Maiden Name - Important Quotes

Marrying left your maiden name disused

Adjective. Contrasts traditional ideas of love. Sense of abandonment. Harsh and negative connotations. Use of the end stop line suggests irreversible change

Its five light sounds no longer mean your face

Reference to Winifred Arnott. Use of possessive pronoun, she used to own it, but now she doesn't.

Your voice, and all your variants of grace;

Use of direct address creates a personal tone of voice. Repetition of personal pronouns.

For since you were so thankfully confused

Use of enjambment. Use of oxymoron suggests that the law manipulated the truth. There's a sense of loss of identity due to this deception.

By law with someone else, you cannot be

Use of legal language creates a focus on the legal aspects of marriage rather than the romantic aspects. Suggests that she was deceived.

Semantically the same as that young beauty:

Adjective. Implies that she was beautiful when she had her identity, but now that she's older, she has become ‘less attractive’. There's a suggestion that women ‘lose’ their most important attributes after marriage

It was of her that these two words were used.

Use of the end stop line suggests irreversible and permanent change.

Now it’s a phrase applicable to no one,

Suggests that her name now has no meaning.

Lying just where you left it, scattered through

Verb suggests passivity, there is no sense of necessity.
Use of metaphor, she has left it forgotten with old, forgotten items, creating a sense of abandonment.

Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two

Use of list, repetition of old to emphasise the past.

Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly

Asyndetic list of adjectives, speeds up the pace of the poem. Gives the sense that it was rushed. The adjectives highlight how things have changed, but they have negative connotations.

No, it means you. Or, since you’re past and gone,

Metaphor. Suggests loss of identity. Reveals the impact of marriage on a woman’s identity.

How beautiful you were, and near, and young

Syndetic list reveals the depth of loss. Shows that she has lost her value and identity through marriage

Those first few days, unfingermarked again.

Suggests that she is no longer innocent and pure. A sense that she is tainted due to her marriage. Parts of her will remain the same, however it will only last for a while.

So your old name shelters our faithfulness,

Suggests that marrying has caused her to lose her faithfulness to herself

With your depreciating luggage laden.

Alliteration. Metaphor. Adjective suggests that she has lost her value over time due to her marriage and husband.