The Landlady

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Sound Devices

Throughout “The Landlady” Atwood uses hard consonants to create sounds that help the actions reverberate within the poem. Words like “bulge” (Line 10), “squabble” (Line 6), and “shouting” (Line 23) have forceful sounds that punch through the poem and create a feeling of power. This power is attributed to the landlady. Atwood also uses alliteration with the hard-consonant sounds to bring even more power to the words in phrases, such as “bicker of blood” and “days like doors” (Lines 8, 16). Furthermore, Atwood uses the S sound to create movement within the poem—“shouting” (Line 23), “slams” (Line 15), “stands” (Line 30). The S sound physically takes longer to make and elongates these actions.

Form and Meter

The poem is written in free verse, which is a poem that does not adhere to a specific structure, though Atwood does build a loose but deliberate structure for the poem with the number of lines in each stanza increasing in number then decreasing again and bookending the poem with single-line stanzas. The longer stanzas build a scene for the reader, each representing an aspect of torment the landlady is causing the speaker, while the shorter stanzas build tension. The brevity of the final line adds to the weight of the statement and the finality of the closing remark.

Just as there is no formal structure, Atwood also does not employ a clear or consistent rhythm in poem. The lines are uneven and contain a wide variation of syllable counts and stresses. This is common in Atwood's poetry, as the bulk of her prolific catalog of poems are written in free verse. Instead of strict structure, Atwood's poetry focuses instead on the musicality and imagery of the words.

Enjambment

Enjambment is when a full sentence is broken by a line break, forcing the reader to move to the next line to complete the thought in a poem. Atwood employs enjambment throughout “The Landlady.” In the second stanza Atwood splits one sentence into three lines: “She is / a raw voice / loose in the rooms beneath me.” Through her use of enjambment and line breaks, Atwood highlights the landlady’s overpowering quality; giving this one description of her three lines slows the reader down and allows more time for the gravity of this depiction to sink in. In the third stanza, “below” in Line 6 is enjambed with “thought” in Line 7, so the word “thought” is literally found “below” in the next line giving extra depth to the statement and helping the reader visualize the meaning. The enjambment of Lines 18 and 19 gives space between “dream images” and “of daring escapes,” which makes the reader take a moment between the juxtaposition of the idea of the “dream images,” which has a positive connotation, and the “daring escapes,” which has a negative connotation. In the penultimate line, the speaker says, “She stands there, a raucous fact / blocking my way” (Lines 30-31). Here Atwood enjambs the “fact” of the landlady with the “blocking” of the speaker, elevating “fact” to a physical presence the speaker cannot move beyond.