The Full Text of “The Whitsun Weddings”
The Full Text of “The Whitsun Weddings”
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Introduction
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"The Whitsun Weddings" was written by British poet Philip Larkin and first published in his collection The Whitsun Weddings in 1963. The poem recounts the speaker's train journey from the east of England to London and his observations along the way. At first, the speaker focuses on the view out of the window of the countryside and passing towns. Soon, though, his journey is interrupted by the loud commotion of numerous wedding parties. As the speaker observes all these newlyweds, he reflects—rather ambivalently—on what it means to be in love and all the ceremony tied up with getting married. Soon enough, the train arrives in London and this "frail travelling coincidence" is over.
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Summary
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It was Whitsun Saturday and I left late. It was a sunny day and my train departed around 1:20, almost completely empty. The windows were open due to the stifling heat, even the seat cushions were hot, and everything felt very slow. Out of the window I saw the backs of houses, the glare of windshields, and I could smell the fish-dock. We rode beside the wide, flat, slow river, zooming through the Lincolnshire countryside.
The train kept its steady course all through the hot afternoon, as we traveled south and inland. We passed big farms with cows whose shadows were small under the high sun, and canals full of industrial waste. I saw a greenhouse, and hedges rising and falling. The carriage had a pretty bad smell from the cloth, but sometimes the smell of grass overpowered it. Towns seemed to repeat themselves as we went past, each one signaled by a scrapyard.
At the beginning of the journey, I didn't notice the weddings whose noise could be heard from each station. The sun was too bright for me to see what was happening in the shade of the platform, and though I could hear a commotion I thought it was porters mucking around with the mail. I kept reading, but as the train pulled away I noticed a large group of young female wedding guests. They were smiling, had elaborate hair, and were dressed as if in a caricature of contemporary styles, with heels and veils. They were poised uncertainly on the platform watching us leave.
It was as though they were witnessing the end of something that we on the train had survived. Now I was intrigued, so I took greater notice at the next station and comprehended the scene more clearly. I saw fat fathers with sweaty heads, loud overweight mothers, and uncles being rude. Then I noticed the girls again, with their perms, nylon gloves, and fake jewelry, and the yellows, pinks, and brown-greens.
These fashion elements separated the girls visually from the other guests, almost as if they were an illusion. These numerous weddings—which took place in small halls and cafes near the train yards, with rooms covered in streamers and full of coach-loads of guests—were nearly over. At every station, newlyweds boarded the train while the guests gave last bits of advice and threw confetti. When we left each station, I read the faces of those still on the platform, each of which seemed to say something about the wedding. The children seemed bored.
For the fathers, this was the biggest success of their lives, though something about it felt like a joke. The older women looked like they knew a terrible secret, while the girls seemed perplexed, holding their purses tighter—perhaps even intimated by what they saw, as though they'd witnessed something of fearful religious importance. Pretty soon we left the guests behind—though we had internalized all their perspectives—and raced towards London, the train blowing fits of steam. The environment grew more urbanized, fields giving way to plots of land being developed, and I noticed poplar trees casting shadows over the roads.
In that fifty minutes or so, which was just long enough to get comfortable and reflect on the wedding, all of these new marriages got started. The newlyweds gazed out of the window, crammed into the carriage. A cinema, a cooling tower, and a cricket game were all visible from the window. I don't think any of the different couples thought about the people they would never meet now that they were married, or how they all were sharing this first hour of their respective marriages together. As we approached sunny London, our final destination, I thought of the different areas packed together like squares of wheat.
We were headed straight for the capital, racing past glinting rail and stationary train carriages. The sooty, mossy walls of the city started to surround us and the shared experience was nearly over. The collective power of these newly-weds was ready to be unleashed. We slowed and braked, feeling the gravity as though we were falling like a shower of arrows sent beyond view, raining down somewhere else.
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Themes
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Time, Death, and Impermanence
“The Whitsun Weddings” describes the speaker’s train journey into London on Whitsun Saturday (a date in summer that was once a popular choice for weddings). As it does so, the poem takes an unsentimental look at what it means to be human in light of the unstoppable forward march of time. Even though weddings might be thought of as new beginnings, the speaker draws out the way that all this celebration is ultimately cast in the light (or shadow) of its impermanence—that is, in the face of inevitable death.
Before the wedding parties even show up in the poem, the speaker builds an atmosphere of decay. Looking out upon the shifting English landscape that passes by the train's windows, the speaker sees “industrial froth” on the canals. This evokes the vast shifts in the fabric of society due to modern industrialization, which was happening at the time of Larkin's writing. It also suggests the way that human activity wears down and muddies the world around it. Likewise, the carriage-cloth of the train, which was ostensibly once pristine and new, now “reeks” with a bad odor, subtly suggesting rot and overuse. Later, the speaker sees “acres of dismantled cars”—objects made defunct by time.
All of these images suggest that the human world cannot stay fresh for long—an idea that, in turn, comes to affect the later description of the newlyweds themselves as “Fresh.” That is, in creating this atmosphere of decay, the poem implies that even these bright young faces will eventually become worn out and stale.
At first, however, the wedding parties are vibrant. Marriage is traditionally one of life’s major events, and the newlyweds and their guests behave with all the pomp and ceremony of a momentous occasion. Their enthusiasm reflects the idea of marriage as a stamp of permanence—of pledging to be together forever and so on. At the same time, however, the way the train passes by the wedding parties seems to highlight that this permanence is just a kind of trick played by the magnitude of the occasion. That is, however momentous these events may feel to the participants, they are little more than fleeting visions that pass by almost as soon as they appear.
This idea is supported by the description of the wedding parties initially posed on the platforms “as if out on the end of an event / Waving goodbye / To something that survived it.” The young couples’ new beginnings, in their way, signify their endings—another step away from their youth and freedom. The poem sums this up in the phrase “happy funeral”—this is a happy day for many, but this happiness all too brief.
The speaker then focuses on the balding fathers, the “mothers loud and fat,” and the “smut[ty]” uncles of the newly-weds—hinting at the way that the “Fresh” young couples will age and turn into similar figures. Likewise, the focus on the gaudiness of the girls’ appearances (their “jewellery-substitutes” and so on) shows that the pomp of the big day is a kind of temporary illusion. Indeed, the supposed importance of the wedding day is undermined by the way that this importance can never last. That’s why the “success” of these wedding days is, though “huge,” also “wholly farcical.” Time will continue to move forward, and, the poem suggests, this happy moment will soon end; death lurks behind every smile and under every wedding hat.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-6
- Lines 6-8
- Line 8
- Lines 9-10
- Lines 11-20
- Lines 27-33
- Lines 33-45
- Lines 45-80
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Love and Marriage
Larkin’s poetry often takes an unsentimental look at love, frequently presenting it as little more than a biological mechanism to ensure the human race’s reproduction. “The Whitsun Weddings” takes slightly satirical aim at the artificiality, conformity, and farcical nature of weddings to undermine the notion of love as some sort of grand, magical, and everlasting endeavor. In reality, the poem implies, marriage and love are commonplace and mundane. The poem thus contrasts the supposed meaningfulness of getting married (e.g., the big day) with a kind of hollowness at its core.
The wedding parties don’t appear until the poem’s third stanza. At first, the speaker doesn’t even realize that all the commotion he can hear is caused by wedding guests, thinking it to be something else entirely (showing that, to him at least, these weddings are not especially important). When he does take notice, he is taken aback by the sheer number of weddings that seem to be taking place. This makes them feel less special and unique, best summed up by the speaker’s approximate counting of the weddings as adding up to a “dozen” (a word usually associated, at least in England at the time, with eggs—something decidedly less than romantic).
It’s also worth considering why the speaker encounters so many wedding parties on his train journey to London. Whit Monday, the day after the Whitsun weekend, was a public bank holiday, making the long weekend a popular time to get married for economic and practical reasons—but not really for romantic ones. This gently undermines the romanticized clichés about love as something special, magic, and eternal.
The speaker then observes the wedding parties more intently, critiquing the guests’ appearances as gaudy and fake. The girls are dressed not fashionably, but in “parodies of fashion” adorned with “jewellery-substitutes”; the fathers have “seamy” foreheads; the mothers are “loud and fat.” Perhaps this is what leads the speaker to describe the “success” of the weddings as both “huge” and “wholly farcical”—these are momentous occasions, but they also seem vacuous and pretentious.
It’s worth noting that critics are particularly divided about this section of the poem. Some see it as an unfair and snobbish takedown of the working classes, and others view it as a set of honest observations that reflect the reality that, given this particular wedding date was popular for primarily practical reasons, it did tend to be the poorer in society getting wed. “[J]ewellery-substitutes,” then, need not necessarily carry negative connotations. It’s possible to read the poem as primarily concerned with making fine-tuned observations about the rituals and social practices of marriage—and how those relate to the idealism that is usually associated with love.
Indeed, this ambiguity about the speaker’s position towards the weddings is important. On the one hand, the speaker's observations certainly do highlight something fake and throwaway. But the ending of the poem seems to take a view that incorporates these weddings as both meaningful and meaningless. When the train comes to its stop at the end and the speaker remarks on “this frail / traveling coincidence,” it at once seems both significant and kind of hollow. The train is about to unleash a kind of “power” by emptying out its newly-weds—who will in turn reproduce and create the next generation of couples—but it’s not necessarily a power with any real sense of wonder or magic.
Instead, it’s as common as rain in England—which is how the poem ends, by subverting the mythology of Cupid’s arrows (which usually make their targets fall in love) and imagining them somewhere “out of sight” becoming rain. These arrows, then, don't follow through with their special purpose (thus undermining the idea of love as a kind of destiny).
That said, rain is also associated with fertility, and the fact that all the couples are married also means that, in their way, they are a community with a shared experience that they will always have in common whether they know it or not—a community that will in turn impact the world.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 21-80
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Alienation and Community
The speaker is clearly alienated from the wedding parties he encounters on the train, but there is also a sense running throughout "The Whitsun Weddings" that, ultimately, everyone else is alone too. The wedding parties create a sense of community from which the speaker is excluded, yet even this feeling of togetherness may only be temporary. In the end, the guests and newlyweds all go their separate ways, the "frail ... coincidence" of this shared train ride over as quickly as it began.
A sense of isolation is present from the start of the poem. For one thing, the speaker's train is initially empty as it heads back to London. And though the countryside seen through the train window is full of a certain kind of life, or at least the evidence of life (through buildings and so on), there aren't any other people in the first two stanzas of the poem. This marks the speaker out as a somewhat lonely figure.
Indeed, when the speaker encounters the bustle and commotion of the wedding parties, he feels very much like a detached observer. At first, he doesn't even notice that these weddings are the source of the "whoops and skirls" he can hear from the platform. There is a total disconnect between the speaker and the crowds—and between the importance that the crowds place on the wedding day and the speaker's indifference.
Each of the guests, in turn, seem to have their own private thoughts about the wedding, which the speaker, as a kind of spy in their midst, can interpret: the children are bored; the fathers are overwhelmed; the women are sharing "the secret like a happy funeral" (that marriage can be a disappointment, perhaps); the girls are "gripping their handbags tighter" out of some kind of instinctive fear. All of these different figures are sectioned off from each other, held together only loosely and precariously by the weddings themselves (which, of course, are pretty much over at this point in the day).
And though these individual wedding parties are brought together by a sense of celebration and occasion, the parties, too, are isolated from one another. That is, each wedding is its own distinct group, failing (or choosing not) to recognize that there are numerous other parties doing exactly the same thing. Their own sense of community somewhat ironically cuts them off from other communities. The newlyweds never think, for instance, "of the others they would never meet," nor about the fact that "their lives would all contain this hour"—that is, how all these newlyweds will have forever shared this train ride.
That's why the speaker views this shared experience as a kind of "coincidence," one which seems significant but perhaps in reality actually isn't. That said, he can't really relate to the newlyweds because he isn't one of them; he might simply be projecting all this, in turn misreading the situation and contributing to his own and social separation. Overall, though, it's not as if the newlyweds even seem that happy. There is a kind of disquiet in the carriages, allow the reader to wonder whether the ultimate act of communion—marriage—really does bring people closer together, or just cuts two people off from the rest of the world.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-27
- Lines 36-45
- Lines 48-55
- Lines 58-63
- Lines 64-68
- Lines 74-77
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Whitsun Weddings”
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Lines 1-6
That Whitsun, I ...
... a hurry gone.The poem opens by establishing its disarmingly casual tone, pitching somewhere between a narrative and dramatic monologue. Though the whole poem is tightly—and virtuosically—controlled in terms of its form, the language is intentionally down-to-earth and even prosaic (as is Larkin's work more generally).
Like a story or diary entry, the poem starts by setting the scene. The poem is set on Whitsun Saturday in mid-1950s United Kingdom. This isn't an arbitrary detail, but a key part of the poem's setup.
The Monday following Whitsun weekend is a public bank holiday. That's why the speaker encounters so many wedding parties on his train journey from the East of England to London. Of course, the wedding parties themselves aren't introduced until the third stanza, making them a kind of chance encounter (and subtly undermining the idea of the wedding day as something special and unique).
The stanza form used throughout is Larkin's own but is loosely based on the odes of John Keats. This aspect of the poem is analyzed in more detail in the form section of this guide, but here it's worth acknowledging the way that the second line in each stanza is considerably shorter than the rest (two metrical feet as opposed to five), which helps evoke the push-pull rhythm of a train alternating between acceleration and coming to a stop.
Initially, the train carriage is mostly empty. This helps the poem set up a contrast between the quiet isolation of the speaker and the boisterousness of the wedding—and this contrast provides the poem's vantage point, with the speaker able to comment on the weddings in a detached and observant way. And though there is no "sense / Of being in a hurry," the mention of the date and hour does foreshadow one of the poem's main themes—the relentless passing of time. The diacope (close repetition) in line 5—"all windows down, all cushions hot, all sense"—gives the reader a sense of the uniformity of the train carriages, which again anticipates something the poem develops later: the uniformity of the wedding parties.
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Lines 6-10
We ran ...
... and water meet. -
Lines 11-16
All afternoon, through ...
... hothouse flashed uniquely: -
Lines 16-20
hedges dipped ...
... of dismantled cars. -
Lines 21-27
At first, I ...
... went on reading. -
Lines 27-33
Once we started, ...
... that survived it. -
Lines 33-38
Struck, I leant ...
... uncle shouting smut; -
Lines 38-41
and then the ...
... from the rest. -
Lines 42-46
Yes, from ...
... rest stood round; -
Lines 47-51
The last confetti ...
... and wholly farcical; -
Lines 52-57
The women ...
... gouts of steam. -
Lines 58-63
Now fields were ...
... got under way. -
Lines 64-68
They watched the ...
... contain this hour. -
Lines 69-75
I thought of ...
... Travelling coincidence; -
Lines 75-80
and what it ...
... somewhere becoming rain.
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Symbols
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The Countryside
The train journey undertaken in this poem is a long one, stretching from the east of England to London. As part of this, the speaker sees a fair share of countryside out of his window. This countryside symbolizes the ways in which nature affects human society and behavior—even the institution of marriage.
On a basic level, of course, the countryside simply signifies the natural world itself. This isn't a heavily romanticized depiction of nature, but more a series of relatively detached observations. Subtly, though, the presence of the river, farmland, cattle, etc. helps build a detailed picture of the natural world and the way that the natural world is used by human society. This a countryside modified by human activities like farming and industry, as exhibited by the "Canals with floatings of industrial froth." The references to the countryside in the poem underscore the fact that humans both shape the natural world and depend on it.
This also ties in with the poem's implication that humans' ideas of love and marriage are ultimately based on the biological (and, thus, natural) need for reproduction—something Larkin often suggests. Just as the English countryside shaped agriculture and industry, so too does the natural need for procreation shape English attitudes towards marriage. Love isn't necessarily a fairy tale—but maybe it's just the most efficient way for the human race to propagate and spread.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 9-10: “The river’s level drifting breadth began, / Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.”
- Lines 14-15: “Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and / Canals with floatings of industrial froth”
- Lines 16-17: “hedges dipped / And rose: and now and then a smell of grass”
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The Urban and Industrial Environment
"The Whitsun Weddings" makes frequent reference to what the speaker can see out of his train window as he heads to London. The speaker's glimpses of urban and industrial life symbolize both waste and the human potential for renewal.
Of course, this changes depending on which part of the country the train is in at any given point. The speaker's observations are finely-tuned, and at first he sees evidence of people without actually spotting any people themselves. This builds a sense of disquiet in the poem that feeds into the way it casts doubt on the meaning of love and marriage. The built environment seems to suggest the emptiness of contemporary life.
The urban environment also helps develop the poem's historical and social context. The "new and nondescript" towns, for example, reference the extensive rebuilding of the post-war years in England. The "acres of dismantled cars" (scrapyards) speak to both waste and the human talent for regeneration, feeding into the poem's subtle discussion of fertility and reproduction.
When the train nears London, this urban environment intensifies. The speaker notices a cinema and a cricket game—both of which seem like surreal details that flash by before they can be fully comprehended. This surreal quality again suggests a kind of emptiness. To the speaker, these images suggest diversion and entertainment, but not necessarily real meaning.
When the train gets close to its destination, the speaker notices "walls of blackened moss." This image speaks in part to the dirtiness of the urban environment, but also to the resourcefulness of life itself (moss, of course, is a living thing). Perhaps this resourcefulness is the power that the speaker refers to in lines 76-77: "all the power / That being changed can give."
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 7-8: “the backs of houses, crossed a street / Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock;”
- Line 15: “Canals with floatings of industrial froth;”
- Lines 19-20: “Until the next town, new and nondescript, / Approached with acres of dismantled cars.”
- Lines 58-59: “Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast / Long shadows over major roads,”
- Lines 65-66: “—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, / And someone running up to bowl—”
- Lines 69-70: “I thought of London spread out in the sun, / Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:”
- Line 73: “walls of blackened moss”
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is used throughout "The Whitsun Weddings." An early example is in line 13:
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
The /s/ sounds here are distributed with an even regularity throughout the line, giving it a sense of momentum (in fact, alliteration in this poem often creates forward motion). This subtly mirrors the train's ongoing path from the east of England to the south.
In the same stanza, line 19 also uses alliteration effectively:
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
The repetition of the identical /n/ sounds evokes the way that, at that speed, each town that goes by lacks definition. That is, the speaker's eyes can hardly settle on what's there before the train is going past the next town. This also builds a sense of the cultural and historical atmosphere, referencing the numerous new towns that were built in England during the postwar years (the years after World War II).
The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas all use alliteration as way of creating a noisy, almost boisterous reading experience. This, of course, is no coincidence—it reflects the commotion caused by the wedding parties on the station platforms. The alliteration of "notice" and "noise" in line 21 shows the way that the speaker hears the guests before he consciously comprehends what's happening.
Lines 28-30 are full of /p/ sounds that, through being so obviously placed, evoke the garish and loud outfits of the girls in "parodies of fashion." The fathers wear "broad belts" (line 36) and "suits" (which alliterates with "seamy foreheads"). "Then the" in line 38 has a delicate sound that evokes the meticulous attention the girls have paid to their hairdos. "Fathers" in line 50 chimes with "farcical" in line 51 to question whether the apparent importance of the wedding days is really grounded in reality.
Once the train, now full of newlyweds, has left the guests behind, the alliteration starts to represent other elements of the poem. The /s/ sound, which was associated with the regular motion of the train in line 13, returns: "sitting side by side" (line 64); "spread out in the sun" (line 69). The two plosive /p/ sounds in line 70—"[London's] postal districts packed like squares of wheat"—are themselves packed into the line (echoed by "Past standing Pullmans" in line 73).
Finally, the poem's closing four lines intensify the alliteration to what is probably its peak. /S/ alliteration takes grip of the poem, mimicking the way the brakes are reducing the train's speed. "Slowed," "swelled," "sense," "sent," "sight," and "somewhere" brilliantly manage to evoke the sound of rain and, through their sheer repetitiveness, a kind of magic spell. This alliteration, then, neatly sums up the poem's ambiguous ending, which asks whether love is truly something magical and mythical (e.g. Cupid's arrow, discussed in the allusion section) or is as common and unremarkable as bad weather in England.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Whitsun,” “was”
- Line 3: “sunlit Saturday”
- Line 7: “Behind,” “backs”
- Line 9: “breadth,” “began”
- Line 10: “Where,” “water”
- Line 13: “slow,” “stopping,” “southwards”
- Line 14: “short-shadowed cattle”
- Line 15: “Canals,” “floatings,” “froth”
- Line 16: “hothouse,” “flashed,” “hedges”
- Line 18: “carriage-cloth”
- Line 19: “next,” “new,” “nondescript”
- Line 21: “notice,” “noise”
- Line 23: “station,” “stopped,” “sun”
- Line 24: “interest,” “in”
- Line 26: “with”
- Line 27: “went,” “Once,” “we”
- Line 28: “passed,” “grinning,” “pomaded,” “girls”
- Line 29: “parodies”
- Line 30: “posed”
- Line 33: “something,” “survived,” “Struck”
- Line 36: “broad belts,” “suits”
- Line 37: “seamy foreheads,” “fat”
- Line 38: “then the”
- Line 40: “mauves”
- Line 41: “Marked”
- Line 43: “banquet-halls,” “bunting-dressed”
- Line 44: “wedding-days”
- Line 45: “Were”
- Line 46: “couples climbed,” “rest,” “round”
- Line 48: “And, as,” “define”
- Line 49: “departing”
- Line 50: “dull,” “fathers”
- Line 51: “Success so,” “farcical”
- Line 53: “funeral”
- Line 54: “girls, gripping”
- Line 55: “last”
- Line 56: “loaded,” “sum,” “saw”
- Line 58: “plots,” “poplars”
- Line 60: “Some,” “seem”
- Line 61: “settle,” “say”
- Line 62: “died”
- Line 63: “dozen”
- Line 64: “sitting side,” “side”
- Line 66: “none”
- Line 67: “Thought,” “the,” “they,” “never”
- Line 68: “their”
- Line 69: “spread,” “sun”
- Line 70: “postal,” “packed”
- Line 71: “we were,” “we”
- Line 73: “Past,” “Pullmans”
- Line 74: “Came close”
- Line 77: “slowed”
- Line 78: “swelled”
- Line 79: “sense”
- Line 80: “Sent,” “sight,” “somewhere”
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Diacope
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Enjambment
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Simile
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Zeugma
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"The Whitsun Weddings" 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.
- Whitsun
- Lincolnshire
- Hothouse
- Reek
- Carriage-Cloth
- Nondescript
- Whoops and Skirls
- Porters
- Larking
- Pomaded
- Seamy
- Smut
- Perms
- Bunting-Dressed
- Annexes
- Gouts of Steam
- Poplars
- Odeon
- Pullmans
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “Whitsun”)
Whitsun is the name used in Britain (and elsewhere) for the Pentecost, which is the seventh Sunday after Easter, marking the visitation of the Holy Spirit to Jesus's disciples. In England, it was a popular date for a wedding because it granted certain tax advantages and was on a long weekend (the Monday was an extra day off).
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Whitsun Weddings”
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Form
"The Whitsun Weddings" is a tightly controlled formal poem. It is composed of eight ten-line stanzas that follow a strict meter and rhyme (further discussed in those sections of the guide).
Put simply, this is a long poem! This is deliberate on Larkin's part, allowing for the slow and steady development of the poem's main themes (love, time, isolation and so on). The poem is in no hurry and develops at a regular pace, mimicking the steady forward momentum of the train. Caesurae often provide stopping points, like stations along the way. Even looking at it on the page, the uniformity of the stanza shape makes the poem visually resemble the equal-length carriages of the train, as though the reader is looking down on the train from above.
There are some key moments to note during the poem's "slow and stopping development." The first two stanzas have no mention of the weddings at all—the weddings arrive in the third. Then, after the caesura in line 55, the newlyweds part ways with their guests, marking the next significant transition in the poem. Finally, the train comes to its destination in the last stanza—which is also the point when the poem is at its most ambiguous and figurative, with the "arrow-shower" simile. The poem, then, comes to a stop at the same time as the train. All in all, the whole poem has followed the speaker's train journey chronologically—in a straightforward, stop-by-stop manner.
It's also worth noting that the ten-line stanzas—and indeed the eight stanza total length— steers close to the ode form developed and employed by John Keats in his own odes (see, for instance, "Ode to a Nightingale"). Like those odes, this poem is an examination of time and beauty (or, perhaps, the lack of it). And like those odes, the poem employs a meditative tone as the speaker makes a series of observations.
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Meter
"The Whitsun Weddings" is a tightly-organized metrical poem, and is a quintessential example of Larkin's control of rhythm and stress. The poem is definitively iambic (da-DUM), giving it a steadily propulsive sound that evokes the momentum of a train traveling across the country. For the most part, these iambs are in lines of five feet—the classic sound of iambic pentameter.
Line 9 provides a perfect example:
The ri- | ver’s lev- | el drift- | ing breadth |began,
Notice how steady and consistent this sounds. If there's one classic metrical scheme for English poetry, it's probably iambic pentameter—making this the perfect meter for a poem so resolutely based in the English landscape (both rural and urban). The rhythm is also hypnotic, evoking the way that the rhythms of train wheels can lull people into a kind of stupor (or sleep!).
Of course, one look at any of the poem's eight stanzas will demonstrate that not all the lines have five metrical feet. The second line in each stanza is only two feet long (iambic dimeter). Apart from being another demonstration of Larkin's control of meter, this seems to mimic the push and pull of a train accelerating and decelerating as it negotiates several stations along its route. "For miles | inland"—which is line 12—is a good example of this variation.
It's worth noting that the poem's general form is very close to the odes of John Keats, a 19th century British Romantic poet (see "Ode to a Nightingale"). Like those odes, this poem has ten-line stanzas, and both poets use the same rhyme scheme. So perhaps the shorter second line in each stanza is Larkin's way of marking this form as his own—paying tribute to Keats but also diverging in his own direction.
There are a few key moments where the poem disrupts its iambic pattern. Line 32, for example, employs a troachic (DUM-da) substitution in its first foot:
Waving | goodbye
This makes the word "wave" seem more active, while also giving it a falling rhythm that perhaps foreshadows the similar metrical effects used in the poem's penultimate line.
Before looking at that line, though, here is line 57:
We hur- | ried towards Lon- | don, shuff- | ling gouts | of steam.
There are a number of ways of scanning the above line, but notice how the unstressed syllables in "hurried towards London" seem to rush out of the mouth, as the reader tries to squeeze the extra syllables into the established iambic sound. This, then, mimics the very image that it describes—a hurried journey.
Now, here's the poem's end (lines 79 and 80):
A sense | of fall- | ing, like | an arr- | ow shower
Sent out | of sight, | somewhere | becom- | ing rain.Notice how the penultimate line (79) builds tension through the sound of falling. Though it can be scanned to pretty much conform to iambic pentameter, the extra syllable at the end of the line creates this falling effect:
A sense | of fal- | ling, like | an ar- | row shower
Contrast that line, then, with the one that follows immediately after and closes the poem. The last two feet in this line are iambic again ("becom- | ing rain"), which has the effect of bringing the poem's sound back down to earth. So, the penultimate line goes up and the final line goes down, ending on the heavy stress of rain.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme in "The Whitsun Weddings" is strict and regular throughout the poem. Each ten-line stanza runs:
ABABCDECDE
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the rhyme scheme—apart from the way Larkin sustains it for so many lines without it becoming tiresome—is the way that it is not even that noticeable. Indeed, Larkin opts for a conversational tone without too many obvious poetic elements—and the rhymes are just there, without drawing too much attention to themselves. They help push the poem forward, but without becoming a distraction.
Many of the rhymes are also slant rhymes—often so imperceptible that it's only through the rhyme scheme in other stanzas that readers can notice them. For instance, "street" and "meet" clearly rhyme in stanza one, whereas the chime between "grass" and "cars" is much more subtle. Similarly, the rhyme between "sense" and "fish-dock," if it exists at all, is practically impossible to perceive (the two share sibilant sounds, and their /e/ and /i/ sounds are somewhat similar), while the rhyme between "froth" and "carriage-cloth" in stanza two is crystal clear.
These moments help steer the poem away from overly poetic language. They also suggest a tension between a prescribed path (rhyme scheme), and the possibility of wandering away from that path—just as young people must weigh the pressure to marry against the option of breaking with that tradition.
As a whole, this rhyme scheme has its roots in the Keatsian ode, which follows the same set of rhymes and was John Keats's development of the classical ode form. It lends itself well to meditative contemplation, which is precisely what is on show in this poem (aided by the meditative rhythms of the train journey itself). Technically speaking, the rhyme scheme divides each stanza into four lines and six lines respectively—a quatrain and a sestet. Larkin intentionally avoids accenting this division, aiming for the disarming casual tone that draws the reader deep into the poem.
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Speaker
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Most people interpret the speaker in this poem as Larkin himself—or a version of Larkin at least! This would have been a familiar train journey for Larkin, who lived and worked in Hull (east England) for most of his life. The poem is written in the first-person singular ("I"), but occasionally it slips into the first-person plural ("we"). This slight confusion is thematically useful for the poem, showing that there is a kind of tension between the speaker's isolation as a detached observer and the groups of wedding guests—between individual and community, in other words.
That said, there is no clear indicator in the poem itself as to who the speaker is. However, for the sake of clarity, this guide has also taken the speaker to be Larkin or a version of Larkin. As such, we use the singular "he" to refer to the speaker, in contrast to the "they" that refers to the many people that the individual speaker sees on his journey.
For the most part, the speaker is just a typical train-traveler gazing out of the window. At first, he doesn't even notice the boisterous wedding parties, mistaking them for rowdy employees (line 26). He tries to go on reading, but then he takes more notice of the weddings, deciding to concentrate on them more intently. The rest of the poem depicts his innermost thoughts about those weddings, and there is a distinct division between him and them. For the most part, his tone is very down-to-earth—but it takes a leap into something more figurative in the poem's closing image of an "arrow-shower" falling "out of sight."
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“The Whitsun Weddings” Setting
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"The Whitsun Weddings" has a very distinctive sense of setting. First of all, it's set on a specific day—Whitsun Saturday (in May). It takes place in England on a journey between the east (Lincolnshire) and London, the capital. The year isn't specified though there are clues that place it in the 1950s, which was when the Larkin wrote and published the poem. It's a hot day, making the trains "reek" with the stench of "carriage-cloth."
The poem is, of course, set on a train. This is a vital component of how the poem develops—the train journey provides the poem's vantage point (the speaker looking out of the window) and the sense of time passing, as the speaker passes through one station after another. This combination of the speaker's gaze and the hours going by contributes to the poem's meditative and reflective tone.
The poem, then, is full of observations specifically relating to the setting. The speaker observes both rural and urban environments—farms and "acres of dismantled cars." This gives the reader a sense of post-war England—the speaker passes towns that are too new to really have their own character, and this contributes to a tension between the natural world and urban growth (playing into the poem's discussion of love as a kind of unstoppable life-force). Cultural references like the Odeon cinema and "someone running up to bowl" (cricket) showcase typical leisure activities of the day.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Whitsun Weddings”
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Literary Context
"The Whitsun Wedding" is one of Larkin's most enduring poems and showcases many of his poetry's distinctive characteristics. There is a virtuosic control of rhyme and meter coupled with a disarmingly down-to-earth tone. Larkin was grouped with a number of other mid-20th century British poet as The Movement (poets like Thom Gunn, Donald Davie, and Ted Hughes) who defined themselves against the Romantic and abstract excesses of earlier poets like Dylan Thomas.
As always, these kinds of groupings are somewhat crude—and, indeed, Larkin's poetry features many elements that are perhaps more in line with the Romantic poets than it first appears. This poem, for example, is heavily indebted to the formal innovations of John Keats, perhaps the quintessential Romantic poet. "The Whitsun Weddings" has the same stanza length, rhyme scheme, and meditative tone as some of Keats's odes (for instance, "Ode to a Nightingale"). That said, this poem is considerably less prone to romantic idealism, and feels very much rooted in its specific historical and cultural context.
Larkin has a reputation for being a somewhat miserable, cynical poet. While there's undoubtedly some truth in this, the poem is undoubtedly beautiful and certainly has an element of nostalgic longing throughout it. For someone so supposedly critical of love, the subject occupies a number of Larkin's most famous poems.
A good comparison poem would be "An Arundel Tomb," which uses a sculpture as a way to reflect on the nature of love. This poem appears in the same collection as "The Whitsun Weddings" (the collection is also called The Whitsun Weddings). This poem subtly hints that love might not be quite as magical as it seems. Such a sentiment is probably best expressed in Larkin's "This Be the Verse." That poem presents love as a kind of dumb biological force, helping one generation "hand[] on misery" to the next.
Historical Context
The poem is set sometime in 1950s England, and the historical context plays an important role throughout. For one thing, getting married on the Whitsun weekend afforded the British public a longer weekend (because the following Monday was a bank holiday). This made it a very popular weekend for getting married—hence the sheer number of wedding parties encountered on the speaker's train journey from Lincolnshire to London.
The poem's historical context also plays out in the view from the train window. The speaker, usually taken to be Larkin himself, sees a country in transition. England underwent a great deal of rebuilding after the Second World War, and whole new towns were created (the "nondescript" nature of these towns is referenced in line 19). There is a kind of tension between the rural countryside and the built urban environment, subtly playing out beside the train tracks.
The approach to London brings with it a noticeable change too, the speaker seeing signs of popular leisure activities like the cinema and cricket (lines 65 and 66). Larkin was preoccupied with the changing nature of sex and relationships in British society, and though this poem predates the introduction of the contraceptive pill and the liberating attitudes of the 1960s, Larkin's fixation on the meaning—or lack of meaning—of love is in full display. The poem also nods to love as a kind of constant presence in human history with the allusion to Cupid (a god from classical mythology) in the closing lines.
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More “The Whitsun Weddings” Resources
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External Resources
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Larkin's Life and Work — A valuable resource from the Poetry Foundation.
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A Reading of the Poem — Listen to the poem read by the poet himself.
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Weddings Statistics — An interesting analysis of the changing social habits of marriage through the years, from the British Office of National Statistics.
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Return to Larkinland — Watch a BBC documentary about Larkin and the importance of place in his poetry.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Philip Larkin
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