Class

Oblique references to social class are made throughout the poem. In the first stanza the speaker asks the applicant, “First, are you our sort of a person?” (1), which can be interpreted as a request for the marriage applicant to declare his social position. The list of markers of class that follow can be understood as coded referents to bourgeois styles, norms, and mores. Chief amongst these is a much-parodied emblem of the English upper class – the monocle. The references to rubber features of sexed bodies is made in the first stanza as well. This evokes both bourgeois prudishness and the at times absurd performance of gender roles in bourgeois society.

Reference to the obligations of bourgeois domestic life is made in the third stanza of the poem. The speaker explicitly projects that the bridal hand that will fill the applicant’s hand in matrimony will “bring...