Poem Outline - Chapter 3 - "Pathedy of Manners" by Ellen Kay

In "Pathedy of Manners" by Ellen Kay, a woman is viewed by the narrator as this woman's her life goes by, telling of the choices that she makes and how her life turns out because of them.

The word choice in the poem tries to be something it isn't, like the woman in the story, and therefore seems unfitting or unsettling in their contexts.

• "She learned the cultured jargon" (5)

"Cultured jargon" is a set of words with two possible meanings. Cultured is an adjective that means refined, but it can also refer to something with an artificial nature. Jargon is a term that means the language of a group, - in this case the upper class - but it can also mean unintelligible, meaningless talk. Therefore, "cultured jargon" can either mean "enlightened and refined speech" or "artificial and unintelligent speech". The first definition of this set of words refers to how most people view the upper class and the way they talk about life, growing up in comfortable homes without poverty. The second definition of this set of words refers to how the woman, who is intelligent, has to dumb herself down to fit in with those who speak the language of the rich.

• "They had an ideal marriage, and ideal / But lonely children in an ideal house" (15-16)

The use of the word "ideal" reveals that the woman's situation seems like it would be just that, "ideal", but in her eyes it is not. The repetition of the word "ideal" makes the word become dull and meaningless after so many uses, when other adjectives could have done the same or even a better job of describing the elements in her life. This sentence seems almost like the chatter of those who are watching her life and wanting to be her, talking to each other about this woman and her "ideal marriage" and her "ideal / ... children" and her "ideal house". The one unhappy word here is "lonely", which is slipped in as an almost afterthought in the list before talking about her "children". The use of the word lonely shows isolation and sadness, breaking the vision of an "ideal" life.

There are words in the poem that appear more than once and bear significance to different parts of the poem.

• "At twenty she was brilliant and adored... sought for every dance" (1-2). "A hundred people call, though not one friend, / ... She will walk / Alone in brilliant circles to the end" (25-28).

The word "brilliant" is used only two times in the whole poem: once at the beginning and once at the end. Both lines happen to start with the letter "a" as well. However, these two sentences show the change between the woman at twenty years old and the woman at forty-three years old. Brilliant is first used to describe the woman herself. She was "adored", regarded highly and admired by many, and people wanted to be around her. They all wanted her so badly, they even "sought" her out specifically. Brilliant is later used to describe the metaphorical circles that the woman will walk "to the end", or until she dies. She is no longer adored like she was twenty-three years ago, for she is now alone with "not one friend". She has gone from being on top in school to being on top in real life, but with the change of how people saw her. The circles are the memories of her hopes and dreams, what she wanted to accomplish, that which she feels she no longer can.

• "Those bred / To antique crystal and authentic pearls" (5-6). "A bright young man whose pearl cufflinks were real" (14).

Pearls are mentioned in the poem as a symbol of the upper class and their lineage. Both times, the credibility of the pearls are stated outright, for they are told to be "authentic pearls" and then the woman's husband was a "man whose pearl cufflinks were real". Validating the pearls emphasizes that they are of real value, and the fact that the woman's husband has real pearls has come to be seen as a symbol of the fact that he is part of the upper class and has wealth.

The woman's life started to take a turn for the worse as she let others interfere, and word-choice is also able to expose this.

• "And when she might have thought, conversed instead" (8).

Instead of using her mind and thinking about life, the woman started to slip into the world of socialites. She begins to spend her time learning rituals of the upper class, no longer leaving time to engage her mind in thought.

• "She shuns conviction, choosing to infer / Tenets of every mind except her own" (23-24).

This woman who once had such a wonderful mind full of intelligence now doesn't trust herself enough to use it anymore. Instead of taking in a fixed structure of an idea, a "conviction", the woman would rather have an inference from someone else. She trusts others more than her own mind. "Tenets" is a word that means an opinion, especially one held as true to members of a group. Saying that the woman would rather get the opinions, of other members of the upper class shows that she wants to assimilate to be like them, and no longer wishes to have her own opinions. The woman had changed the way she spoke earlier on when she "learned the cultured jargon" but now she has changed the way she thinks to no longer reflect her own opinions (5). Both the words "jargon" and "tenet" refer in their definitions to being something for a specific group, such as the upper class. The fact that these types of words keep being used show how the woman is blending into the group and not watching the world around her, only focusing on becoming like those she sees around her most.