"A Light Woman" begins by making the reader feel as though they've just stumbled upon the last few minutes of a conversation. The speaker says that "our story approaches the end," implying that he's been telling his listener some tale for a while now. He then asks his listener whom they "pity the most of us three": his friend, his friend's "wanton" (or lustful, promiscuous) lover, or the speaker himself.
While there's no way for the reader to know who they feel most sorry for because they haven't heard the story yet, this question is pretty leading. In asking it up top, the speaker implies what he's hoping to achieve by telling this story: he wants his listener to feel bad for him. At the very least, he doesn't think his friend's "mistress" is deserving of "pity." He calls her a woman with "wanton eyes," meaning that she's sexually shameless or immodest. In Robert Browning's Victorian England, such qualities in a woman would be cause for social exile. Readers might not know exactly what happened yet, but the speaker's feelings about this woman are clear.
This stanza also establishes the poem's form. "A Light Woman" is made up of 14 quatrains (four-line stanzas) of accentual verse. This means that the poem's lines typically contain the same number of stressed syllables, but those stresses don't occur in a regular pattern. For the most part, the first three lines of each stanza contain four stressed beats, while the fourth line contains three. For example:
So far as our story approaches the end,
Which do you pity the most of us three?—
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me?
The meter is at times ambiguous and open to interpretation, but overall it lends some structure and rhythm to the poem without making it feel formal or rigid. Each quatrain also features a simple ABAB rhyme scheme, in which alternating lines rhyme with one another.
PDF downloads of all 3113 of our lit guides, poetry guides, Shakescleare translations, and literary terms.
PDF downloads of all 1956 LitCharts literature guides, and of every new one we publish.
Learn more
|
Explanations for every quote we cover.
Detailed quotes explanations (and citation info) for every important quote on the site.
Learn more
|
Instant PDF downloads of 136 literary devices and terms.
Definitions and examples for 136 literary devices and terms. Instant PDF downloads.
Learn more
|
Compare and contrast related themes.
Compare and contrast Related Themes across different books.
Learn more
|
Teacher Editions for all 1956 titles we cover.
LitCharts Teacher Editions for every title we cover.
Learn more
|
PDFs of modern translations of every Shakespeare play and poem.
PDFs of modern translations of every Shakespeare play and poem.
Learn more
|
Advanced search across our collection.
Advanced Search. Find themes, quotes, symbols, and characters across our collection.
Learn more
|
Line-by-line explanations, plus analysis of poetic devices for lyric poems we cover.
Line-by-line explanations, plus analysis of poetic devices for every lyric poem we cover.
Learn more
|
Common Core-aligned