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The publication of The Whitsun Weddings in 1964 by Faber and Faber attracted much critical attention both in America and Britain, not least from critic and poet Louise Brogan, who praised Larkins formal gifts about which she wrote:
"He is able to use such gifts as they are seldom used, to describe the tough realities of his time."
And Larkins verse in The Whitsun Weddings is tough, tougher than that of the previous two collections, both in diction and, to a certain extent, in subject matter, for although his preoccupations remain fundamentally the same, his view of experience and expectation seems to have become rawer, and his characters suffer more real pain in the face of the world in which they live. ...
The Less Deceived has no characters save the speaker persona of the poet and the negligible friend of I Remember, I Remember, whereas The Whitsun Weddings is full of personalities with whom Larkin populates his landscape. ... Experience has tricked both the speaker and Mr Bleaney, denying them anything greater than a yearly frame of unfulfilment and the provision of the lowest requirements for subsistence; just as it tricks another character from The Whitsun Weddings, Arnold, of Selfs the Man. ...
So Larkin peoples The Whitsun Weddings with real (if a little stylised) characters. ...
Familiarity with the poorer facets and qualities of life is a preoccupation with Larkin in The Whitsun Weddings. ... This can be best seen in a comparison between Toads Revisited of The Whitsun Weddings and Toads of The Less Deceived. ... However, when we come to Toads Revisited in The Whitsun Weddings Larkin turns on the opinions of Toads. ... He has shown us the low quality of life for those like Mr Bleaney and Arnold in The Whitsun Weddings described the disillusion one can feel with the world in A Study of Reading Habits but finally he reassures us in his insistence that the mainstay of life, work, is not a bad thing but a comfort.
Approximate Word count = 2473
Approximate Pages = 9.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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