Robert Frost and Character

¶ … Home Burial" And The Woman In Robert Frost's "Home Burial," the woman in the poem is grieved -- both haunted by the death of her child and by the lack of compassion that she senses in her husband's callousness. At least, she perceives it to be callousness. As the poem plays out, it appears more and more that the man is simply short-tempered and lacking in emotional intelligence: he has none of the sensitivity that a grieving woman might prefer from a man.

However, it might also be that her anger towards him stems from some unknown grudge -- some ill-will that she bears him and that it is projected outward only when she is frustrated by his attempts to intellectualize her grief.

In Frost's "Home Burial," insights about the woman's character are given through the poem's dialogue and description -- snippets that begin first with the narrator, then the husband, then most fully from the woman herself -- and this paper will show how her character is illuminated to various degrees in this manner as the poem progresses.

At first, the woman's character is viewed clinically from the narrator's point-of-view -- she is first brought to the reader through the words of the narrator who describes her as "starting down," "looking back," and taking a "doubtful step" -- as though she does not know where she is going or what she wants to do (Frost 2-4).

Her husband, who views her as skittish, afraid, uncertain, and alarmed then gives his assessment of her: she is "up there always" seeing something from the window that makes her behave so strangely to him (Frost 7). Of course, it is the grave of their child that she sees and it brings back those painful memories of how he buried the child while she wept and how he spoke of trifling matters when he came in as though he had buried a dog.

She is beside herself with grief and rage when he tries to see what has provoked her so. When he realizes that it is their child's tombstone out the window, he attempts to pacify her -- but she resents him and does not want to open her heart to him. Her character is deepened through her actions -- in the way she tries to flee -- she wants to rush out of the house to someone else.

She wants to be away from him because she considers him to be brutish. This of course is not entirely fair of her, as he begs her to stay and tell him why she is so upset: he pleads to know. She responds that he is always "sneering" (Frost 70) at her feelings, rationalizing them into nothing instead of accepting them and being there to grieve with her. That is all she wants -- someone to grieve with her.

He does not fit that role and so she resents him -- because she feels that he should fill that role: "You can't because you don't know how," she says of him, refusing to allow that he might in fact be capable of feeling grief if only she will deign to conduct him (Frost 75) -- but she berates him for his faults and he rises to anger. She runs off and he calls after threateningly.

Thus, the woman's character is revealed in snippets, first by the narrator, then by the husband and finally by her own words and forceful actions.