A PHOTOGRAPH BY SHIRLEY TOULSEN

Line by Line explanation : 'A Photograph' by Shirley Toulson

This poem by Shirley Toulson is a tribute to her mother. One day, she finds an old photograph of her mother, pasted on a cardboard sheet; a photograph she remembered her mother talking about with fondness.

Line-wise summary:

1) The cardboard (photograph) shows the narrator who it was that day (poetic device: allusion as the cardboard’s lack of durability hints at the lack of permanence of human life)

2) When two of her mother’s cousins went paddling (on the beach, with the narrator’s mother)

3) Each of the cousins held one of her mother’s hand.

4) Her mother was the eldest – about twelve years old at this time.

5) All three of them stood smiling, their hair strewn across their face (possibly tossed by the beach wind or water) (poetic device: alliteration... stood still to smile)

6) As her mother’s uncle clicked their picture with a camera. Her mother’s face was sweet.

7) And the picture was taken much before the narrator was born.

8) The sea in the picture is still the same today (has changed very less)

9) And in the picture it seems to wash their feet which by nature, are transient because human life is short-lived as compared to nature. (Poetic device: Transferred Epithet. Human life itself is temporary not the feet. When the adjective for one noun like life is transferred to another noun like feet, it is called transferred epithet. It is also alliteration due to the repetition of the ‘t’ sound but Transferred Epithet is the dominant device here.)

10) Some twenty, thirty years later from when the picture was clicked,

11) her mother had looked at the snapshot and laughed. She had pointed out her cousin Betty and Dolly and talked nostalgically of how they used to be dressed for the beach. The sea holiday was remembered by her mother with a fondness as well as a sense of loss because that time would never return.

12) Similarly, her laughter would never return to the narrator. The sea holiday was the narrator’s mother’s past and her mother’s laughter is the narrator’s past.

13) Both these pasts, the sea holiday as well as the laughter of her mother are remembered with a difficult and yet easy sense of loss. (Poetic device: oxymoron. The coming together of two opposite ideas to describe the same entity. ‘Laboured’ and ‘easy’ are opposite words describing the same entity ‘loss’. The loss of the holiday and the laughter was easy because these things have to be accepted as a part of life. They are merely a part of the past and cannot be brought back or relived. However, precisely because they cannot be relived, there will always be a tinge of difficulty letting them go completely. They will always be seen as loss.)

14) Now, it has been twelve years since her mother passed away. The girl in the photograph seems like a different person altogether. Thus, the use of the words, ‘that girl’.15) And about the fact that her mother has passed away leaving behind nothing but memories and photographs like this one,

16) there is nothing to be said. It is a part of life and on thinking of it, one really has no words to express how one feels.

17) The silence of the whole situation silences the poet and leaves her quiet. (poetic device: alliteration and personification. The situation has been given the human quality of silence and the sound of ‘s’ has been repeated)

The camera thus managed to capture a moment in time. It kept the memory of the mother and for the mother alive. The sea holiday brought a sad smile (wry) to the mother’s face because she couldn’t relive it but was glad that she once had.Similarly, thinking of her mother’s laughter brought a sad smile to the poet’s face because although that laughter was now gone she was glad to have once had it in her life.

Nature is perennial while human life is temporary or transient. The poet uses a transferred epithet (terribly transient feet) in order to make this comparison and highlight the terribly short-lived life of her mother.

As in the Portrait of a Lady, this poem also deals with the theme of loss and bereavement and the impact it leaves on those who are left behind.

General and Philosophical Summary

A Photograph,” a poem by the English writer Shirley Toulson, describes the adult speaker’s discovery of a photograph showing her mother, at that time a girl, and some even younger cousins swimming during a holiday at the sea. At the time the picture was taken, the speaker’s mother was “the big girl,” roughly twelve years old (4), and the picture shows her holding the hands of the two younger girls as they swim. The photo shows all three girls smiling for the camera, and the speaker fondly recalls how her mother, in her thirties or forties, later looked at the picture and laughed at the way she and her cousins were dressed. Now the speaker, looking at the picture herself, ponders the fact that her mother has been dead for roughly twelve years—about as long as the young girl in the picture had at that point lived.

Clearly one theme of Toulson’s poem is mutability, or change. The picture records a time in the distant past; the speaker recalls a time in the more recent past; and then the speaker finally comments on the present, when her mother has been dead for roughly twelve years. The poem is thus a meditation on the passing of time and also on the fact of loss, especially the mother’s loss of her youth and the speaker’s loss of her mother. Yet the poem can also be seen as a response to, and minor victory over, such loss. Just as the photograph records the past so that the past still, in some sense, exists, so the poem itself records both the photograph and the responses to it of the speaker’s mother and of the speaker herself. The poem itself functions as a kind of photograph, preserving the past so that it never completely disappears.

The fact that the photograph is surrounded by (or pasted onto) a piece of mere “cardboard” (1) already suggests the idea of fragility. The photograph is not surrounded by a sturdy metal frame, nor is it (apparently) preserved under protective glass. Instead, the photo is in some ways as vulnerable to change as the people it pictures have proven to be. In the photo, the mother, then a twelve-year-old girl, serves as a source of security and reassurance to her younger cousins. Ironically, of course, the mother herself is now dead; although she protected her...

THE MOOD OF THE POET IN THE POEM IS NOSTALGIC

Reference to Context (RTC) questions:

1. The cardboard shows me how it wasWhen the two girl cousins went paddlingEach one holding one of my mother’s hands,And she the big girl- some twelve years or so.

a. What does the cardboard refer to?b. Who was the big girl and how old was she?c. How did the cousins go paddling with mother?

2. All three stood still to smile through their hairAt the uncle with the camera, A sweet faceMy mother’s, that was before I was born

a. Who does ‘all three’ refer to here?b. Where are they now?c. Why did they smile through their hair?

3...A sweet face,My mother’s, that was before I was bornAnd the sea, which appears to have changed lessWashed their terribly transient feet.

a. Where was her mother?b. When did this incident take place?c. How is the poet able to remember her mother’s childhood?d. What has stood the onslaught of time and what has not?

4. Some twenty- thirty- years laterShe’d laugh at the snapshot. “See BettyAnd Dolly,” she’d say, “and look how theyDressed us for the beach.”

a. Who would laugh at the snapshot after twenty – thirty years later?b. How did mother remember her past?c. Who were Betty and Dolly?

6. ...The sea holidaywas her past, mine is her laughter. Both wryWith the laboured ease of loss

a. Who went for the sea holiday in the past?b. What does ‘both’ refer to?c. How does the poet feel when she remembers her mother?

1) How does the poet contracts the girls terrible transience with the scene?

Ans: All the girls standing at the each have a terribly transient existence. They are mortal and suffer physical change with the passage of time. THe mother's sweet face and her smile has already disappeared for the last twenty or thirty years. But the vast sea remains unchanged or seemed to have less changed in their comparison.

2) "Both thrive with the laboured ease of loss" Describe the ironical situation.

Ans: Both the mother and the daughter suffer a sense of loss. The mother has lost her care free childhood. She can't have these moments of enjoyment again that she once experienced at the beach. She can't be a sweet smiling girl of twelve again. This is considered as the poet's loss too. She can't see the smiling face and experience the laughter again in life. The irony of the situation is that both of them struggle to ear the loss with tolerable ease.

3) Explain the line " the sea holiday as a past, mine is her laughter , Time spares none" .

Ans: Gone are the childhood days of mother and the sea holiday has become her past, the photograph flashes back to the scene that was captured about 30 years ago. Gone is a carefree laughter of the mother which was love at one time. But now, the laughter of her mother has eventually become a thing of past for the poet. She has silently resigned herself to the fate.

1) What does the word ‘cardboard’ denote in the poem? Why has this word been used?

Ans: The cardboard means a very stiff and thick paper, here the cardboard is a part of the frame that keeps the photograph intact. It's use in poem is ironical  It keeps the photograph of that 12 year old girl safe who herself was terribly transient  The player's mother had died some years ago.

2) What has the camera captured?Ans: The camera had captured all the three girls alive in it. It has captured the pretty face of the poet's mother who as a girl of twelve at that time. It has also captured the smiling faces of the two girl cousins Betty and Dolly. They are holding the hands of the poet's mother.

3) What has not changed over the years? Does this suggest something to you?Ans: The sea has not changed over the years. It rings out the transient nature and its object. Time spares none. The pretty faces and the feet of the three girls are terribly transient or moral when compared to the ageless and unchangeable sea. 

4) The poet’s mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this laugh indicate?Ans: The poet's mother laughs at the snapshot which was taken years ago. In the photograph, she as well as her two little cousins stood at the each. She laughed at the ay all of them were dressed up for the beach. Perhaps they looked funny. Their laughter indicated the youthful spirit.

5) What is the meaning of the line “Both wry with the laboured ease or loss”Ans: Both the mother and the poet suffered a great sense of loss. The mother has lost her childhood innocence and joyful spirit that the photograph has captured some years ago. For the poet, the smile of her mother has become thing of the past. She has silently resigned to her faith. Ironically both labour to bear their loss with ease. 

6) What does "this circumstance" refer to?Ans: The circumstance refers to the death of the poet's mother. The photograph of her dead mother brings sad nostalgic feelings in the past. But the poet has nothing to say at all about the circumstance. The silence of the poet makes the silence prevailing their still deeper.

7) The three stanzas depict three different phases. What are they?Ans: In the first stanza, the poet's mother is shown as a twelve year old girl with pretty smiling face. Then she is paddling with her two girl cousins. This face is before the poet's birth. The second face describes the middle aged mother laughing at her own snapshot. The third face describes the chilling pale of silence that the death of her mother has left of the past.