W.H. Auden Miss Gee

Form;

A ballad. Could be set to music, almost prose like. Usually features four lines with line 2 and line 4 ryhming. Iambic metre with four stresses in the first and thrid line, and three stresses in the second and third.

Theme;

Loneliness (Miss Gee lives on her own and has no children) Isolation (From the community), Death (How you cannot escape it). Retelling the sad tale of a woman's life. (Based on the governess who raised Auden as a child)

Style;

• Ballad form (Helps to progress the tale, usually upbeat however the poem is not, it's a contradiction).
• Plain language, conversational, detatched, emotionless (There is no pity displayed for Miss Gee)

Links;

• Pessimistic, featuring death (1st September 1939, O What is That Sound).
• Loneliness as featured in several Auden poems.
• Abandonment (O What is That Sound, the abandonment of the speaker by their spouse)

There is a conventional narrative within this poem.

Creates a character by revealing aspects of her life, causes problems for her and then kills her.

Stanza 5;  The stereotypical role of women. Selflessness, giving, boring etc.

Stanza 8; Freudian sexual reference (Electra complex), phallic imagery.

Stanza 13; Showing her submission. Black comedy (It is tragic). Irony (She is already a good girl)

Stanza 22; She is dead or dying. Quasi-comic. Lack of empathy. Change of tone, distancing the reader, she is mocked, we feel guilt for doing so.

Stanza 25; Studied rather than valued. The irony of Christian do-gooders. She only becomes of interest after her death. Lack of appreciation after devoting her life to God (Anti-religious? Does religion become your hamartia?)