The Spring And The Fall

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context

Published in 1922, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem "The Spring and the Fall” appears within the context of Modernism. Modernist poets aimed to bring poetry into the gritty real world of the early 1900s. They moved from grandeur and isolation. For them, poetry wasn't about conveying lofty, rapturous themes but about how words could express a range of ideas or human emotions. "The Spring and the Fall” aligns with Modernism in its attitude toward love. Love isn’t glorious but glum. It’s painful, with the speaker declaring that the man "broke [her] heart, in little ways (Line 12).

Another aspect of Millay’s poem that joins her to Modernism is fragmentation. Modernist poets like T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein emphasized the world's brokenness in their dislocated poems about society, people, and objects. Millay speaks to fragmentation as her speaker’s heart is broken or fragmented. She also breaks apart the division between spring and fall by announcing that there’s "much that’s fine to see and hear” in both seasons.

Yet Millay’s emphasis on rhythm and traditional form separates her from Modernists who preferred harsher sounds and covert rhythms. Eliot’s famous Modernist poem The Waste Land, published the same year as "The Spring and the Fall” in 1922, has moments of melody but they’re not standardized like the melody in Millay’s poem. Thus, Millay’s specific rhyme scheme and general lilt link her to pre-Modernist poetry and the context of traditional poets who prioritized rhyming and pleasant sounds. The form and musical quality of Millay's poem have more in common with Gerald Manley Hopkins’s poem "Spring” (1877) than Amy Lowell's poem "Spring Day” (1916), as the latter is a traditional Victorian poet, and the former an American Modernist.

Historical Context

Published in 1922, Millay’s poem connects to the context of gradual freedom for American women. Although the female speaker is vulnerable to love and its consequences, she nonetheless possesses the confidence to articulate her heartbreaking love affair. In a sense, the speaker in "The Spring and the Fall” isn’t afraid to use her voice or speak about matters that, in previous periods, might have been taboo for a woman to articulate.

Millay’s speaker reflects "The New Woman” or "Gibson Girl” of the late 1800s/early 1900s. This woman generally enjoyed more rights and liberties than women of previous generations. She could bike, work, and create art. "The New Woman” was more multifaceted than previous ideals for women. In "The Spring and the Fall,” the agility of "The New Woman'' manifests in the motion of the poem. The poem swings from season to season and from in love to out of love.

The movement correlates to the Jazz Age—a period of freedom for young people across America during the 1920s and 30s. In "The Spring and the Fall,” the speaker and their dear one have the freedom to wander along the road and pick at nature. At the same time, Millay’s poem is a bit ahead of its time: It anticipates the women’s liberation movement of the 1950s and 60s, which gave women and women poets—Anne Sexton, for example—even more permission to frankly speak about love and other matters.