Elizabeth Jennings’ One Flesh bears the overarching significance of how a relationship will end if it were to lack communication. Through the use of diction in “floatsam” and “wait” to depict the non-progressing, stagnant nature of their relationship, Jennings tells us that communication is vital to fuel a romance, old age causing the relationship to lose direction and causing it to slow and halt, before death.
The idea of communication between vital to fuel a romance could be first seen through the simile of them “hardly ever touch(ing)” and when they actually do, it is “like a confession”. The word “confession” expresses the difficulty they have to go through to come into contact with each other, as it connotes some form of building up of courage to admit a wrongdoing. This can also be linked to the idea of guilt, where the couple could be said to feel guilty because they “hardly ever touch”.
However, when they do touch, they start to think of “having too little feeling – or too much”. The hyphen that links the two phrases together suggests a degree of confusion, uncertainty regarding their feelings to each other, which could be attributed to the lack of communication within the relationship; it has led to each one of them doubting the other’s feelings. The couple is faced with “chastity”, something of which their “whole life was a preparation”.
The latter quotation could have been a reference to the concept of death, while sex is considered one of the ways in which a couple communicates with one another – therefore the lack of it in a relationship is drawing it closer to death, an absolute end. Death is naturally first preceded by old age, however, thus it could be inferred that the lack of communication can come with old age. As a couple grows older together, their relationship will lose direction and eventually become stagnant.
The nautical imagery created by diction of “floatsam” compares it to their relationship, in the sense that their romance is not moving in any determined, definite direction, neither forwards nor backwards. All they do is drift, if not remain stagnant, giving off the effect of aimlessness and the lack of direction. The couple is also described as being “strangely apart, yet strangely close together.”
The diction and repetition of “strangely” gives the reader the impression of a mystery of sorts, providing no clear explanation or rationale for the detached manner the old couple acts around each other, though also providing no reason as to why they are attached enough to live together under one roof. The loss of direction and stagnation of their relationship can further be seen through the simile used in “like a thread to hold and not wind in”, which also happens to reinforce the attached yet detached nature of their relationship. The simile that was used to describe the “silence” between them adds to the sense of aimlessness and drifting, as they appear to still be bound to each other, yet no longer close, seeing as they could be “wind (wound) in”.
The fact that the relationship could stagnate shows that there was movement before – thus we can infer that the transition from a progressing relationship to a drifting relationship will still continue, eventually causing it to stop entirely. The poet also conveys the idea that a relationship, once it halts will be followed closely by death; an absolute end. The diction in “wait”, as seen in “as if they wait some new event” implies that there is nothing going on in the relationship between the both of them, or that they are already bored of the current situation, as one only waits when one does not have anything to do.
The woman’s eyes are “fixed on the shadows overhead”, where the symbolism in the use of “shadows”, the lack of light (darkness) connotes the black oblivion, void, that is death – along with the diction in how her eyes are “fixed”, the reader feels a sense of imminence, as the diction of “overhead” implies its closeness. The symbolism in of fire in “fire … has now grown cold” can be interpreted as the representation of life.
The fact that they are “old” with the fire having “grown” – implying a progression from a former, different state over time – “cold”, can lend credibility to the idea that their own life force is diminishing as time goes by and they grow even older, bringing them even closer towards death. Therefore, the poet brings out the overarching significance of how the relationship will end if there is the lack of communication by initially showing how vital communication is and then how the depletion of it as time passes and the couple grows older causes the relationship to slow down, grow stagnant and eventually halt before they are met with death.
The title of “One Flesh” is apt in the sense that it is ironic, seeing as the couple portrayed in the poem is seen to be detached and far apart – the last thing from being One Flesh – so the poet thus juxtaposes, through the title, what a couple should be and what the couple is like in the poem to show us the effects of the overarching significance.
