English Society and Literature - Amy Lowell's Patterns - Book Report/Review Example

One of the first things that strikes the reader on coming across Amy Lowell's poem, "Patterns" for the first time is the unusual application of imagery and free verse as well as its loosely repetitive, yet cleverly effective rhythmic pattern which fits the theme and the title to perfection. This dramatic monologue begins on a soothing, fanciful note, with the lady narrator walking around amid flowers in a garden (I walk down the garden paths, /And all the daffodils/Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.), but goes on to take a restless, almost seditious tone within the confines of the constricting brocade and the patterned garden paths (I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown). It ends in a searing cry, a defiant question against the imposed patterns of patriarchal society, patterns which allow for the senseless destruction of war, but which in Lowell's time did not allow a woman a sense of pride in her own femininity. At the same time there is a comparison with the patterns of nature, not only of a winter that will follow summer but of the daffodils and swills which are free to sway with the breeze and feel the beatitude of nature, from which the brocade insulates the "softness of a woman". The narrator is a society woman of Lowell's time, a perfect combination of fashion and propriety expected of women in those times: "In my stiff, brocaded gown./With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare/Pattern". Her own description of her clothes is significant, her hair powdered to perfection and jewelled fan festoon the conventional female image of a decorative appendage, and she is well aware of it. And it does not stop there. She is wearing pink, which stands for gentle love, and silver, which traditionally signifies faith and purity: both qualities desirable in a woman, but at the same time she is a plate of fashion in absurd shoes that anticipates the male gaze : " My dress is richly figured,/ And the train /Makes a pink and silver stain/ Just a plate of current fashion,/ Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes". The irony of the tight-fitted outfit and the various adornments that appear to protect the female virtue, but actually merely serve to objectify a woman's form at the cost of her comfort and freedom is not lost on the reader. Nor is it lost on the wearer who protests against the gown exclaiming, "What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!/I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground", almost a clarion call for freedom from the repressions and inhibitions imposed upon a woman. The language in the poem is easily understood, a condition of Imagism which encouraged "common speech". Additionally, the word usage is not merely decorative: each word makes a distinct, concentrated sense and adds to the meaning of the poem as a whole, another requirement of the Imagist movement which was opposed to the grandiloquence of Victorian poetry. When the narrator describes her inconsolable grief, there is not a word less and not one extra in the lines, "And I weep;/For the lime-tree is in blossom/And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom". One can almost see Nature mourning her loss with her, and the relentlessness of her grief hits home with: "The dripping never stops". The choice of words gets syrupy in places, almost reminiscent of a vapid romance novel, " A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,/Till he caught me in the shade, /And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,/ Aching, melting, unafraid". It is as if the narrator's inherently sensual nature having broken its bonds has taken recourse to the most hackneyed of all phrases to leave no doubt in her own mind, and that of her invisible audience, about the direction her thoughts are taking her. The distinctly erotic imagery that is evoked by such a choice of words is a kind of catharsis for the womanhood bound in hooks, lace, whalebone and brocade, a feministic avowal of the right of a woman to the abandonment of nature, free from externally imposed suffocating patterns. Not only will there be a sense of freedom, but an ability to lead rather than follow, to take away the initiative that is supposed to be the manly prerogative. In her daydream the narrator triumphantly declares: "I would choose /To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,". The narrator develops in front of our eyes from a presumably naive society girl breathlessly awaiting marriage, to a woman who wants to unleash her femininity on the society that seeks to confine her. She chafes against the "stiff, correct brocade", which keeps her "upright" even when she is internally bowed down by grief, and seeking an escape into passionate abandon: "For my passion/ Wars against the stiff brocade." Though she feels that she cannot be free of the restrictions by herself, and only marriage to the man she loved would have brought her that freedom "For the man who should loose me is dead,", she gathers herself in a final cry, questioning the very logic behind the patterns: "Christ! What are patterns for". This is a woman made strong by grief, a woman provoked enough by the injustices of this society and some of its senseless event patterns like war which have caused her deep personal loss. She is finally ready to start asking some tough questions from the patriarchal hegemony that seeks to make her identity dependent on male patronage but thoughtlessly takes it away from her, reducing her to an abject mourner. The rhythm Lowell uses is excellent, the lines lethargic and dreamy in the beginning, but barbed and better paced as the poem moves on. The daydream of the escapade with the lover is slow and rhythmic, to mimic an air of languorous lovemaking, but in the aftermath of her shocking loss the poem's rhythm catches a sort of swaying dirgelike cadence: "I stood upright too, / held rigid to the pattern/ By the stiffness of my gown./Up and down I walked, Up and down". The rhythmic mourning continues in the last passage when the natural pattern of seasons is included: " In Summer and in Winter I shall walk/Up and down .....The squills and daffodils/Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. /I shall go/ Up and down, /In my gown". After one has read through the whole poem, one cannot fail to be impressed by resonances cleverly induced by the skilled irregular rhythms. This is in accordance with the Imagist way of thinking, of which Lowell was a strong proponent, that sought to engage with new forms of rhythm, not merely the conventional ones. Sometimes this rhyme pattern leads to some not-too-brilliant writing: "The daffodils and squills/Flutter in the breeze /As they please", but the over-all impact is quite befitting the central theme of the poem. Published in 1915, but possibly written much earlier, this poem is the work of an author ahead of her times. The narrator is clearly aware of the limitations on the feminine identity of her day and age, and is in the process of asking questions of the existing system. As with any other case, the crucial stage of initiating change is to become aware of the need for it: the narrator slowly realizes her station in the patriarchal society and the position in which that puts her. Imagination takes the narrator where reality cannot, an imagination fueled by desolation, and a need to find solace. In the microcosmic world of the poem, we see how individual lives are affected by momentous events and the patterns of repetition in the existence that surrounds each individual, and in this case, they are the patterns that govern the ambience of a Victorian woman. Death makes us all question the realities around us, especially when the reality is grim, when the confining boundaries are not imagined, but real in a very corporal sense. Lowell has captured a compelling hour in the life of a bereaved woman, and through her raised a voice against the restrictions forced upon the feminine condition of her times. Read More