has this excuse for his misery, he can postpone
indefinitely the question of why he does not feel
comfortable in his own world.
Alcoholism
‘‘Miniver Cheevy’’ is, in part, the portrait of an
alcoholic. Like most chronic alcoholics, Cheevy
does not have a steady job. Another symptom of
alcoholism is Cheevy’s erratic mood swings. He
vacillates between sorrowand rage. Alcohol acts
as a depressant on the central nervous system, so
as Cheevy obsesses about being ‘‘born too late,’’ he
drinks, and as he drinks, he gets more depressed.
Alcoholism can cause severe depression, as well as
the inability to think straight and problem solve.
Given that Miniver Cheevy cannot control his life,
it would make sense that he would look for some
outside force that is causing his problems, which is
something alcoholics often do. He believes that the
problem is not within himself, but that it is in his
situation, grasping the unlikely notion that he
would be fine had he only been born earlier.
Style
Masculine and Feminine Rhyme
Masculine rhyme pairs single syllable words or the
final syllables of multisyllabic words that have
the same consonant sound and receive a stress in
the line, as in ‘‘scorn’’ and ‘‘born.’’ Feminine rhyme
pairs multisyllabic words in which two or more
syllables have matching consonant sounds and
the final syllable is unstressed, as in ‘‘seasons’’ and
‘‘reasons.’’ The even-numbered lines in ‘‘Miniver
Cheevy’’ have feminine rhymes, and the odd-
numbered lines have the masculine rhymes. The
effect is that feminine rhymes trivialize, mock, or
give a sense of light-heartedness, whereas mascu-
line rhymes give a sense of seriousness and dig-
nity. In the first stanza, for instance, Robinson
uses these two rhyme patterns to communicate,
on the one hand, the sadness of Cheevy, this
‘‘child of scorn’’ who wept that ‘‘he was ever
born,’’ with the undercutting, minimizing femi-
nine lines describing how Cheevy ‘‘assailed the
seasons’’ and had his ‘‘reasons.’’
In stanza 5, the poet uses a variation on the
feminine rhyme with a feminine slant rhyme. A
slant rhyme uses a consonant sound that is close
but not an exact match, as when Robinson rhymes
‘‘seen one’’ with ‘‘been one.’’Verbal Irony
Verbal irony is a way of using of words to convey
the opposite meaning. When the poet writes that
‘‘Miniver mourned the ripe renown / That made so
many a name so fragrant,’’ the explicit meaning is
that Miniver regrets the loss of the fame that
sweetened the names of heroes and perpetuated
them, as a perfume sends out a scent. But the
poet’s ironic message is that for others the
renowned ones are now rotten and those heroic
subjects have decayed and gotten smelly. Rhyming
‘‘fragrant’’ with ‘‘vagrant’’ further undercuts the
value of what Cheevy longs for in the past.
Another instance of verbal irony occurs when
Robinson refers to a suit of armor as ‘‘iron cloth-
ing,’’ knowing that it would have none of the
flexibility or functionality of actual clothing; it
does not really have the ‘‘medieval grace’’ that the
poem attributes to it, even though Cheevy might
be inclined to look favorably on it. Overall, the
entire poem takes an ironic attitude toward Min-
iver Cheevy, presenting him as a foolish and
deluded person while he thinks that he is more
insightful than most.A knight on a horse(Image copyright arfo, 2009. Used under
license from Shutterstock.com)
Miniver Cheevy