I shall reprint a few quotes from what I said earlier about "The Impluse", before the rest of the poem was added. Some have disputed the analysis I then gave. After seeing the whole poem who say I was wrong?
This poem is about the loneliness and dangers....of isolated farm living......It takes a certain type of person to put up with that type of life and this girl couldn't...... She returned to her family..... When Frost wrote this poem, divorce was frowned upon and what the girl did was "far more extreme" then we would view it now---marriage actually was "until death do us part" ("and he learned of finalities beside the grave").
Frost is actually writing a poem about rural farm life and using the effects it can have on people not suited to it to show off what type of people DID live out there.....This poem is a contrast between the girl and her husband--who never even had a glimpse of insight into what his wife was going through in the months or years they had lived out there.
The problem with this poem is that it, in some respects, has not aged well. Our views on divorce have changed radically and true rural isolation is a thing of the past. We no longer truly understand the unstated premises of the poem which powered it in Frost's day.
Some have now suggested that the woman was driven mad--that is incorrect--she had to be crazy to stay there!--Isolation and fear do effect people and that is what Frost is displaying in the poem--not "madness". She seems to get a little paranoid but she has reasons. In part II "House Fear" the very first line says---"Always--I tell you this they learned"--THIS THEY LEARNED? How did they learn it--to not enter their house without first giving warning to a thief who might be inside?---they learned it through a bad experience--that how they learned it. Is it any wonder that in part III, "The Smile" that this young girl worries that the bum who begs food might still be lurking in the woods? A woman has different worries than a man. She was not mad--self-reservation is not madness.
ewrgall
[This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited May 03, 2001).]
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