I believe “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson is a poem that uses Carver’s idea of “commonplace but precise language.” Raymond Carver describes this idea as something that’s seemingly ordinary, but given its precise context and usage, suddenly holds a lot of weight behind it. A quote that I feel best matches this is when Emily Dickinson writes, “She rose to his requirement, dropped the playthings of her life to take the honorable work of woman and of wife.” On the surface, the quote seems rather straightforward. Without the context of the poem, it simply seems like the woman leaves behind unimportant and childish parts of her life when she gets married. However, given the context of the poem, the stanza can be interpreted as sarcastic. The parts of her life that are brushed off as “playthings” could be hobbies or people that are deeply important to her; yet, she no longer has time for them after becoming society’s ideal housewife. The words and phrases in the quote are fairly simple, but plenty of meaning left to be interpreted lies underneath.
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2 thoughts on “Jakob Yacker Discussion 13”
Hi Jakob, I like your interpretation of Dickinson’s “The Wife” and how it ties into Carver’s idea of giving weight to ordinary language. The line “She rose to his requirement, dropped the playthings of her life,” is such a good example. At first, it seems very straightforward, but in context it feels loaded with meaning. The word “playthings” might sound trivial, but it likely represents parts of herself that truly mattered, making the sacrifice feels even more significant.
Jakob, I agree that the first four lines of “the Wife” use commonplace language that is very striking. It’s funny though because the rest of the poem strikes me as the opposite of commonplace language, and Dickinson is known for using very quirky, sometimes extraordinary language.