Edwin Arlington Robinson

Vain Gratuities

Never was there a man much uglier
In the eyes of other women, or more grim:

chalice to the brim

Biblical phrasing for 'cup of suffering'—Psalm 23's 'my cup runneth over' inverted. The gossiping women mock her marriage as divine punishment requiring stoic endurance.

"The Lord has filled her chalice to the brim,
So let us pray she's a philosopher,"
They said; and there was more they said of her—
Deeming it, after twenty years with him,
No wonder that she kept her figure slim

kept her figure slim

The cattiness peaks here. They're suggesting stress and misery kept her thin—implying she can't eat from unhappiness, a backhanded compliment disguised as concern.

think of lavender

Lavender = old-fashioned, dried-up, past her prime. Also suggests she's preserving herself like dried flowers—beautiful but lifeless. The women are calling her a spinster in all but name.

And always made you think of lavender.
But she, demure as ever, and as fair,

demure as ever

Robinson's turn begins. 'Demure' isn't fragility—it's self-possession. She doesn't need to defend herself to these women because she genuinely doesn't care what they think.

Almost, as they remembered her before
She found him, would have laughed had she been there;
And all they said would have been heard no more

foam that washes

The final image: their gossip is ocean foam on an uninhabited island. Not just unheard—it occurs where no one exists to hear it. Their opinions literally don't exist in her world.

Than foam that washes on an island shore
Where there are none to listen or to care.
The New RepublicEdwin Arlington Robinson
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Sonnet's Architecture

Robinson uses the Italian sonnet structure to stage a debate. The octave (first 8 lines) belongs entirely to the gossiping women—notice there's no narrator intrusion, just their quoted cruelty and the poet's reporting of it. The volta (turn) at line 9 shifts perspective completely: 'But she' introduces the wife's reality, which contradicts everything the women assume.

The rhyme scheme reinforces this division. The octave's ABBAABBA creates a closed circle—the women talking to themselves, reinforcing their own judgments. The sestet's CDCDCD opens outward, suggesting the wife's world extends beyond their narrow frame. 'Before / more / shore' and 'there / her / care' create sonic space, literally making the poem sound more expansive when describing her actual experience.

The final couplet effect (though this isn't technically a couplet) delivers the crushing dismissal: their words are 'foam' on an 'island shore / Where there are none to listen or to care.' Not 'she doesn't care'—there are literally 'none' there. The women don't exist in her consciousness at all.

What Robinson Knows About Gossip

CONTEXT Robinson spent his career writing psychological portraits of New England characters, often focusing on interior lives that contradict public perception. His Tilbury Town poems repeatedly explore the gap between how people are seen and who they actually are.

The women's gossip reveals class-based aesthetic standards. They find the husband 'uglier / In the eyes of other women'—beauty is a social consensus, and he violates it. The phrase 'other women' is doing work: it excludes the wife from the category of women whose opinions count. She's either blind, desperate, or philosophically resigned (their three theories).

'After twenty years with him' is the tell. Twenty years of apparent contentment baffles them more than the initial marriage. They need her to be suffering—hence reading her slim figure as evidence of misery rather than simple constitution. The lavender image captures their fantasy: she's a dried flower, preserved but dead inside, maintaining appearances while slowly withering.

But Robinson's 'would have laughed' is conditional and devastating. She's not even present for this conversation—and if she were, laughter would be her response. Not anger, not hurt—laughter at the absurdity of their certainty about her inner life. The poem's final move makes their gossip not just wrong but ontologically void: foam washing on shores where no consciousness exists to register it.