20 pages • 40 minutes read
Rita DoveDusting
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Light and Shadow
The motifs of light and shadow trade off throughout “Dusting.” The poem starts out blindingly bright, then fades. The first stanza highlights just how bright the solarium is twice: “no / shade in sight” (Lines 1-2); “a rage / of light” (Lines 4-5). Beulah polishes the “dark wood” (Line 7), imbuing it with life until it “gleam[s]” (Line 9). Beulah latches onto the shiny details of her memories. The “bright” (Line 14) carnival fish ripples in a “clear bowl” (Line 14). She comes home the night of a dance to see the living room full of sparkling snow, the fish caught in a bowl of ice. The present day becomes the bright yellow of a “canary in bloom” (Line 20). Sometime after these memories, she finds herself cast in ominous “shadow” (Line 35).
Beulah seeks a balanced contrast between light and shadow. The wood she dusts, her springboard into the happy world of memory, is both dark and gleaming. Two metaphors describe the fish from the carnival: a ripple of light and a dark, gory wound. Too much light is oppressive. The solarium illuminates Beulah so brightly that it reduces her to one dimension, obscuring the rich depths of her thoughts and feelings. Shadow is brutal in its own way: “The shadow” (Line 35) falls after every memory that brings her happiness, over the rest of her life.
Dust
The dust in “Dusting” symbolizes time. Dust accumulates on untouched or unused surfaces, just as passing years accumulate on older memories and make them harder to remember. Beulah’s mind’s eye functions as a mental dust cloth. Over time, other details piled up around the name. Beulah searches for the true answer by passing over the same place repeatedly, certain the answer is just beyond her grasp. The dust clears, “Under her hand” (Line 8), allowing surfaces to shine again. Some details come forward right away: Just as the “scrolls / and crests” (Lines 8-9) of the wood come through, so do the “rifle booth […] his kiss and / the clear bowl” (Lines 13-14). She comes up with a name, but it is not quite right. By stating it outright—“Not Michael” (Line 17)—she acknowledges the thought, corrects course—“something finer” (Line 18)—then tries again. She casts away a bit more dirt, getting her closer to the real thing.
Memories, like dingy wood surfaces, can be recovered with enough patience. The endurance that Beulah has for cleaning the same surface day after day is the same endurance that empowers her to recall the smallest details of her past. The project may seem futile at times. No surface is immune to dust, and as long as Beulah is responsible for cleaning the solarium, her work will never be over. In the past, the fish in the bowl, stuck in a “locket of ice” (Line 26), surely has no hope. Still, Beulah defies her circumstances and gives the fish a chance at life. In the present, Beulah refuses to lose her happy memories, protecting what remains of that fierce youthful spirit.
The Fish
The fish from the carnival is the core symbol of Beulah’s youth. The speaker names it in the second stanza list, lending the same level of importance as Maurice’s kiss. The fish is the most detailed bit of the fair memory. The boy, before Beulah remembers his name, is “silly” (Line 12), and he is “with / the rifle booth” (Line 13). “His kiss” (Line 13) is not accompanied by any adjectives, adverbs, or prepositional phrases that elaborate. The fish and the bowl each get an adjective (“clear” and “bright” [Line 14]), and the fish gets an additional descriptive phrase, “rippling wound” (Line 16). The fish experiences true peril as it is frozen alive, then overcomes it to swim again. This vitality mirrors the way memory can preserve the past and keep it evergreen.
Names
Names are supremely important in “Dusting.” The whole poem is a search for one name from long ago. Beulah remembers plenty of other details from the carnival, and yet she still desperately seeks the name of the boy. By finding his name, she can prove to herself that she has not entirely lost the free, innocent girl she once was.
Several of the names in “Dusting” have Biblical connotations. The name Beulah comes from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah Chapter 62 Verse 4 reads:
Nor will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah,
and your land Beulah;
for the Lord will take delight in you,
and you will be married (“Isaiah 62:4 NIV.” Bible Gateway).
Beulah describes the promised land, the ancestral home of the Jewish people. The author of this verse uses marriage as a metaphor for the happy reunion of people and homeland. In “Dusting,” the meaning of Beulah’s name changes twice throughout her life, first to “Promise, then / Desert-in-Peace” (Lines 33-34). The new meaning of “Promise” corresponds to her engagement and wedding. This aligns with some earlier lines, in which “Father gave her up / with her name” (Lines 30-31). Beulah’s real-life father walked her to the altar on the wedding day as part of the tradition of giving his daughter to her new male guardian, the groom. Beulah’s name’s second meaning, “Desert-in-Peace,” refers to her life as a married woman. Marrying her husband should be Beulah’s happy ending, but she is dissatisfied with her present circumstances. “Dusting” demonstrates the irony in this kind of “peace,” as Beulah longs for a more exciting past.
The boy from the fair’s name is slightly more complicated. In Abrahamic faiths, “Michael” is the name of an archangel. He is often depicted as a warrior, leading armies and fighting Satan. This name, however, is not quite right. “Maurice” may be a reference to Saint Maurice, an Egyptian soldier in the Roman army who was martyred for his faith. This association gives the impression that Beulah’s Maurice was a noble figure, and their love met a tragic end.
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By Rita Dove
