Cambridge Ladies PDF

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Summary of the poem titled "Cambridge Ladies" for Poetics 2156 with Patrick Jackson ...

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Hayley Maine Poetics Jackson 11/12/17 Cambridge Ladies and Empty Minds E.E Cummings has always been one of my favorite poets based on his modernist principles. His poem, “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls” is one of his many pieces that apply in numerous ways to Modernist principles through its characteristics, theme, and language. Specifically, this poem touches on the idea that ideas should stand on their own, rejects previous convention, and talks about an immanent experience. Traditional poems dealing with women, as this one does, often talks of them in a Blazon or in romantic sense that exemplifies their ladylikeness. They discuss women in a light that they are to be desired, or never touched at all to save their innocence. In many ways they are compared to angels, and intelligent based on their ways to sway the men. However, they weren’t often criticized for who they are, or who they have made to be by the people around them. However, Cummings does through his modernist thinking. His first few lines talk of their “furnished” souls, created by the craftsman around them instead of themselves and the comfortable, unbeautiful beings they have become as a result. “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds (also, with the church's protestant blessings daughters, unscented shapeless spirited) they believe in Christ and Longfellow,1 both dead,” (1393).

This is where the immanent experience comes in. This idea of women is not what we expect. We don’t expect them to be criticized for being housewives or fearers of God. We don’t expect for their less than mundane behavior molded by the society around them to be bashed. This is not the reality that the traditional readers want to be sold. However, the readers of this specific poem wouldn’t be traditional. They would be modernist in the sense that they would want to read this radical idea that women should be something more than housewives. This is in relation to the specific women talked about in this poem, which according to Modernist standards wouldn’t be reading this poem either. They are not a part of the secret circle belonging to those who write this material. They are a part of those criticized inside the poem itself. The theme of this poem, I think, would be “Do not go easy” which fits in with modernism in the sense that one would fight against the grain. Cummings wants the readers to refuse this pre-set society behavior. He wants the poem to tell them to fight against their predetermined roles. This is an extremely modernist idea because it fights against what it familiar. It creates a new world and the new ideas that stand solely on their own....