Literary Analysis: "Golden" and "The Erl-King" Compared

Introduction: Two Voices, Two Worlds

Ariel Smith's poem "Golden" and Angela Carter's prose narrative "The Erl-King" — collected in Carter's celebrated volume The Bloody Chamber — are two very different works that nonetheless share a common preoccupation: the experience of women who find themselves caught between desire and entrapment, between surface appearance and inner worth. Each work uses a distinct set of literary devices to convey its narrator's emotional reality, and each rewards close reading precisely because its most powerful meanings are encoded in specific images, sounds, and figures of speech.

Close Reading of 'Golden' by Ariel Smith

The most striking line in "Golden" is: "I lean over / big, shiny smile wasted on you." This moment drives home the central argument of the poem — that the prostitute is a full human being who has genuine value, and that what she possesses is, in an important sense, more valuable than what the man in the car is seeking. She offers him a smile to attract his attention, yet the transaction that follows is hollow and conducted for a negligible sum of money. There is nothing real or substantial in the interaction. There is no hint of the possible outcomes that characterize a traditional, healthy relationship — no courtship, no possibility of lasting connection — and so her smile, along with all of her inner charm, is genuinely wasted on a man who wants nothing more than a brief, anonymous encounter. The line invites the reader to sympathize with the narrator and to wonder what her life might look like if only there were someone on whom that smile would not be wasted.

Literary Devices in 'Golden': Irony and Simile

Smith relies on two key literary devices — irony and simile — to convey the tension at the heart of her poem. She calls her speaker "golden," yet the details that follow make clear that this woman is heavily painted and gaudily dressed, wearing shoes in which she can barely walk, all for reasons that have nothing to do with being golden in any meaningful sense. What is truly golden about her — her spirit, her soul, her capacity for genuine human connection — goes entirely unnoticed and unvalued by the men who seek her out. She is reduced to a sex object, nothing more. The irony embedded in that self-description therefore carries real force: it makes the reader see the gap between how she presents herself and what she actually is, and it generates considerable sympathy.

The simile Smith employs reinforces this effect. Describing herself and the other women as "made up like perfect, pretty dollies" is a comparison that lands like a gut punch. She is not a doll; she is a real person who feels, longs, and suffers, yet she is trapped in an endless routine of selling herself short to men who do not deserve her. The simile captures both the artificiality of the role she is forced to perform and the dehumanizing nature of that performance.

Conclusion: What These Voices Teach the Reader

Each of these two works teaches the reader something new. From Smith's poem, we gain a sense of what it must feel like to be a prostitute — not from the outside, but from within. The poem is effective precisely because, beneath its matter-of-fact surface, there is a current of longing for romance and for a real relationship that makes the speaker's situation feel genuinely affecting. There is nothing romantic about her life as she describes it, yet the longing for romance is present in every line. From Carter's narrative, we learn what it is like to be in love and yet to be afraid of love — to recognize in another person's arms the very thing that could destroy you. Both voices are remarkable for their honesty, and both reward the close attention that careful literary analysis makes possible.