True Love

“True Love” reflects two opposing forces in society: romanticism and realism. Romanticism privileges what ought to be; it seeks the ideal in the human experience and will not settle for less. Realism privileges what is; it seeks the reality of the human experience and will not brook with fanciful aspirations. The boy in the poem has clearly absorbed the romantic mindset. He falls in love at first sight and continues his infatuation—which can never be more due to the fact that he is still a child and she is of marriageable age—even after she is married. However, the young woman’s real life circumstances do not match the idealization that the boy has for her. Her father has an alcohol use disorder, and her brothers are wastrels. Her only escape is a good marriage—“good” in the sense of marrying someone of financial means because that is what realism deems important. To do that, the family must mortgage their property to afford a “fashionable” (Line 28) wedding. Predictably, the mortgage is foreclosed, she moves away, and the rest of the family “[s]ort of drift[s] off” (Line 33). Such is not the happy ending that the romantic would envision.

The boy, of course, witnesses all of these events from afar, but they do not threaten his idealization of the young woman, saying, years after, “I know she is beautiful forever, and lives / In a beautiful house far away” (Lines 34-35). The realist would say the speaker is deluded because he cannot know for certain anything about her circumstances once she moves away. Moreover, the realist would say the boy’s romanticism can only persist as long as he is distant from the woman. That is, in a real interactive relationship, one is bound to discover the imperfections and foibles of the other. As long as all he can do is worship her from afar, he can entertain any notions about her no matter how fanciful. The romantic, however, would say that the love the boy experiences is indeed very real, for it even has a physical response: “It stops your heart. It / Thickens your blood. It stops your breath” (Lines 8-9). Despite the sordidness of the world, it is human aspiration—not cynicism—that makes life worth living.

Due to his youth and naivete, the boy in “True Love” might be described as an innocent, meaning his perspective is unsullied by sordidness or self-interest. The evidence of his innocence is in his immediate and persistent love for the young woman despite its irrationality. However, the brutal truth of the matter is that the circumstances of the young woman’s family have diminished, making her own prospects precarious. None of this, though, is spelled out by the speaker; he relates the story from the perspective of the innocent despite now being an adult. For example, instead of stating that the father has an alcohol use disorder, he says, “Their father was what is called a drunkard” (Line 19). By inserting the phrase, “what is called,” the statement sounds as if it is spoken by the boy who does not understand what a “drunkard” is; he has merely heard the word applied to the father and so repeats it. The same might be inferred for the descriptions of the brothers: “They were slick-faced. / Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work” (Lines 17-18). Again, the boy likely does not understand that these signs of behavior mean that the brothers are wastrels and, thereby, do not support the family.

However, readers who do know how to interpret these signs understand the dire straits in which this woman finds herself; also, readers who know what a mortgage is are not surprised when it is foreclosed, bringing the family to ruin. Perhaps the most significant reflection of the boy’s innocence is his response to what is assumed to be the young woman’s first sexual encounter on the wedding night: “I lay in bed that night / And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her” (Lines 29-30). Referring to sex in such a roundabout fashion suggests the reticence or embarrassment of broaching the topic typical of an innocent.

Yet to say the boy is innocent does not mean he is ignorant: He knows about sex, and he sees what is becoming of the family. The acquisition of knowledge comes about by innocence being dispelled by experience. Whether that happens for the speaker even in adulthood is an open question. For when he says, “I know she is beautiful forever, and lives / In a beautiful house, far away” (Lines 34-35), the statement seemingly expresses the survival of innocence in the speaker’s mind. However, the import of the statement might not be literal but figurative: Her beauty lives on in the speaker’s memory. Such a reading insists that a quality of innocence might indeed survive despite experience.