¶ … Golden" and "The Erl-King" My favorite quote in "Golden" by Ariel Smith is "I lean over / big, shiny smile wasted on you" -- it really drives home the fact that the prostitute is a person too who has value and meaning and that what she has is actually more valuable than the person in the car looking for sex. She gives him a smile to attract, but the transaction is empty and for a measly chunk of change. There is nothing real or substantial in the interaction; there is no hint of a possible outcome like that in a traditional, healthy relationship between a man and a woman; there is no likelihood of courtship or marriage; thus, her smile (her charms) are wasted on this guy who is simply looking to "hook up." It makes the reader sympathize with her and wonder what her life would be like if only there were a man on whom that smile would not be wasted.

My favorite quote from "The Erl-King" by Angela Carter is "His embraces were his enticements and yet, oh yet! they were the branches of which the trap itself was woven" -- it really signifies the complexity of the love-relationship, the way in which a couple becomes one; only here the narrator does not want to be caught in this love-embrace, though she does love the King; she does not want to be turned into one of the trapped birds in the King's cages; thus, even though she wants to enjoy his arms and his embrace, she recognizes that they...

This line drives straight to the heart of the narrative and colors it wonderfully for the reader.
I learned something new from each of these voices; from the Smith piece, I learned what it must feel like to be a prostitute, and from the Carter piece, I learned what it must be like to be in love and yet be afraid of being in love. Smith's poem is effective in conveying life through the eyes of a girl who sells herself to men; there is nothing romantic about this life, but in between the lines there is a longing for romance and for a real relationship that makes the poem very effective.

Smith uses irony and simile -- two literary devices to convey this tension. She calls herself "golden" and yet she also describes herself in terms that make the reader realize that she is over-painted and gaudily dressed in shoes in which she cannot even walk for a reason that is not very golden at all. What is golden about her is what is on the inside -- her spirit, her soul -- yet no one notices that or even wants or cares about it. She is just a sex object to men, nothing more. Thus, the irony she creates in describing herself as "golden" packs a punch that makes the reader view her more sympathetically. The way in which she says the she and the others are "made up like perfect, pretty dollies" is a use of simile that adds to the gut punch of the poem: she is not a doll; she…