Literary Analysis: An Explication of P.K. Page's Poem 'The Landlady'

This essay provides a thorough explication of P.K. Page's poem, 'The Landlady,' exploring its themes of loneliness, alienation, and the search for authentic human connection within a modern society. The analysis begins by examining the poem's setting and the landlady's perspective, highlighting her impersonal observation of her tenants and the symbolic use of sepia tones to represent a distance from true experience. The essay delves into the landlady's desire to understand her tenants and the futility of her attempts to penetrate their inner lives, contrasting her yearning for intimacy with the cryptic nature of their interactions and the superficiality of modern communication. The poem's use of imagery, such as the 'camera eye' and the 'wire,' is discussed to illustrate the landlady's one-sided attempts at connection and the ultimate failure to bridge the gap between herself and others. The essay concludes by emphasizing the poem's relevance to contemporary society, portraying the pervasive loneliness and the lack of genuine human contact often experienced in modern life.

Running Head: EXPLICATION OF “THE LANDLADY” BY P.K. PAGE
Explication of “the Landlady” by P.K. Page
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1EXPLICATION OF “THE LANDLADY” BY P.K. PAGE
“The Landlady” was first published in the month of May 1944 in the Canadian Forum.
The poem serves as a tribute to the form of loneliness that is extremely inherent to human being
The poem begins with an addressal to the boarders in the house of the landlady. The
narrator is impersonal as she talks about the impersonal attitude of people who come and go, in
literal sense of the term. The “sepia” color of the air is symptomatic to the color of old
photographs that manage to cover the original colors of the film. There is a stark contrast
between her urges to take something from her tenants and the alienation that is reflected in “the
craving silence swallowing her speech”. The act of “swallowing her own words would allow her
to pick up strands of conversation of the tenants. The inclination towards photographs reoccurs
during the mention of “camera eye” that is used by Page to describe the activities that are being
recording and are in the state of constant flux (Geddes). By letting her eyelids drop like
“shutters”, she is able to record the life of her tenants in the form of “exact” mental images, in a
sepia tone that veil the real subject matter. Her mind becomes an album of snapshots into which
she can indulge herself once their expressions become blank, like that of “zero”. The boarder’s
phone calls are always “cryptic”. The landlady fails to catch them unguarded, “unprepared” and
without the presence of “wall/about them” (Geddes). This is clearly the portrayal of lack of a
vulnerable moment that can distinguish the boarders from being anything but a human. The
inquisitive nature of the landlady is established with the use of words such as “jump”, “dream”,
and “tremble” (Geddes). The readers gradually understand that even with the help of a “wire”,
that the landlady uses to unlock the minds of her tenants, the intimacy is nothing but one-sided.
This leads to further discontent as the repetition of her dissatisfied state is present in the line –
“like a lover, must know all, all, all.” Her hopes of catching them “unprepared at last” are futile.
The landlady realizes the her knowledge is constrained, her photographs do not do justice to the

2EXPLICATION OF “THE LANDLADY” BY P.K. PAGE
characters for they are only the surface portraits. All that she can do is to wish to look past their
placid face unless she reaches “the dreadful riddle of their skulls (Geddes).” Page has created the
landlady as s steady pulse, a being who is alive, in the world that is completely erratic. Her
yearning for authenticity and the need to get away from “the room of you” furthers the presence
of a cage in which her “self” is restrained (Geddes).
“The Landlady” is the story of every individual in the present society who craves for an
authentic human contact, some exchange of words other than the cryptic phone calls that are
made for getting food delivered at home, at drive through, or at the cash counter where the
“encounter” consists of words such as cash, credit, or debit. All these examples scream of the
plight of human beings’ loneliness in which we are doomed.

3EXPLICATION OF “THE LANDLADY” BY P.K. PAGE
Work Cited
Geddes, Gary, ed. 20th-century poetry & poetics. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996.