25 pages • 50-minute read
The Song of the Shirt
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Symbols & Motifs
Death
Personified by the seamstress’s song, Death is one of the few figures mentioned in the otherwise solitary narrative. She introduces Death as “that phantom of grisly bone” (Line 34); this almost casual description and use of the relative pronoun “that” imply that the seamstress has earlier encountered Death and thus refers to him with a degree of familiarity. Her familiarity with Death is reiterated when she acknowledges she “hardly [fears] his terrible shape” (Line 35) because it “seems so like” (Line 36) her own starving body. Death thus acts as a mirror.
In the seamstress’s isolated and lonely profession, Death also acts as her primary company; his presence in her life only continues to flourish. As her life is worn out like the shirts she mends, the seamstress begins to consider and more frequently “talk of death” (Line 33), imagining things like the “shroud” (Line 32) or burial clothes she will wear when she dies. But like the shadow she is grateful to occasionally see on her “blank” (Line 47) wall, death never actually speaks or interacts with the seamstress. While she may derive some comfort from the brief interruption of monotony Death provides, Death’s inaction and irrelevance to the poem’s narrative further emphasizes the seamstress’s solitude and isolation.
The Swallows
Besides the seamstress, a flock of “brooding” (Line 62) swallows are the only other living entities mentioned in the poem. The seamstress jealously observes the swallows that have built nests “underneath the eaves” (Line 61) of her roof. In the midst of her solitude and continual labor, the seamstress watches the swallows’ “sunny backs” (Line 63) and listens as they “twit” or taunt her “with the spring” (Line 64). Unlike the seamstress who is confined to her home’s “blank” (Line 47) walls and “shattered roof” (Line 45), the swallows are free to go where they please. While the seamstress can only long for “one short hour” (Line 73) of “respite” (Line 74) to enjoy nature, the swallows fly through a sky the seamstress cannot see (Line 67) and return home to their nests in her roof’s eaves. Their hours are not defined by tasks; they do not know “the woes” (Line 71) the seamstress has experienced for years. The swallows symbolize the kind of natural freedom denied to members of England’s lower class.
The Slave
The slave is another recurring figure throughout the socially conscious literature of Hood’s period and present in “The Song of the Shirt.” Published in 1843, Hood’s poem was written only 36 years after England abolished the practice of slavery throughout its empire. As such, slavery had already been widely condemned as a social evil, so writers advocating for the working class often appropriated the language surrounding slavery to demonstrate the evils afflicting the poor. The comparison was twofold: Like slaves, lower-class workers were “financially exploited” and “deprived of full human status” (“Thomas Hood, Early Victorian Christian Social Criticism, and the Hoodian Hero,” Robert D. Butterworth, p. 430).
In Hood’s “The Song of the Shirt,” the seamstress is financially exploited and treated as subhuman. Despite her long hours and grueling work, she can afford little more than “a crust of bread” and “rags” (Line 44). Furthermore, her movements are more restricted than the swallows nesting in the eaves of her roof and she cannot even afford to take a walk, as the lost time would “[cost] a meal” (Line 72). Because of the cruel and unrewarding nature of her labor, the seamstress regards herself as little more than a slave.
Later in the poem, the seamstress also compares herself to a prisoner who must “work for crime” (Line 52). The seamstress’s life of solitary confinement, restricted movement, and continual labor until her “brain begins to swim” (Line 18) is not so different from a prisoner sentenced to penal labor. With these comparisons, Hood uncomfortably reminds his audience of the British Empire’s prior abuses and human exploitation and suggests the current treatment of the working class as little more than subhuman criminals is a similar atrocity.
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