The Full Text of “Living in Sin”
The Full Text of “Living in Sin”
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“Living in Sin” Introduction
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"Living in Sin" is an early-career poem by Adrienne Rich, first published in The New Yorker in 1954 and later collected in The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955). It depicts a young woman "living in sin"—living together outside marriage—with a male partner in a dingy apartment. Her fantasy of a romantic bohemian lifestyle turns into a reality of daily drudgery, leaving her increasingly dissatisfied. The poem is a sharp portrait of romantic disillusionment, as well as a preview of the feminist themes that would define much of Rich's later work.
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“Living in Sin” Summary
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A young woman "living in sin" with her partner had imagined that their small apartment would take care of itself. Love seemed like an ideal state that transcended mundane problems like dusty furniture. In her fantasy scenario, it would be almost blasphemous to wish for quieter faucets or cleaner windows. She had pictured pears on a plate, a piano with a Persian cover, and a cat chasing a charmingly funny mouse at her partner's urging. She hadn't imagined that, at five a.m., every stair on the staircase would groan under the milk deliveryman's feet. Or that daylight would fall with such harsh clarity on the cheese and three gloomy bottles left over from last night's meal. Or that a beetle would stare back at her from the plates on the kitchen shelf, like an ambassador from an insect colony in the walls. Meanwhile, her partner yawned, noodled around on the keyboard, said it needed tuning, shrugged at his own reflection, scratched his facial hair, and left to buy cigarettes. Feeling taunted by small "demons" of unhappiness, she tidied up the bed, dusted the table with a towel, and allowed a pot of coffee on the stove to boil so long that liquid flowed up and over the sides. As the day ended, she fell in love with her partner again—but not so in love that she wouldn't wake up sometimes at night and feel morning approaching like a grim, persistent milkman.
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“Living in Sin” Themes
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Romantic Illusions and Disappointment
"Living in Sin" portrays a young woman's growing disappointment and disillusionment with her romantic relationship. The title implies that she's living with a male partner she isn't married to, a situation once known as "living in sin" and frowned upon in conservative quarters while celebrated in others as rebellious and romantic. The poem doesn't judge the young couple by traditional moral standards, but it does deflate their romantic fantasy by showing them living not so much in sin as in squalor. They may be leading an unconventional, bohemian life, but they're stuck in a lackluster relationship and dingy apartment that’s no more exciting for being forbidden. Rebellion against convention, the poem suggests, is not an escape from the hard realities that threaten all romantic illusions.
The poem contrasts the idealized fantasy of "living in sin" with the messy, mediocre reality this young couple is living through. Before moving in with her partner, the young woman “had thought the studio would keep itself” and that there would be “no dust on the furniture of love.” In other words, she assumed that her love would be a kind of shield against the humdrum realities of domestic life like battling dust, grime, and vermin. Yet now she finds herself annoyed by things like the sound of the pipes, the creaking stairs, and the sight of leftover food on the counter.
The poem implies that her partner isn’t all she dreamed he would be, either. It’s not just that he’s messy, but that he, too, is abandoning his youthful, romantic ambitions. Instead of working on his music each day, he makes excuses and wanders off to buy cigarettes. While the idea of “living in sin” might suggest thrilling, forbidden romance, the truth is that she spends much of her time tidying up alone. And rather than feeling condemned by God, society, etc., the woman in this “sinful” romance is simply “jeered by the minor demons”: nagged by ordinary dissatisfaction, boredom, loneliness, and so on.
The poem thus reveals the mundanities of everyday life to be as present in this relationship as any other, and it might also suggest that the woman’s disappointment is all the more painful because of her romantic fantasies. She dreads the "morning light,” for instance, because it falls "coldly" on the remains of their meager meals from the night before and thus exposes their circumstances as more desperate and deadening than romantic. And though she’s no longer "wholly" in love, she feels better toward the "evening" (when the light is less harsh, conceals more, etc.) than in the clear light of day.
She doesn’t want to confront the cold reality of her situation, in other words, even as her failure to consider everyday reality (while blinded by the promise of rebellious love) perhaps led her into this situation in the first place. Yet the poem’s final simile, comparing daylight to "a relentless milkman [coming] up the stairs," suggests that the harsh light of reality will only keep exposing the flaws of this situation. The woman seems trapped in a cycle of disappointment as predictable as the sunrise, or the daily milk delivery.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-26
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Domesticity and Gender Inequality
“Living in Sin” highlights the inequalities within a young couple's relationship. The phrase "Living in Sin" implies that, by living together without marrying, this couple is defying their era's social conventions. In practice, though, their relationship looks a lot like many old-fashioned marriages, in which men's careers come first while women get stuck with domestic tasks. From a woman's point of view, the poem implies, this supposedly subversive relationship is just more of the same old thing: ditching the traditional institution of marriage doesn't necessarily eliminate long-standing inequalities between men and women.
The poem shows a bohemian couple falling into old, imbalanced gender roles: as the man supposedly focuses on his career ambitions, the woman is forced to take on all the domestic chores. Originally, the woman "had thought the studio would keep itself"; in dreaming of this bohemian life, she hadn't given any thought to who would maintain the apartment. Now she's found out the answer: her, not him. The woman handles a variety of household tasks (making the bed, dusting, etc.) while the man seems to do very little at all. The poem implies that she's supporting his ambitions as a musician, but he's not working hard or accomplishing anything. Meanwhile, the poem makes no mention of her ambitions, and that's part of the point: whatever dreams or goals she might have brought to this situation have disappeared under housework.
As radical as the couple might wish they were, then, their relationship repeats an ancient and unfair dynamic. The situation seems so wrong that the ironic title "Living in Sin" even has a grain of truth to it. The poem does imply a judgment on the relationship and the man's behavior—but from a feminist rather than a traditional religious viewpoint. Arguably, the poem shows the man committing the "sin" of sloth (laziness) and hints that, even though the couple hasn't sworn marriage vows, this romance is based on a kind of lie. In the end, the woman seems unhappy in part because she's trapped in an old, restrictive role. For her, abandoning marriage hasn't solved the fundamental problem of gender inequality.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-26
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Living in Sin”
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Lines 1-4
She had thought ...
... relieved of grime.The opening lines of the poem introduce a nameless young woman—"She"—and describe her former fantasy of a bohemian lifestyle.
As the title indicates, this woman and her partner are "living in sin": an old-fashioned way of saying that they're living and sleeping together without being married. (Doing so is considered sinful in some religious traditions.) When they decided to live this "sin[ful]" bohemian life, the woman imagined that their small "studio" apartment "would keep itself." In other words, she didn't give any thought to practical concerns like cleaning the apartment; she figured those things would somehow take care of themselves. She was so romantically smitten that she couldn't imagine any "dust" accumulating on "the furniture of love." Basically, she imagined their love nest as a place where mundane problems either wouldn't occur or wouldn't matter.
To the extent that she did notice or anticipate difficulties, she saw them as part of the romantic adventure of "living in sin." She was so committed to this adventure that she considered it "Half heresy"—almost blasphemy—to wish that the apartment's faucets were less "vocal" (noisy) and that its windows were less "grim[y]." If their love nest were sparkling clean and in perfect working order, she wouldn't find it nearly as romantic!
Notice how, within the context of "living in sin," the religious word "heresy" has an ironic or paradoxical ring to it. Mainstream society may consider this woman's lifestyle sinful, but to her, undertaking it is almost like committing to a faith, and she wants to do it properly.
The poem narrates events in the third person, reporting the woman's thoughts from a seemingly detached perspective. This detachment creates an ironic tone throughout, as reality undermines the woman's fantasy and the reader comes to understand (better than she does) how bleak her situation is.
These opening lines also establish the poem's form: unrhymed iambic pentameter, a.k.a. blank verse. A standard line of iambic pentameter contains 10 syllables that follow an unstressed-stressed rhythm: "da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM." In practice, though, the syllable count and rhythm often vary a bit. Look at how this pattern plays out in lines 1-2:
She had thought | the stu- | dio | would keep | itself;
no dust | upon | the fur- | niture | of love.Line 2 fits the pattern perfectly, but line 1 contains a small variation: an extra unstressed syllable at the beginning. (This isn't a particularly noticeable variation, since "She had" sounds and reads almost like a single syllable, as in the contraction "She'd.")
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Lines 4-7
A plate of ...
... at his urging. -
Lines 8-11
Not that at ...
... three sepulchral bottles; -
Lines 12-14
that on the ...
... . . . -
Lines 15-18
Meanwhile, he, with ...
... out for cigarettes; -
Lines 19-22
while she, jeered ...
... on the stove. -
Lines 23-26
By evening she ...
... up the stairs.
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“Living in Sin” Symbols
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Morning and Evening
Daylight is often symbolically associated with truth and clarity, while darkness is linked with the opposite: ignorance, falsehood, illusion, etc. The poem plays into this symbolism, using morning (daylight) and evening (darkness) to illustrate the woman's changing attitudes toward (or her changing perceptions about) her situation.
Morning in the poem brings a harsh dose of reality. The stairs of the couple's cheap apartment building "writhe," or buckle and groan, under the milkman's weight, while "morning light" clearly and "coldly" shows the depressing "scraps" of last night's meal. In other words, morning acts as an unpleasant wake-up call, clearly illuminating the reality of this couple's lifestyle. The woman seems to recognize that, rather than living in bohemian glamour, they're living in messy mediocrity.
Lines 23-26 expand on this symbolism. "By evening," the woman is "back in love again"—with her partner and, by extension, their lifestyle. It's as if the dimming light hides the full, messy truth and allows for romantic fantasy. (In general, evening and twilight are often associated with romance.) But even when the light dims, the woman isn't "wholly" in love anymore, and "throughout the night," she can "feel the daylight coming." Symbolically, even when she immerses herself in fantasy, she can sense the cold reality that will soon shake her out of it. This rude awakening arrives with each sunrise, like the "relentless milkman"; in other words, it's predictable and routine. Not a day goes by when she doesn't feel a dawning sense of dissatisfaction.
By implication, if a simple change in lighting—a small dose of reality—can weaken this fantasy, it must have been pretty fragile in the first place!
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 8-11: “Not that at five each separate stair would writhe / under the milkman's tramp; that morning light / so coldly would delineate the scraps / of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;”
- Lines 23-26: “By evening she was back in love again, / though not so wholly but throughout the night / she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming / like a relentless milkman up the stairs.”
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The Milkman
The milkman serves as a symbol of the humdrum, repetitive reality of everyday life. Like the sunrise, the milkman's arrival is a routine, daily occurrence. The two things are even linked by the poem's closing simile: "she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming / like a relentless milkman up the stairs." His heavy step on the stairs sounds ominous to the woman because, in her unhappy situation, she dreads the coming of each new day. The way the stairs seem to "writhe" under his weight suggests that, psychologically, she is writhing in pain.
There's also some subtle irony in the fact that she fears his arrival, because the milk he brings—like the accompanying daylight—would normally seem nourishing, wholesome, and welcome. That it strikes her as the opposite is another sign of how unfulfilling her life is.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 8-9: “Not that at five each separate stair would writhe / under the milkman's tramp;”
- Lines 25-26: “she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming / like a relentless milkman up the stairs.”
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Mess and Decay
Before moving in with her partner, the woman in the poem imagined that there could be "no dust upon the furniture of love." In other words, she imagined love as a pure, ideal state, free of everyday messes and problems. In reality, her love nest is full of dust and bugs—which, in turn, symbolize the decay of the relationship and the kind of mundane problems she thought she was escaping.
At worst, she thought she'd be dealing with leaky faucets, some "grime" on the windows, and a single "amusing mouse" chased by a cat (lines 3-7). That is, she imagined that this relationship and living situation might have some flaws, but nothing too serious or hard to manage. Instead, she has to deal with leftover meal "scraps" and "bottles" (lines 10-11), "beetle[s]" that infest the walls and crawl over the dishes (lines 12-14), rumpled "sheets" (line 20), and yes, "dust[y]" furniture (line 21). She pretty much has to deal with these things by herself, because her partner doesn't seem to be helping. She even "lets the coffee-pot boil over" and create a new mess (line 22)—a symbol of the anger bubbling up inside her, and perhaps a sign that part of her wants to sabotage rather than maintain this domestic situation.
In other words, the decay and mess in the apartment seem to represent the decay of the couple's "love," or the messy problems and emotions that threaten its survival. Like beetles hiding in the walls or coffee about to boil over, terrible tensions lurk just below the surface of this relationship.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-4: “She had thought the studio would keep itself; / no dust upon the furniture of love. / Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal, / the panes relieved of grime.”
- Lines 5-7: “a cat / stalking the picturesque amusing mouse / had risen at his urging.”
- Lines 9-14: “that morning light / so coldly would delineate the scraps / of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles; / that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers / a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own— / envoy from some village in the moldings . . .”
- Lines 20-22: “pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found / a towel to dust the table-top, / and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.”
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“Living in Sin” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration reinforces the poem's meaning in subtle but clever ways. It's most noticeable in the early lines of the poem, which describe the woman's fantasy of bohemian life. Listen to the prominent /h/ and /p/ sounds in lines 3-6:
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse [...]The plosive /p/ sounds, especially, help unify the passage into a pretty, pleasing picture: a verbal representation of the woman's "picturesque" dream.
Alliteration then fades into the background as the poem begins describing the couple's actual, gritty lifestyle. It's as if the language becomes less musical as bare reality sets in. There are a few exceptions: for example, the /s/ sounds in line 8 help emphasize the separateness of the two words "separate stair." The /m/ sounds in "milkman's" and "morning" (line 9) draw a subtle connection between these two words—one that becomes important in the poem's closing simile, which compares morning light to "a relentless milkman."
Alliteration pops up once again in the description of the woman doing household chores (lines 20-21):
[...] pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,Here, it's as if the repetition of /b/ and /t/ sounds is imposing some order on the language, much as the woman is straightening out the messy apartment.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 3: “Half heresy”
- Line 4: “panes,” “plate,” “pears”
- Line 5: “piano,” “Persian”
- Line 6: “picturesque”
- Line 8: “separate stair”
- Line 9: “milkman's,” “morning”
- Line 20: “back,” “bed”
- Line 21: “towel,” “table-top”
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Assonance
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Irony
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Juxtaposition
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Parallelism
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Imagery
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Asyndeton
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"Living in Sin" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Living in Sin
- Studio
- Taps
- Heresy
- Persian shawl
- Picturesque
- Milkman
- Writhe
- Tramp
- Delineate
- Sepulchral
- Fix
- Moldings
- Envoy
- Sounded
- The minor demons
- Jeered
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(Location in poem: )
The poem's title is an old-fashioned expression for living together as an unmarried couple. In traditional Christian societies, cohabitation and sex before marriage are considered sinful.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Living in Sin”
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Form
"Living in Sin" is a single-stanza poem of 26 lines; its meter is blank verse with occasional variations. In other words, it consists almost entirely of unrhymed iambic pentameter (10-syllable lines following a "da-DUM, da-DUM" rhythm). The fairly regular meter, combined with the lack of rhyme and stanza breaks, helps evoke the young couple's regular, unbroken—and, to the woman, stifling—domestic routine.
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Meter
The poem is written in iambic pentameter, with variations here and there. In other words, its lines typically contain five metrical units (feet) called iambs, each of which consists of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. The resulting rhythm sounds like this: da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM. The poem is unrhymed, and unrhymed iambic pentameter has a special name: blank verse.
Here's how this meter sounds in the first few lines:
She had thought | the stu- | dio | would keep | itself;
no dust | upon | the fur- | niture | of love.
Half her- | esy, | to wish | the taps | less vocal [...]Notice the small variations from the standard pattern. The first foot of line 1 contains two unstressed syllables ("She had") rather than one, but this doesn't throw off the pattern much because the ear tends to run these two syllables together, as in the contraction "She'd." The first foot of line 3 substitutes a spondee (stressed-stressed) for an iamb: a common substitution that doesn't disrupt the flow much, either. The last foot of line 3 contains an extra unstressed syllable (-cal) at the end, but this is a very common metrical feature (not even technically a variation) known as a feminine ending.
Overall, then, the meter is pretty regular, in keeping with the dull regularity of the couple's domestic routine. It's also notable that iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English-language poetry; in other words, the form of "Living in Sin" is very traditional. By "living in sin," of course, the couple is trying to reject tradition, especially the institution of marriage. Ironically, however, they're still falling into age-old patterns: for example, the woman is doing all the domestic work while the man just putters around. The poem's traditional meter drives home this irony.
At the same time, the poem's occasional metrical variations suggest some instability beneath the surface of the relationship: lines 7, 15, and 21 are shorter than normal, while line 22 is longer. In fact, line 22 has six iambic feet, making it a line of iambic hexameter ("and let | the cof- | fee-pot | boil o- | ver on | the stove"). Here, the variation aligns with the image: the line itself seems to "boil over" its formal container.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Living in Sin" is written in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter.
The absence of rhyme might suggest a certain lack of spice in the couple's domestic routine. Since rhyme gives poems a song-like quality, the lack of rhyme might also point to the ominous lack of music in the couple's apartment. The young man seems to be an aspiring musician or composer, but as lines 15-18 ("Meanwhile [...] cigarettes;") make clear, he isn't working very hard at his art: he's just noodling around and taking long breaks.
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“Living in Sin” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is anonymous and narrates events in the third person. The speaker is able to report the woman's thoughts and feelings (as when she's "jeered by the minor demons" or "back in love"), but never gets inside her partner's head in the same fashion. This narration style is called close third person, meaning third person that stays close to a particular character's viewpoint. In this poem, it allows for a generally sympathetic portrait of the main character: a woman who's partly "in love," trying to rebel against convention, but unable to escape a pattern that's trapped many women in more traditional relationships.
At the same time, the speaker comes off as wiser and more knowing than both characters, giving the poem an ironic flavor. For example, when the poem describes the woman's fantasy of a bohemian life, including the "picturesque" mouse (line 6), it's as if the speaker is gently making fun of her romantic illusions. (When the woman has to deal with real vermin in her real apartment, the experience doesn't sound so picturesque.) Similarly, the word "minor" in "jeered by the minor demons" seems like ironic commentary by the speaker. "Living in sin" hasn't landed this woman in a grand moral drama, like a struggle between salvation and damnation; she's just battling the petty, everyday "demons" of frustration and unhappiness.
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“Living in Sin” Setting
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The poem's setting is a "studio" (line 1), or a small one-room apartment, shared by a young man and woman. As the title indicates, the couple is "Living in Sin" there, meaning that these two are living and sleeping together without being married (an arrangement considered sinful in some religious traditions). The man seems to have some kind of musical aspirations (hence the "keyboard" in line 16), so this is probably a couple living a bohemian or starving artist's life.
Lines 1-7 describe the woman's fantasy of how this apartment would be: somewhat gritty, but in a limited and charming way. In her mind, she decked it out with a "plate of pears" (as in a still-life painting), a "piano" draped with an expensive "Persian shawl," and a cat chasing a single "picturesque" mouse.
Instead, the apartment is dingy and vermin-infested, and the woman seems to be the only one cleaning it. Rather than a plate of pears, she wakes up to the "sepulchral" (gloomy) remnants of the previous night's supper: "scraps" of cheese, empty "bottles." Rather than a funny cat-and-mouse chase, she has to deal with "beetle[s]" creeping out of the walls. As for the piano, her partner plunks a few keys on the "keyboard," then claims it's "out of tune." (In reality, he seems to be making excuses for not playing.)
While her partner slacks off, the woman is left to "ma[k]e the bed," wipe up "dust," and generally do the chores of a stereotypical housewife in an old-fashioned marriage. (But she doesn't own a house and isn't a wife.) For her, this setting has come to feel like a trap, to the point where she dreads the approaching "daylight" (line 25) that clearly shows how disappointing it is.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Living in Sin”
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Literary Context
"Living in Sin" first appeared in The New Yorker in January 1954, when Adrienne Rich was 24, and was collected in Rich's second volume of poetry, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955). The Diamond Cutters is something of a transitional book between Rich's debut collection (A Change of World, 1951), which was relatively traditional in its style and subject matter, and Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), which was more formally experimental and signaled Rich's turn toward more explicitly feminist themes.
Along with friends such as Audre Lorde and June Jordan, Rich helped lead a generation of female and LGBTQ poets whose work challenged patriarchal, racist, and homophobic power structures in America and beyond. Some early elements of this approach were already present in Rich's first book (including the often-anthologized poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"), and "Living in Sin," from her second, reflects her deepening exploration of gender, love, and inequality during the 1950s. The poem's formally traditional style contrasts with Rich's later adoption of free verse, which she found less "distancing" and restrictive than meter. However, its use of (mostly) regular pentameter helps convey the protagonist's regular routine, while its metrical variations suggest an inner frustration that threatens to "boil over" (see line 22).
Rich's commitments to feminism and left-wing politics grew over the course of the 1960s, in parallel with the growing women's liberation movement and other social movements of the era. Her collections from the late '60s (including Leaflets) and early '70s (including The Will to Change and Diving into the Wreck) are considered landmarks of feminist and LGBTQ literature. Diving into the Wreck, whose title poem explores women's erasure from cultural narratives, shared the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
Historical Context
As both a writer and activist, Adrienne Rich was a leading voice in what is now known as second-wave feminism (or "women's liberation," the term she preferred). After leaving an unhappy marriage and coming out as a lesbian, Rich also became a leader in the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
Second-wave feminism extended from the 1960s through the 1980s and sought to redress a wide range of social injustices. Where first-wave feminism had largely focused on women's suffrage, the second wave centered on issues such as reproductive freedom, workplace opportunity and equality, and legal protections against sexual harassment and domestic violence. Its advocates opposed the belief (widespread in post-World War II America) that a woman's proper place was in the home, keeping house, raising children, and supporting men's ambitions. Betty Friedan's bestseller The Feminine Mystique (1963), which directly challenged the notion that women should be content with this "housewife-mother" role, is often credited with launching second-wave feminism.
"Living in Sin" was published almost a decade before this movement began. While it's not as politically confrontational as Rich's later work, it does portray a woman's dissatisfaction in the domestic sphere. The couple in the poem may be living outside the traditional (and, historically, patriarchal) institution of marriage, but the woman still finds herself trapped in a subordinate role, just as married women had for generations. Basically, her male partner expects her to be a housewife, even though she has no house and isn't a wife. By portraying the irony and injustice of this situation, "Living in Sin" looks ahead to the politics of Rich's most famous poetry—and the social changes of the '60s and beyond.
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More “Living in Sin” Resources
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External Resources
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An Interview with the Poet — Watch a 1973 interview with Adrienne Rich.
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The Poet's Life — A biography of Adrienne Rich at the Poetry Foundation.
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Rich and Feminism — An article on "Adrienne Rich's Feminist Awakening" in the late 1960s and early '70s.
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Rich on Love and Power — The poet discusses power dynamics in romantic relationships.
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More on Rich and Politics — An in-depth exploration of Rich's work as a political poet and essayist.
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The Poet's Obituary — Read Rich's 2012 New York Times obituary.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Adrienne Rich
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