Eros Turannos

The only thing worse than staying with this man, the woman concedes in the opening stanza, is the thought of abandoning the convenience, stability, and external expectations of the relationship. She no longer remembers what once convinced her to enter into a relationship with a man who is not authentic, doesn’t treat her with dignity, but instead wears a “mask” (Line 3). The poem offers no context or backstory to clarify her bitterness, save for the single weighted word describing the man as “Judas” (Line 12). It is important to note that Edwin Arlington Robinson never specifically identifies the woman as married. She has been victimized by love, but it is not marriage that tyrannizes her. It is her heart and her unwillingness to capitulate that the relationship is doomed.  

More than staying unhappy, she fears being alone in the “downward years” (Line 6) of her old age. In this dilemma, Robinson examines the tyranny of gender expectations that, at the turn of the last century, judged divorce or adultery as threats to society, rejecting women embroiled in them but not similarly treating their male partners: While the town keeps a smug distance from the woman, the man knows “that he will not be lost” (Line 15).