Living In Sin

1 Pages 246 Words

Explication of “Living in Sin” By: Adrienne Rich This poem’s speaker is a woman who is disillusioned with, and may feel guilty about the relationship she is in. The studio apartment in which she lives, (maybe with her lover and/or husband) symbolically parallels the relationship. Lines 1-7 suggest that she used to have an ideal vision of the relationship (and the studio), but in the cold light of the morning, the vision disappears. The studio’s deteriorated state symbolizes the state of the relationship. Another way to put it is that her perception of the studio’s state reflects her sadness. She perceives the studio’s disrepair when she has lost her rose colored glasses. Lines 8-14 describe more of the studio’s messiness. For example, remnants of the previous night’s love (the bottles of wine) now appear dead and empty, suggesting to me, that these signs of the studio’s dirtiness, are symptoms of the problem but don’t create the problem itself. The relationship seems to be the problem. In lines 15-22 the lover is described as bored and incommunicative. The speaker, perhaps motivated by her guilt, makes an attempt to clean the studio and just maybe, her allowing the coffee pot to boil over could be interpreted as symbolizing her allowing her lover to continue to behave as he does. The final four lines appear to indicate that while the speaker regains her idealized vision of the relationship at night, every morning, she knows that it will disappear again....