The Whitsun Weddings Essay Questions

How does the speaker characterize weddings and marriages in the poem?

More than anything else, the speaker sees the wedding parties as homogenous, grouping them all together—it’s not even clear exactly how many of them there are on the train. He views weddings and marriages cynically, criticizing the artificial jewelry and hairstyles of the brides and the embarrassing looks and behavior of family members. Furthermore, he links the supposedly romantic wedding night to pain through the “religious wound” of the bleeding virgin bride. Finally, Cupid’s arrows transforming into rain suggests that rather than lasting, the love behind the weddings will fade away.

Does the poem follow the Romantic tradition, oppose it, or both? How?

In keeping with the Romantic tradition, “The Whitsun Weddings” presents an idealized view of nature in contrast to a more negative view of industrialization. The “new and nondescript” towns are presented as modern but boring, and the “acres of dismantled cars” indicate the waste and destruction of modernity. The allusion to Cupid is also representative of the common use of classical imagery in Romantic poetry. Yet there are also many key departures from Romanticism in the poem. Romantic poems often included supernatural elements, which are absent here, and women were often presented in an idealized manner, which is certainly not the case in “The Whitsun Weddings.” In addition, while Romantic poets often displayed interest in the lives of common pastoral people, the scenic views the speaker admires are without people.