Afternoons

• 'summer is fading'

  • fading - losing vibrancy
  • transitional moment in women's lives
  • summer represents their finest days, whereas the arrival of autumn has negative connotations
  • misogynistic view - once women have had children they are past their prime - devoid of any purpose as an individual
• "Before them"

  • from 'behind' to 'before' highlights the separation between women and identity as lovers
  • prepositional phrase
  • lack of autonomy
  • life before marriage
• 'unripe acorns'

  • metaphor for life
  • happy/free/content/new/fragile/naive
  • small living things dependent on their host
  • metaphor for children - unaware of what life is like - no experience
• context

  • Philip Larkin’s poetry celebrates the ordinary details of day to day life
  • Larkin never married, had children or even left the UK in his whole life
• structure

  • The first stanza deals with Larkin's rather cynical view of marriage and deals with the idea that the young mothers are isolated. Larkin's use of language emphasis the recurring theme of emptiness within the young mothers and how regimented their lives have become
• Our Wedding, lying near the television

  • implies their love has become something ordinary and neglected
  • speaker uses domestic imagery to show how relationships are unappreciated
  • a persons wedding day is usually one of the best days of their lives, but the fact that their memories are "lying" by something as ordinary as 'the television', implies that women's priorities have changed