Essay Database

Wallace Stevens and Religion This essay offers an explication of Wallace Stevens' poem "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman." Addressing “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman,” the speaker proposes “poetry” as “the supreme fiction” (line 1) rather than God or religion. Stevens considered religion as fictions, imaginative creations that made it possible for people to feel at home in a world that is not naturally homelike and hospitable. Thus the speaker’s statement suggests that religious fictions have …

…be human. Therefore, if the base and ignoble passions associated with lewdness is human, why not project a heaven on this basis rather than the lofty and sublime moral sentiment? This is the more conceivable inasmuch as the imagination is itself irreverent and protean: “fictive things / Wink as they will” (lines 21,22). The poem is calculated to elicit from the old woman—and those readers who share her outlook—the “wince” (line 22) that concludes the poem.