How All Occasions Do Inform: "Household Matters" and Domestic Vignettes in George Meredith's Modern Love‪.‬

FOR ALMOST A CENTURY AND A HALF GEORGE MEREDITH'S MODERN LOVE HAS been recognized as a challengingly, troublingly modern poem. Successive generations found it contemporary and pertinent. In 1862 the poem irked and even scandalized reviewers for its disturbing tastelessness and for what seemed its vulgar, amoral undressing of marital relations. The young Swinburne, an avatar of the new and shocking, was rare among the poem's first reviewers for his admiring letter in the Spectator of that year. (1) Apprehension about the poem's indecency, however, quickly yielded to apprecitations of its art and then examinations of its richness in form, in style, in narration, and in imagery. Meredith mimes the courtly sonnet tradition to reveal a tale of marital disarray. The poem's images, which have been widely discussed, combine to depict domestic scenes from this marriage, scenes that are sharp, lucid, and forceful. The emotions--essentially those of the husband--highlight the personal tensions and interpersonal "games" of the couple (what might now be termed "the family dynamics"). Meredith's form, his images, and his attention to psychology 'all contribute to the sense of modernity in Modern Love. Especially contemporary in their feel are the often scathing domestic vignettes that alternate with lyric passages, that sustain the narrative of the poem, and that we are likely to find so vivid and striking. Much of the power and effect of Modern Love derives from them, though they have drawn little critical attention.