Meredith, "Modern Love"
Open Post for Meredith's "Modern Love." You can pick one of the sonnets to talk about or discuss it generally. If you want, post links or material that relate to the poem, or muse about your reaction. Your board.
posted by Devo @ 1:45 PM
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I thought I'd post a quick summary of the poem's organization. Here goes:
Plot Outline for Meredith’s Modern Love
Sonnets
I-II Narrator establishes perspective on both main characters.
III Speaker of the poem emerges and laments his wife’s new lover.
IV-V Narrator intervenes with some perspective on their position, and in V notes that the husband’s distorted perspective.
VI-X Husband reflects upon his jealousy and lasting attraction toward his wife.
XI-XII Hubby’s most bitter and one-sided invective against his wife.
XIII Narrator intervenes with broader perspective on human condition as products of nature and culture.
XIV-XV The husband first meets his own lover, the “gold-haired lady” and it stirs his wife’s jealousy and love, and he then taunts her with his new lover’s letter, compared with her own.
XVI-XVII A flashback is followed by a stunning scene in which they ably play the happily married couple before friends at a dinner party.
XVIII Reflection on supposedly ideal country love (which should be compared to the flashback two stanzas before) combined with one of my favorite deflations: “‘Tis true that when we trace its source, ‘tis beer.”
XIX-XX Husband begins to recognize the complexity of their situation and as well as his own complicity.
XXII-XXIII His rumination on the failure of their mutual knowledge.
XXIV-XXVIII It is revealed that his wife has not actually cheated upon him, only loving another, but their lack of understanding makes him doubt, in a histrionic, Hamlet-derived self-questioning, and he launches into libertinism, seeking out his “golden-haired lady.”
XXIX-XXXII The husband’s new lover, via wit and “common sense” proceeds to overturn his expectations and shallow idealities, but discovers that she is not a panacea.
XXXIV-XXXV The husband’s interview with his wife suggests she is suffering but he is unwilling to discuss the complexity or his own lack of happiness with her.
XXXVI Wife and lover meet in a polished interview in which each single out the other’s most apparent physical defect for compliment.
XXXIX-XL Husband and his lover finally commit adultery but he discovers that he is still jealous of his wife and her lover: “The dread that my old love may be alive, / Has seized my nursling new love by the throat.”
XLI-XLIII In desperation, husband and wife sleep together one last time in an attempt to rekindle their love, but their self-forced union without passion seemingly kills what remains of their affection.
XLV-XLVIII The husband is finally able to avow that he believes his wife has been true, at the same time that she has finally committed adultery with her lover. The wife ultimately kills herself.
XLIX-L Narrator’s summary of the wife’s death, and what the husband does not understand about it. Narrator gives final summary of their story.
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