After the analyzing the poem, my class came to a conclusion that the main point of the poem was to question the necessity of attention in anyone’s relationship. The lines “Should a body kiss a body, Need the world know?” questions the reader if the world should care about what happens within a relationship. I thought that the line “Comin Thro’ the Rye” indicated that Jenny was over coming something in her past. “She draigl't a' her petticoatie” represents her past that had been dragging her down. I guessed that the thing she was overcoming was the negative and burdensome attention the world had given her due to her relationship with a man.
I think connects well to situations in the modern days because people give relationships, or sex much attention, whether it is their business or not. The poem talks about how burdensome and pressuring attention can be within a relationship. For a couple, it is their decision and their decision only to choose what happens between them.
The poem made me realize that that people can be judgmental about others with the smallest amount of evidence. After some discussion, our class guessed that Jenny might be a prostitute when we learned that the poem possessed sexual aspects. The class’s immediate assumption about Jenny told me about the way we viewed sex. Associating the word prostitute to sex showed that the poem wasn’t giving out a positive vibe. The man in the poem who is referred to as “body” could’ve been Jenny’s husband or lover, which wouldn’t make Jenny the prostitute that we thought.
In conclusion, the poem points out that it is people’s own decisions to choose who they want to be in a relationship and what they want to do with it.
