Soledad

By: Angela Manalang Gloria

SUMMARY

The poem is about a woman who is condemned for what she has done.
It tells how the people judged her and how sinful she is for them. They still
condemned this woman till the end without knowing the reality of her
scandal.

INTERPRETATION

This poem imparts how people judge a woman who gave up her
virginity before the holy matrimony. The first part It was a sacrilege, the
neighbors cried, The way she shattered every mullioned pane To let a
firebrand in. They tried in vain expresses how the critics deprave the
woman. They debase her for doing an unwanted act, comparing what she did
to an act of disrespecting something holy because of letting a man consume
her. Then the poem goes

To understand how one so carved from pride

And glassed in dream could have so flung aside Her graven days, or why
she dared profane states how people cant find a reason why the woman
would engage in such a vulgar act when she seems to be a well bred person,
associated with this line To understand how one so carved from pride and
glassed in dream. Then it continues with The bread and wine of life for
some insane moment with him. The scandal never died. It says that the
fact that the woman neglect the right ritual which is to have sex only after
marriage will never be forgotten or forgiven by those critics.

The second stanza starts with But no one guessed that loveliness
would claim Her souls cathedral burned by his desires. For me, it seems
that the man raped the woman. Because of his own desires he had stained
her pure soul, and stole her virginity. And the people who dispraise her dont
know this reality. Then its followed by Or that he left her aureoled in
flame And seeing nothing but her blackened spires,. The people also

didnt know that after the man ruined and left her and make her look filthy in
the eyes of others, he left her with nothing. Thus the poem ends with The
town condemned this girl who loved too well and found her heaven in the
depths of hell. This means that in the end the people still condemned

the woman, for them she is a sinful person who have let herself fall in her
lust because of love. Soledad, as for me, implies a very sad reality, the
reality that women who became dirty will remain dirty. People then looked at
women depending on their chastity, loosing their virginity out of marriage is
a sin.

Andrea Michaella B. Samson