The Landlady
The Landlady - meaning Summary
Oppressive Domestic Presence
The speaker depicts a landlady as an intrusive, dominating presence that occupies rooms, thoughts and daily routine. She controls the speaker’s time, meals and dreams, appearing as a physical bulk that blocks perception and escape. Imagery emphasizes her persistence and materiality—everyday, unavoidable and almost grotesquely concrete—so the poem registers a claustrophobic, powerless relationship in which nothing feels private or truly owned.
Read Complete AnalysesThis is the lair of the landlady She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. the continuous henyard squabble going on below thought in this house like the bicker of blood through the head. She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells that bulge in under my doorsill; she presides over my meagre eating, generates the light for eyestrain. From her I rent my time: she slams my days like doors. Nothing is mine. and when I dream images of daring escapes through the snow I find myself walking always over a vast face which is the land- lady's, and wake up shouting. She is a bulk, a knot swollen in a space. Though I have tried to find some way around her, my senses are cluttered by perception and can't see through her. She stands there, a raucous fact blocking my way: immutable, a slab of what is real. solid as bacon.
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