- Some think that the poem fully demonstrates the impact of the woman’s presence in the modern society. It shows the confidence of the new profound woman and how the older generation, or “her aunts”, reacted to the new movement.
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Others think that Nancy’s liberation and rebellion just a kind of superficial and ironical one. The poem presents an ironic portrait of a liberated “new woman” whose “modern” attitudes are expressed in trivial actions. And the final line of the poem: the army of unalterable law indicates nothing will change, the faith, though locked in the shelves, will never be destroyed, or lost. It will be kept well and come down. That is the strength of tradition.
Both of them sounds reasonable, now I will analyze these two, and give my own explanation to the poem.
Firstly, I want to share with you something information about the poem, I think it will help us to understand the poem better.
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Cousin Nancy is one of the poems of Eliot’s first volume of poetry: Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917. (pay more attention to the “observations”, one of main themes, also main techniques of Eliot’s poetry, including Cousin Nancy, since time is limited, I will not talk it further)
- some notes
riding to hounds, hunting follow the hounds, a typical sports game.
Matthew and Waldo: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) British Victorian poet and critic, main work including the poem Dover Beach (1867), and classic essay Culture and Anarchy (1869) and Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803-1882) American writer, philosopher, and central figure of American transcendentalism. His essays are regarded as landmarks in the development of American thought and literary expression.
- the social background
The poet lived in a period called Modernism (1865~1950, roughly). During this time, women began to climb the social ladder. Many women began taking jobs that were usually male-dominated and they also got the right to vote. Eliot’s wrote poems to center around the plight and the lifestyles of women, to deal with women and their advancement in society. His poems mirror the women of that time and confirm their position in the world, especially at the time of change.
The first two stanzas, just as I mentioned may be a kind of objective description of Nancy. (now we look at the poem)
Look at the verb, such as strode, rode, broke, and smoked, they are rhymed, the plosive consonants /d/,/k/ (indicate …speed up the movement of Nancy), and now we talk something about their meaning,
Stride means to walk with long steps, especially in a hasty or vigorous way, when we think that the lady’s step should walks with grace and elegance, here Nancy ignored the traditional way of women’s manner, which give us the first impression of Nancy—a real new woman.
break should be pay more attention, I think break here means to force or make a way through, the repetition of “break” indicated Nancy’s attitude toward tradition, her unceasing rebellion.
It is obvious here that her masculine behavior—such as hunt over the pasture, strode across the hills, showed her desire for equal to man.
So if we just understand from the literal meaning of those words just as what I’ve done, we easily draw a conclusion that Nancy is a new woman, courageous and resolute, with spirit of liberation and rebellion. But when we think it further, we find something more, (reread it)“strode…broke them”, this two lines give us an imagination of such kind of England’s green and pleasant land, with the heroine’s movement. But quickly the following line ironically deflated our romantic expectations by use the word “barren”, here barren may suggest the cultural deficiency of the New England. (Why do I draw this conclusion? The landscape of New England can be a symbol of its cultural environment, and that is what Nancy want to strode across and broke) Just as the poet once summarized cultural gentility by saying that “the society of Boston was and is quite uncivilized but refined beyond the point of civilization”. The imposition of modernity on such kind of blank landscape, more or less demean image of our heroine here, and give the tone of irony.
Compared with the former two lines’ virtual expression, “Riding to hounds/ over the cow pasture”, the depiction here is more specific. The ironic tone here seems stronger, since such kind of behavior can not considered as “modernity”, no more than a parody of man’s behavior. And the first line of second stanza “…smoked” give us further impression of irony. “And danced all the modern dances” (dancing and smoking may be a part of modern mannerism, “all” here a more general word, Nancy goes in for becoming a part of modern world, and adheres herself to them all, then lost herself in them ironically …) the following two lines (read…) may the author’s rendering of “modern”, or a kind of comment. (We noticed that here the repetition of “modern” emphasizes the imposition of the new way of life) Who knows what is modern? It is just kind of thing we can feel about, but not define; Nancy’s behavior seems as a label, give a vivid description of “modern”.
In the last stanza, Matthew and Waldo, seen as busts or their work, represent as patron saint of the faith, the unalterable law. Here Eliot mocked the two gently (why do you think the author mocked them?); they are old fogies (T. S. Eliot made a habit of mocking Matthew Arnold in his work). The unalterable law, here I think has three meanings, the rational artistic forces (may combined with tradition), the Christian power (or the power of religion), and the forces of time (the unchanging process of time). The last three lines strike a different note, especially the last line, which has the ring of heroic poetry, here I want to mention is that it is also the last line of George Meredith’s Miltonic sonnet, Lucifer in Starlight. Now the poet juxtaposed Nancy’s petty rebellion with classic treatments of Lucifer’s grand defiance (special attention here that Lucifer’s reenter heaven is futile, does it imply Nancy’s failure). This special use of allusion is one of the leading characteristics of Eliot’s poetry. Eliot once emphasized the need to see past and present simultaneously, his particular use of the past in order to grasp his attitude toward the present. I can talk more about it.
- Since the allusive interweaving of past and present here gives this “thin” poem a sense the history, a temporal dimension, and a variety of explanation.
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Eliot proposed a theory of the gradual unification of discrete “points of view”, which does help to characterized the effect of that poem’s final line: through allusion, the poem undertakes the “task of unifying” disparate worlds, combining discordant viewpoints (Nancy’s, Meredith’s, Satan’s, and even the author’s), and including the whole poem, the author also use Nancy’s aunt’s, Arnold’s and Emerson’s viewpoint (watch), into a richer and more complicated perspective on “modern” life. Here he opened a vista to our imagination.
Contrast with his other complex and obscure poems, this short one I chose, Cousin Nancy seems easier to understand, when I first read his collected poems. My first response to it is a smile; I smiled my knowing, since it’s my impression that today I can find many Nancy Ellicott-girls in our daily lives. But since I finished my presentation, I think that the poem is not so simple to portrait a modern girl, it leave us an open question to think what is the relationship of modern and tradition, and what is our attitude toward them. In my opinion, the modern and the tradition is not a kind of contrast, but consistent in the process of time, the tradition, or the deep cultural roots, is unalterable one, any rebellion form of modern is ephemeral, and I think that any modern will be a part of tradition, one day, Nancy, will also become the bust on the shelf, just like Arnold, or Emerson. So will you and me.
Q: Do you notice the final stanza introduced a note peculiar? The diction of this final pentameter is at odds with that of the rest of the poem. And do you think whether this field of reference aggrandizes or trivializes Nancy’s “modern” rebellion?
“The barren New England hills” with “upon the glazen shelves kept watch”
Q: if we considered the New England hills as the symbol of the traditional culture, why is it barren? And why are shelves glazed?
Maybe a kind of objective observation here, since the shelves of Nancy’s family are really glazed, or we can say that the tradition is well kept, though antique, locked away in the shelves.
(The need for an “impersonal” or objective poetry in which the life of the writer is dissolved into his art) In the title of the volume, “observation” indicated the writing technique, the purpose of the poems, and also the attitude of the poet, he observe, like an objective spectator, observing everything, forever observing, includes himself in the observation, and wrote down what he observed into his poems.
