While Edwin Arlington Robinson delves into the emotional anxieties and long-simmering frustrations of this lonely New England woman, the poem offers more than a case study of a claustrophobic life. There are three interlocking perspectives here: the bleak reality of the woman as she contemplates settling for a life without passion or emotional reward (Stanzas 1-4), the narrow-mindedness of judgmental neighbors who dismiss her as stand-offish (Stanza 5), and the broad sympathy of the speaker-poet who warns of the darkest implications of the woman’s plight (Stanza 6). 

Robinson inserts no markers—roman numerals, or typographical tells such as italics or quotation marks—to indicate these dramatic perspective shifts. Instead, Robinson leaves readers to reject the first perspectives as misleading and dangerously limited. Although the poem suggests that the woman cannot be helped or understood entirely, Robinson urges readers to see her dark isolation through sympathy and compassion. 

The opening four stanzas reveal the woman’s debate over why she became involved in an unrewarding relationship, what “fated her to choose” (Line 2) a man incapable of emotional honesty who hides behind an “engaging mask” (Line 3). “She fears him,” she admits in the opening line but doesn’t elaborate, lacing her self-interrogation with anxiety and uncertainty.