Wallace Stevens

Wallace Steven's "Sunday Morning" was definitely overwhelming the first time I read it.  I had to go over it a few times take each section one by one to get any real meaning out of it; and then to really appreciate it-or to fully appreciate any text- I think it helps to put it into context by knowing about the author so I went back and read the biography again about Stevens.  In going back and reading more about Stevens, I was able to put together a few more things in the poem that hadn't stood out as much before. 

The major opposition in, "Sunday Morning" is substituting nature or paganism for Christianity or a natural religion for a supernatural religion.  The poem begins with a woman enjoying a "late/coffee and oranges in a sunny chair"(lines 1-2) or the more materialistic things in the world, before she begins to contemplate what the reader assumes is her recent separation from religion.  

Stevens stated, "In the absence of a belief in God, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view, but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate"(417).  Stevens expresses these same sentiments in different words in section V of the poem when the women says, "But in contentment I still feel/The need for some imperishable bliss"(lines 62-61).  One can see throughout the poem the conflict the woman is having within herself over what the truth really is but in section VI it sounds as if she is having a revelation that paradise isn’t as incredible as people make it sound.  Paradise is “like our earth”( line 79) but “unchanging”( line 79), but she realizes that change is what makes things beautiful.  It is with change that things have the ability to reach their full potential.  She believes that because paradise is stagnant and unchanging it would be miserable.  In VII she has made her decision and it is about pagan worship and those thoughts are further extended into section VIII as she talks about “[living] in an old chaos of the sun/or old dependency of day and night” (lines 110-111) suggesting she has freed herself from her religious ties. 

Even if a person has never struggled with the same religious doubts as the character in the poem, I think Stevens has written a poem that everyone can relate to. Most people at some point in their life find themselves needing to do some introspection or “soul-searching” like the woman in this poem did, and can relate to the struggle she is going through as she searches for enlightenment.