The Large Cool Store
The Large Cool Store - context Summary
1964, in the Whitsun Weddings
Written and published in 1964 and included in The Whitsun Weddings, Larkin’s poem situates a modern department-store scene against the routines of working-class life. It contrasts plain daytime garments with bright, synthetic nightwear and reads that contrast as emblematic: love, women, or desire appear separate, artificial, and unearthly compared with everyday reality. The poem registers mid‑20th‑century consumer culture and emotional estrangement in a compact, observational voice.
Read Complete AnalysesThe large cool store selling cheap clothes Set out in simple sizes plainly (Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose, In Browns and greys, maroons and navy) Conjures the weekday world of those Who leave at dawn low terraced houses Timed for factory, yard and site. But past the heaps of shirts and trousers Spread the stands of Modes For Night: Machine-embroidered, thin as blouses, Lemon, sapphire, moss-green, rose Bri-Nylon Baby-Dolls and Shorties Flounce in clusters. To suppose They share that world, to think their sort is Matched by something in it, shows How separate and unearthly love is, Or women are, or what they do, Or in our young unreal wishes Seem to be: synthetic, new And natureless in ecstasies.
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