To Elsie
To Elsie (1)
The pure products of America (2)
go crazy (3) —
mountain folk (4) from Kentucky
or the ribbed north (5) end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes (6) and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names (7)
and promiscuity (8) between
devil-may-care (9) men who have taken
to railroading (10)
out of sheer lust of adventure (11) —
and young slatterns (12) , bathed
in filth (13)
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds(14)
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character (15)
but flutter (16) and flaunt (17)
sheer rags (18) —succumbing (19) without
emotion
save (20) numbed terror (21)
under some hedge of choke-cherry (22)
or viburnum (23)—
which they cannot express (24)—
Unless it (25) be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood (26)
will throw up a girl (27) so desolate
so hemmed round (28)
with disease or murder
that she'll be rescued by an
agent (29) —
reared (30) by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed (31)
house in the suburbs—
some doctor's family (32), some (33) Elsie—
voluptuous (34) water (35)
expressing with broken
brain (36) the truth about us—
her great
ungainly (37) hips and flopping (38) breasts
addressed to (39) cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement (40) of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
while the imagination strains (41)
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod (42) in
the stifling (43) heat of September
somehow
it seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks (44) that
something
is given off (45)
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car (46)
FOOTNOTES
(1)The title addresses Elsie Borden, Williams’ retarded nursemaid from the State Orphanage.
(2) Adopting a Marxist view, Williams uses ‘products’ to refer to alienated, dehumanized, insignificant people in a capitalist society, and Elsie is merely another insignificant object. Also note the commercial tone of the phrase.
(3) Get confused.
(4) Peasants living in the mountains here from Kentucky. Peasants and suburban people are traditionally believed to have rich rites and rituals of their own. Besides, they have a closer contact with nature. Nevertheless, the peasants in ‘To Elsie’ have lost their identity as a result of the identity the capitalist society provides for them; thus they are confused.
(5) With a ragged edge resembling that of the ribs. Bear in mind how nature is degraded by the way Williams describes it.
(6) Lakes, although used to be part of a magnificent nature, are isolated and have lost their majesty. This isolation also provides an imagery-ground for the isolated man.
(7) Most probably, it refers to people who are famous in that field.
(8) Have sexual intercourse.
(9) An idiomatic expression meaning rash, reluctant people, here referring to the peasants.
(10) Went to work on the railways.
(11) Merely for the sake of adventure. Also note the negative tone he uses: lust of adventure.
(12) A formal derogatory term meaning a dirty, untidy woman, here women.
(13) The women are very dirty.
(14) To be deceived by men with bright, showy, not very valuable objects, i.e. gauds, into having sexual intercourse with them.
(15) To be deceived due to their way of thought, imaginations, which does not have any roots in their peasant life and is the product of the capitalist ideology.
(16) Move in an irregular way.
(17) Denotes showing off something especially valuable.
(18) Old, torn or worn clothes.
(19) Yield (to men)
(20) Except for
(21) Feeling of terror. The women who have yielded to men do not have any feelings to express except for the terror of committing adultery which they cannot even express, as they are totally numbed.
(22) A kind of wild North American wild cherry tree with fruits good for stopping hemorrhage in an injury.
(23) A type of American plant that belongs to the honeysuckle family whose Latin meaning is ‘wayfaring tree.’
(24) Either they cannot express the terror or tell the two plants apart.
(25) Refers to the girls divulging their intercourse with a man.
(26) The only way they can explain is apparently to say they had married an American-Indian through cutting their, the couple’s, veins.
(27) Produce a girl.
(28) Surrounded by, meaning their lives are perpetually threatened with those hazards.
(29) An agent of the government.
(30) Brought up.
(31) Very crowded.
(32) Williams’ father was a physician and had hired Elsie as a servant. The doctor and the servant resemble different walks of life in a capitalist society.
(33) Note how insignificantly Elsie is described. ‘Some’ also has been used to describe the doctor, but the reader should bear in mind the doctor’s social status no matter how we are told of him.
(34) Sensuous.
(35) Elsie’s body is compared to the water as a result of being loose.
(36) She was mentally handicapped.
(37) Not graceful.
(38) Hanging loosely.
(39) They notice her sensuous body.
(40) Body waste. The facts that the earth is ‘an excrement of some sky’, we ‘degraded prisoners…’, ‘the imagination straining after deer…’, and his getting suffocated in the ‘September heat’ are the truths he is referring to in line 43.
(41) The memory helplessly and at the same time eagerly remembers the “deer.”
(42) Any of numerous chiefly North American composite perennial herbs with small heads of usu. Yellow late-blooming flowers.
(43) Suffocating.
(44) Very small amount.
(45) Leaked out.
(46) The car is running out of control; the last line of the poem refers to the first line of the poem: ‘pure products of America go crazy.’
ANALYSIS
Williams’ total disillusion with America is perfectly clear in ‘To Elsie.’ He is showing, in this poem, in ‘isolate flecks’, an almost comprehensive picture of the general status of man in a capitalistic society, women’s condition, the role of money and sex and finally a contemporary American nature since nature had loomed greatly in American literature since Transcendentalism about a century prior to Williams. Moreover, his version of capitalism is a flexible one.
Whitman, a very prominent figure in Transcendentalist literature, describes a grass while explaining to a child as
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
A small insignificant blade of grass turns into the majestic universe and consequently to the Lord for him. Whitman and his contemporaries were trying to show that each and every tiny particle in the surrounding nature bears a signature to God. Nevertheless, the nature in ‘to Elsie’ is an already dead, ‘desolate’ and ‘ribbed’ one. The poem never focuses on nature much since it no longer exists as it used to do. Besides, the speaker of the poem sees the whole Jersey smaller and less insignificant than a grass
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys…
Moreover, peasants, the inhabitants of nature, have also lost their contact with it. They are totally alienated from it and are basically metamorphosed into new objects which are ‘pure products of America.’ No more rich peasant customs, rites, and rituals, but a new ideology that suits the capitalist cause: gauds for the local gods
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags
As if man has sold nature’s company to capitalism’s friendship, and what capitalism grants in return is mere confusion since according to the poem it is at odds with humanity. We can see that in Elsie who, personally I believe, stands for the whole race of mankind; as a result she is symbolically retarded.
Elsie, though being a real character, serves, as I mentioned a bit earlier, as a symbol to show the distorted humanity. She is a retarded person; so is her contemporary America. She is obsessed with the notion of money through the cheap decorations she addresses herself to and a kind of a sensual chasm:
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
And so are other women who yield to men when ‘tricked out that night/ with gauds’ and men who are only rapists and savages. In such a society with such an economic and political system man has turned into what H.G. Wells calls ‘Murdocks.’ The world in his book ‘The Time Machine’ has been divided between the fragile, helpless Elio who inhabit the surface of the earth, and the fierce, obscene Murdocks who clamber about in the darkness of their underground tunnels like human spiders emerging only at nights. They descend from the working class, do all the physical labor and are only barbarians who have no understanding.
Although a feminist reading of the poem is pretty irresistible and the feminist critic shall find enough evidence to upport his/her argument, men do not enjoy a much more privileged status than women in the poem holding a Marxist approach. Women are deceived by men, they are raped and lead a far more miserable life than men, but men are pictured exclusively in animalistic dimensions
thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure
The images Williams pictures his poem with, though fragmented and not very long, serve well to ‘express…the truth about us.’ The very fact that everyone is leading a ‘filthy’ life:
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
Man’s condition deserves sympathy and he seems so sunk that he cannot be helped, but at the finishing parts of the poem there dimly glitters sparks of hope
while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod
At the back of his mind, Williams sees the mind still alive and wishes to go after the nature where he belongs. His capitalism is not a very strict one, binding humanity to only one possible capitalist determinism. He leaves a small passage for the mind to ‘strain after’ whatever man has lost so far.
Williams in ‘To Elsie’ portrays an almost dark and gloomy image of man and society. He has lost his place in nature and in finding a new one he is totally confused. The characters in the poem are all more or less distorted mentally as a result of the exploitive ideology they are addressed to. Both sexes, not only women, have contracted the capitalistic disease of valuing money and descend from their humane grade to gain it.
Maryam Akbari