Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Winifred Virginia Jackson’s "Deafness" is a haunting narrative poem that fuses elements of gothic horror, psychological breakdown, and isolation into a chilling study of human desperation. The poem’s rhythmic, ballad-like structure reinforces its storytelling nature, while its stark, rural setting enhances the bleakness of the characters’ lives. At its core, "Deafness" is an exploration of solitude turned madness, of the agonizing futility of communication, and of the slow, inevitable unraveling of a mind driven to violence.

The poem opens with a landscape that mirrors the emotional desolation of its protagonist. The "wall-mountain rimmed around the sky" creates an enclosed, almost claustrophobic world, with the farm dropped into it like discarded debris. The description of "scrub trees" with "fingers locked and bared" upon "black rocks" evokes a sense of barrenness and struggle. Even nature appears constrained and lifeless, reinforcing the oppressive atmosphere. The house itself is "a silent thing," likened to a bird trapped in a cage, a metaphor that foreshadows the psychological imprisonment of the woman who inhabits it.

The woman’s initial compassion for the deaf man—her husband or a man she tends to—is soon replaced by exasperation. His "deafness was a sorry chafe / She pitied overmuch." What begins as pity transforms into resentment when he stops speaking altogether. The silence, once a passive affliction, becomes an active force of torment. His silence is not just a personal limitation but a weapon, an intentional erasure of their already fragile connection. She "did not care" at first, as his words had been more "ugly" than necessary, but over time, "the crumbs of peace fell from her mind / As leaves drop from a limb." This image suggests a slow descent into instability, where even small moments of quiet contentment disintegrate under the weight of unrelenting silence.

The woman’s struggle is initially internal, vacillating between potential escapes ("Old Hen Levy’s Place") and the knowledge that the local community ("Four Corners") would not accept her leaving. She fantasizes about breaking through his silence with "shrill words to shriek / To stab his deafness through," yet even in this imagined victory, he maintains power over her. The deaf man manipulates her frustration, goading her into futile outbursts by "cupping his ear with hand," pretending to listen but ultimately reducing her to a hoarse, exhausted fury.

Seasonal shifts provide fleeting relief. Summer offers small comforts—birds singing, poplars whispering, and Plymouth Rock chickens clucking—but winter intensifies the loneliness. The imagery darkens, with "jays shrieking" and a "lone, lean crow" perching ominously. The crow functions as a psychological projection, a "black thought from her heart" that "blurred her brain like wine." The comparison to intoxication suggests a loss of control, a surrender to madness.

The turning point arrives when a storm buries the farm in "one deep drift," a suffocating embrace that isolates them further. The woman, still tethered to duty, shovels a path to the barn to feed the cattle, while the deaf man refuses, "at her plea [shaking] his head." His obstinacy is not just neglect but an assertion of power, a refusal to engage with the shared reality of survival. Meanwhile, the crow, now moved to the barn, becomes an eerie witness, an almost supernatural presence "brooding" in silence.

The climax is brutal yet inevitable. When outsiders arrive, snowshoeing through "Toby’s Gap," they stumble upon a scene of horror: the deaf man "bound in a chair," his throat slashed "ear to ear," his hair hacked away. The woman sits "muttering, / A-waggling of her head," lost in her delusions. Her final declaration—"He heard! He spoke!"—is devastating in its irony. In her madness, she has convinced herself that his death was the moment of his ultimate recognition, that only through violence could she force him to acknowledge her presence.

"Deafness" is a study in psychological deterioration, a meditation on what happens when communication fails and silence becomes a prison. The deaf man’s refusal to engage with the world, his manipulation of the woman’s frustration, and the oppressive isolation of their environment all converge in a tragic inevitability. The poem does not sensationalize the violence but instead frames it as the endpoint of a long, slow unraveling. The landscape, with its locked trees, cracked earth, and birds that go from singing to shrieking, reflects the woman’s descent into desperation. In the end, she achieves what she sought—not understanding, but an irreversible breaking of silence.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...