Portrait of a Lady AO5

• "Clash of a life of culture and the unaccommodated animal life beneath"


  Perry - Portrait of a lady
• "The poem reveals the 'cruelty and violence' that lie beneath the restraints of polite drawing room conversation"
• "The poem depicts the emptiness and sterility of the life of a cultured woman surrounded by 'bric-a-brac'."
• "The epigraph cuts through the social niceties like a wire"
•  There's a 'social malice' to the poem: the speaker is 'suspended between feelings of attraction and repulsion'