A PHOTOGRAPH BY SHIRLEY TOULSEN

Line by Line explanation : 'A Photograph' by Shirley Toulson

This poem by Shirley Toulson is a tribute to her mother. One day, she finds an old
photograph of her mother, pasted on a cardboard sheet; a photograph she
remembered her mother talking about with fondness.
Line-wise summary:
1) The cardboard (photograph) shows the narrator who it was that day (poetic
device: allusion as the cardboards lack of durability hints at the lack of
permanence of human life)
2) When two of her mothers cousins went paddling (on the beach, with the
narrators mother)
3) Each of the cousins held one of her mothers hand.
4) Her mother was the eldest about twelve years old at this time.
5) All three of them stood smiling, their hair strewn across their face (possibly
tossed by the beach wind or water) (poetic device: alliteration... stood still to
smile)
6) As her mothers uncle clicked their picture with a camera. Her mothers
face was sweet.
7) And the picture was taken much before the narrator was born.
8) The sea in the picture is still the same today (has changed very less)
9) And in the picture it seems to wash their feet which by nature, are transient
because human life is short-lived as compared to nature. (Poetic device:
Transferred Epithet. Human life itself is temporary not the feet. When the
adjective for one noun like life is transferred to another noun like feet, it is
called transferred epithet. It is also alliteration due to the repetition of the t
sound but Transferred Epithet is the dominant device here.)
10) Some twenty, thirty years later from when the picture was clicked,

11) her mother had looked at the snapshot and laughed. She had pointed out
her cousin Betty and Dolly and talked nostalgically of how they used to be
dressed for the beach.
The sea holiday was remembered by her mother with a fondness as well as
a sense of loss because that time would never return.
12) Similarly, her laughter would never return to the narrator. The sea holiday
was the narrators mothers past and her mothers laughter is the narrators
past.
13) Both these pasts, the sea holiday as well as the laughter of her mother
are remembered with a difficult and yet easy sense of loss. (Poetic device:
oxymoron. The coming together of two opposite ideas to describe the same
entity. Laboured and easy are opposite words describing the same entity
loss. The loss of the holiday and the laughter was easy because these
things have to be accepted as a part of life. They are merely a part of the
past and cannot be brought back or relived. However, precisely because they
cannot be relived, there will always be a tinge of difficulty letting them go
completely. They will always be seen as loss.)

14) Now, it has been twelve years since her mother passed away. The girl in
the photograph seems like a different person altogether. Thus, the use of the
words, that girl.
15) And about the fact that her mother has passed away leaving behind
nothing but memories and photographs like this one,
16) there is nothing to be said. It is a part of life and on thinking of it, one
really has no words to express how one feels.
17) The silence of the whole situation silences the poet and leaves her quiet.
(poetic device: alliteration and personification. The situation has been given
the human quality of silence and the sound of s has been repeated)
The camera thus managed to capture a moment in time. It kept the memory
of the mother and for the mother alive. The sea holiday brought a sad smile
(wry) to the mothers face because she couldnt relive it but was glad that she
once had.
Similarly, thinking of her mothers laughter brought a sad smile to the poets
face because although that laughter was now gone she was glad to have
once had it in her life.

Nature is perennial while human life is temporary or transient. The poet uses
a transferred epithet (terribly transient feet) in order to make this comparison
and highlight the terribly short-lived life of her mother.
As in the Portrait of a Lady, this poem also deals with the theme of loss and
bereavement and the impact it leaves on those who are left behind.

General and Philosophical Summary

A Photograph, a poem by the English writer Shirley Toulson, describes the adult speakers
discovery of a photograph showing her mother, at that time a girl, and some even younger
cousins swimming during a holiday at the sea. At the time the picture was taken, the
speakers mother was the big girl, roughly twelve years old (4), and the picture shows her
holding the hands of the two younger girls as they swim. The photo shows all three girls
smiling for the camera, and the speaker fondly recalls how her mother, in her thirties or
forties, later looked at the picture and laughed at the way she and her cousins were dressed.
Now the speaker, looking at the picture herself, ponders the fact that her mother has been
dead for roughly twelve yearsabout as long as the young girl in the picture had at that
point lived.
Clearly one theme of Toulsons poem is mutability, or change. The picture records a time in
the distant past; the speaker recalls a time in the more recent past; and then the speaker
finally comments on the present, when her mother has been dead for roughly twelve years.
The poem is thus a meditation on the passing of time and also on the fact of loss, especially
the mothers loss of her youth and the speakers loss of her mother. Yet the poem can also be
seen as a response to, and minor victory over, such loss. Just as the photograph records the
past so that the past still, in some sense, exists, so the poem itself records both the
photograph and the responses to it of the speakers mother and of the speaker herself. The
poem itself functions as a kind of photograph, preserving the past so that it never completely
disappears.
The fact that the photograph is surrounded by (or pasted onto) a piece of mere cardboard
(1) already suggests the idea of fragility. The photograph is not surrounded by a sturdy metal
frame, nor is it (apparently) preserved under protective glass. Instead, the photo is in some
ways as vulnerable to change as the people it pictures have proven to be. In the photo, the
mother, then a twelve-year-old girl, serves as a source of security and reassurance to her
younger cousins. Ironically, of course, the mother herself is now dead; although she
protected her...

THE MOOD OF THE POET IN THE POEM IS NOSTALGIC

Reference to Context (RTC) questions:

1. The cardboard shows me how it was
When the two girl cousins went paddling
Each one holding one of my mothers hands,
And she the big girl- some twelve years or so.
a. What does the cardboard refer to?
b. Who was the big girl and how old was she?
c. How did the cousins go paddling with mother?
2. All three stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle with the camera, A sweet face
My mothers, that was before I was born
a. Who does all three refer to here?
b. Where are they now?
c. Why did they smile through their hair?
3...A sweet face,
My mothers, that was before I was born
And the sea, which appears to have changed less
Washed their terribly transient feet.
a. Where was her mother?
b. When did this incident take place?
c. How is the poet able to remember her mothers childhood?
d. What has stood the onslaught of time and what has not?
4. Some twenty- thirty- years later
Shed laugh at the snapshot. See Betty
And Dolly, shed say, and look how they
Dressed us for the beach.
a. Who would laugh at the snapshot after twenty thirty years later?
b. How did mother remember her past?
c. Who were Betty and Dolly?
6. ...The sea holiday
was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry
With the laboured ease of loss

a. Who went for the sea holiday in the past?

b. What does both refer to?
c. How does the poet feel when she remembers her mother?

1) How does the poet contracts the girls

terrible transience with the scene?
Ans: All the girls standing at the each have a
terribly transient existence. They are mortal and suffer physical change with
the passage of time. THe mother's sweet face and her smile has
already disappeared for the last twenty or thirty years. But the vast sea
remains unchanged or seemed to have less changed in their comparison.
2) "Both thrive with the laboured ease of loss" Describe the
ironical situation.
Ans: Both the mother and the daughter suffer a sense of loss. The mother has
lost her care free childhood. She can't have these moments of enjoyment
again that she once experienced at the beach. She can't be a sweet smiling girl
of twelve again. This is considered as the poet's loss too. She can't see the
smiling face and experience the laughter again in life. The irony of the
situation is that both of them struggle to ear the loss with tolerable ease.
3) Explain the line " the sea holiday as a past, mine is her
laughter , Time spares none" .
Ans: Gone are the childhood days of mother and the sea holiday
has become her past, the photograph flashes back to the scene that was
captured about 30 years ago. Gone is a carefree laughter of the mother which
was love at one time. But now, the laughter of her mother has eventually
become a thing of past for the poet. She has silently resigned herself to the
fate.

1) What does the word cardboard denote in the poem? Why has
this word been used?
Ans: The cardboard means a very stiff and thick paper, here the cardboard is a part
of the frame that keeps the photograph intact. It's use in poem is ironical It keeps
the photograph of that 12 year old girl safe who herself was terribly transient The
player's mother had died some years ago.
2) What has the camera captured?
Ans: The camera had captured all the three girls alive in it. It has captured the
pretty face of the poet's mother who as a girl of twelve at that time. It has also

captured the smiling faces of the two girl cousins Betty and Dolly. They are holding
the hands of the poet's mother.
3) What has not changed over the years? Does this suggest
something to you?
Ans: The sea has not changed over the years. It rings out the transient nature and
its object. Time spares none. The pretty faces and the feet of the three girls
are terribly transient or moral when compared to the ageless and unchangeable
sea.
4) The poets mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this
laugh indicate?
Ans: The poet's mother laughs at the snapshot which was taken years ago. In the
photograph, she as well as her two little cousins stood at the each. She laughed at
the ay all of them were dressed up for the beach. Perhaps they looked funny. Their
laughter indicated the youthful spirit.
5) What is the meaning of the line Both wry with the laboured
ease or loss
Ans: Both the mother and the poet suffered a great sense of loss. The mother has
lost her childhood innocence and joyful spirit that the photograph has captured
some years ago. For the poet, the smile of her mother has become thing of the past.
She has silently resigned to her faith. Ironically both labour to bear their
loss with ease.
6) What does "this circumstance" refer to?
Ans: The circumstance refers to the death of the poet's mother. The photograph of
her dead mother brings sad nostalgic feelings in the past. But the poet has nothing
to say at all about the circumstance. The silence of the poet makes the silence
prevailing their still deeper.
7) The three stanzas depict three different phases. What are
they?
Ans: In the first stanza, the poet's mother is shown as a twelve year old
girl with pretty smiling face. Then she is paddling with her two girl cousins. This
face is before the poet's birth. The second face describes the middle aged mother
laughing at her own snapshot. The third face describes the chilling pale of silence
that the death of her mother has left of the past.