Gender, Class, and Fatherhood in Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays"

In "Those Winter Sundays," Robert Hayden memorializes his working-class father in an emotionally powerful poem. The speaker reflects on his father's inability to demonstrate love and affection in ways a young child might have preferred, as the man instead labored his life away to the point where resting even on Sundays was barely possible. The poem is set on a Sunday so that the speaker can reflect fully on how working-class labor can be dispiriting, while the seasonal setting of winter provides additional imagery of the brutality of northern cold. Throughout his life, the father depicted in the poem remains stoic and uncomplaining, yet his frustration and anger do manifest themselves within the home environment. Notably absent from the poem is any mention of a mother, suggesting that the father may have been raising his son alone. Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" comments on masculinity as well as social class, revealing the intersection between gender and class as twin forces shaping family life.

One of the prevailing themes of "Those Winter Sundays" is how relationships between fathers and sons become strained when fathers are conscripted into the capitalist model of labor exploitation. As Hiraldo points out, literature such as Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Miller's Death of a Salesman share the common theme of showing how the strain of trying to achieve the American Dream creates problems for working-class families. Both works depict the motif of "separation" between father and son as a direct result of the stress of the working-class labor model (Hiraldo 6).

Separation is a major motif in "Those Winter Sundays," and Hayden uses diction to emphasize it throughout. The speaker describes the winter cold as so brutal it could be heard as a "splintering" or "breaking" sound (line 6). Both terms emphasize the brutality of winter and simultaneously function as metaphors for the separation of father from son, as well as the father's separation from his own emotions. The term splinter refers literally to the severing of an object — like wood — rendering it fragmented rather than whole. Likewise, the term breaking encapsulates several additional elements of the poem. The labor the father performs is backbreaking, exacting a heavy toll on his body. Labor breaks the spirits of the working class while also breaking families apart — splintering them.

In "Those Winter Sundays," the speaker also hints at the effects of backbreaking manual labor on men's mental health. The father's hands are described as "cracked" — a term also used colloquially to describe someone who is mentally ill or who has lost touch with reality (line 3). In the poem, however, it is not so much detachment from reality that constitutes the mental health issue, but rather the detachment, or "separation," between father and son that Hiraldo identifies as quintessential to the working-class patriarchal ethos (6). Questioning the "emotional and psychological ideals attached to our economic system" is not the primary purpose of "Those Winter Sundays" (Hiraldo 6). The poem does comment on the alienation created by capitalist labor systems, but Hayden's treatment is more personal than it is a vehicle for broad social commentary.

Nevertheless, the speaker insinuates that the father's need to provide for his family within a capitalist, patriarchal social structure is what ultimately leads to his inability to express emotions in a healthy way. The father effectively sacrifices his own life for his son, and in doing so sacrifices the possibility of an emotional or affectionate bond. The father does not express love verbally, but nor does the son, who admits to "speaking indifferently to him" (line 10). The speaker grew up fearing his father because of the emotional distance between them. Emotional distance is conventionally characterized by the metaphor of coldness, and the coldness in "Those Winter Sundays" symbolizes the emotional coldness within the family — a coldness created by the father's inability to transcend societal gender norms that cast men as primary breadwinners who must remain inexpressive of love and emotion.

The suggestion of domestic violence in the poem occurs when the speaker describes the extreme cold using the term "blueblack" (line 2). The father has to dress in the "blueblack cold," and the startling, poignant imagery evokes a black-and-blue mark — a bruise — to describe the way the cold affects the human body. However, Hayden also deploys the term blueblack specifically to hint at the possibility of physical abuse or domestic violence. The speaker does not overtly mention being beaten by his father, but the word may imply violence, as does the speaker's reference to "fearing the chronic angers of that house" (line 9). Hayden is not justifying domestic violence; rather, the poet aims to reveal its genesis in male psychology — the conflict between the need to provide for the family and the strain of being unable to do so while still maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Gallagher suggests that Hayden lets the father off the hook from his responsibility to create emotional attachments and display love and affection, finding "discontent and bitterness" as well as "deep sadness" in the poem (246). While bitterness and deep sadness are certainly among the most prevalent emotional themes in "Those Winter Sundays," the poem is not necessarily about justifying the father's anger — it is about explaining it.

The primary theme of "Those Winter Sundays" is encapsulated in line 5: "no one ever thanked him." The poem is cathartic because the speaker is able to memorialize his father by, in effect, thanking him. The speaker did not understand that his father loved him at the time because his father did not know how to express that love. As Moore points out, however, the father's actions all denote "service, kindness, and attention" (58). The young boy could not recognize this, but as the speaker reflects on his father in adulthood, he becomes aware of how much his father loved him and how much he sacrificed.