Living in Sin,” is a biblical allusion. It gives reference to the wrongful deeds of the main character in the poem. This poem starts off with a metaphor. In Line 1, a “studio” represents the woman’s relationship with her current partner. She believes the rapport between the two of them would maintain on its own without any work between the two of them. In Line 2, “dust” is also metaphorically used to represent memories and thoughts of the past that were never present to create the foundation of love and affection between them. Connotation is used with the word "heresy” in Line 3. It emphasizes her giving into the stagnancy of their relationship. The word “taps,” which is a dreary melody that is often played at a funeral, symbolizes the death of anything good that is left in their relationship, but the words that follow are “less vocal,” which in my opinion represents the woman’s ignorance towards her awareness of their dwindling relationship because when something is less vocal, it is obviously more difficult to hear or understand to it’s full potential. As the poem continues in Line 4, “the panes” represent the woman’s heart that has been severely dirtied through this whole ordeal and from the “grime” of all the negativity that stems from her relationship with her partner. The word “relieved” in that same line causes me to think that someone else who is previously uninvolved with the woman steps in to attempt to wipe the hurts away, at least for that moment in time. In Line 5 the “piano” is a representation of the woman’s actions with another person and the “shawl,” which in its literal meaning is a square piece of cloth worn as a covering, is a connotation of the woman attempting to cover up her sinful actions. In Line 6, the “cat stalking the mouse” metaphorically represents the affair she is having or will have with another person. Just as stalking a mouse would become normal or part of a routine for a feline, so would the woman’s affair between her and this unidentified person. The following line, “risen at his urging” in my opinion, means that the woman had finally succumbed to her lustful desires towards a different person. In Line 8, I believe that the phrase not only indicates the time in which this person will come, but I think the phrase “the stairs would writhe” comes to represent how the woman’s current partner will eventually feel when he comes to the knowledge of the travesty committed on his partner’s behalf, since “writhe” in the denotative sense means to suffer. Line 9 shows the use of simile as the woman’s secret lover is being compared to a “milkman” who is simply fulfilling his duty or obligation because of necessity, but the morning light, I feel, represents another new day that the woman has to bear guilt for the sin she has committed. We find that the following line with words like “coldly” and “delineate” gives connotations to the ending of an affair when a new day begins. In Line 11, I believe the phrase “last night’s cheese and sepulchral bottles” could imply the perpetual decay of the relationship between the woman and her partner since old cheese is a symbol of decay as is sepulchral bottles, which is suggestive of a grave or burial which relates back to what was mentioned in Line 3. These words also give us imagery of the diminishing of their relationship. The “kitchen shelf” in Line 12 is, again, symbolic of the woman’s life as it stands and “among the saucers,” in my opinion, causes to suggest that some form of secret is being kept from the knowledge of her partner. “A pair of beetle-eyes,” in Line 13, is a representation of the person she is having an affair with. In the same line it says they have “fixed her own” which says this person has gotten the woman’s attention and focus on something that is sinister or immoral, which is very likely as to why Adrienne Rich chooses to use the beetle. The words in the following line, “envoy from some village in the moldings,” bring closure to the previous line, simply stating that her secret lover is from an area in which her partner is unaware. In Line 15, the man in her life is introduced. In the four lines th...