Society

Society - meaning Summary

Social Decline and Marriage

Pound’s short poem sketches a social transaction: a young woman, Aurelia, whose family fortunes have fallen, is given to an older man, Phidippus. The lines compress loss of youth and autonomy into a single image of “palsied contact,” suggesting social pressure, economic necessity, and the damaging effects of status on personal life. The poem registers pity and social critique without explicit moralizing.