Miniver Cheevy

The poem’s speaker introduces Miniver Cheevy as a “child of scorn” (Line 1). This phrase has two possible meanings. It suggests that instead of being a typical happy and carefree child, Miniver was a product of disparagement, a way to literalize the idea that he had innate contempt for the world around him. The phrase also implies that Miniver was scorned in his childhood by others. Both interpretations provide a sense of Miniver as a bitter outcast who has been at odds with society since birth. Further, the absence of a past tense verb before “child of scorn” makes it clear that Miniver has not grown out of this childhood predilection.

Miniver “grew lean” while “assail[ing] the seasons” (Line 2), living in conflict with the natural ebbs and flows of life through time. He is not made strong by this adversity, however, as he only grows more fragile with passing time. Miniver’s fragility is demonstrated in the next lines, in which he still regrets the fact of his birth, for only the vaguest of “reasons” (Line 3).

In the remaining stanzas of the poem, the speaker unfolds Miniver’s ultimate problem. His inner torment comes from being an anachronism who lives in a world of daydreams of a mythic golden age, desperately wishing he was born in an earlier era. His inner world is filled with visions of the distant past, such as scenes of epic sword fights upon “prancing” horses (Line 6).

Miniver’s romantic notions of the past bring him both moments of joy and further sadness. His visions of heroic warriors “set[s] him dancing” (Lines 7-8)—though most likely an inert man like Miniver would only be dancing in his mind. Likewise, only his dreams of the legendary and fictional (i.e. the cities of Thebes and Camelot, and Priam, the King of Troy in Homer’s Iliad) provide respite from his supposed labors. Miniver longs for Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages, dreaming of a past that never existed outside of fiction, making his delusions impractical.

In the fourth stanza, Miniver mourns “the ripe renown / That made so many a name so fragrant” (Lines 13-14). In other words, he longs for a time where one’s reputation could rise to greatness of epic proportions, which seems less possible in modern times. A deeper reading of this line reveals Robinson’s subtle criticism of Miniver’s romanticization of the past. The word “ripe” is the key to this double meaning. In line with the word “fragrant,” “ripe” describes an intense scent with negative connotations of being unpleasantly pungent. The word also means “fully matured,” which is in stark contrast to Miniver’s immature and shallow longings for the past.

Miniver goes on to mourn the modernization of “Romance”—in this case, not necessarily in the sense of love or sexual attraction, but in its slightly older sense of excitement elevated above the mundane—and “Art” in lines 15-16. By capitalizing these abstract nouns, Robinson personifies modern romance as a frivolous figure having a night “on the town” and contemporary art as a down-and-out “vagrant.” No longer is romance associated with mystery and glamor, but instead it is presented as being commonplace and cheap. Likewise, art no longer has a grand place in society, but is now homeless and wandering without purpose.

The next stanza introduces another of Miniver’s interests: the Medici family, a prominent Italian dynasty that ruled Florence and later Tuscany from 1434-1737 and was infamous for intrigue, murder, scandal, wealth, and power—everything obviously missing from Miniver’s life. Miniver believes that if he could only have been a part of their family, he would have “sinned incessantly” (Lines 19-20), living an extravagant and extraordinary life. Though he later claims to be “born too late” (Line 29), the objects of his worship reveal that he also feels he was born into the wrong social class.

A far cry from the riches and excesses of the Medici family, Miniver is brought back to loathsome reality when he sees a “khaki suit” (Lines 21-22), the uniform of a military man of his time. He curses such a common, plain sight. It is a reminder of how reality conflicts with his inner fantasies of medieval times, in which knights donned what he thinks of as more graceful “iron clothing,” or armor (Lines 23-24). It is ironic that Miniver calls chainmail or plate mail graceful, considering how cumbersome and heavy it is and how ungainly it makes the person wearing it. His notions of the past are superficial, as he lacks any nuance in his view of the past and never stops to consider the brutal reality and struggles of bygone eras. In an echo of the first line of the poem, the narrator confirms that Miniver still holds onto the scorn he developed in childhood. He scorns the fact that he needs to seek money (“gold”) to survive as an adult (Line 25). At the same time, Miniver acknowledges that life is more difficult without money (Line 26). Here, Miniver is shown to be a contradiction: both seeking wealth and looking down on it.

The poem never mentions exactly what “labors” Miniver undertakes for this gold, instead showing him lost in repetitive thought over his money dilemma: “Miniver thought, and thought, and thought / And thought about it” (Lines 27-28). There is a certain humor to these lines, with the excessiveness of the word “thought” being repeated four times. In his introduction to Robinson’s last work, King Jasper, Robert Frost remarked that he and Ezra Pound found the fourth repetition of “thought” in this poem hilarious and saw a certain mischief in Robinson’s choice to include it. The extra “thought” highlights the ridiculousness of Miniver, who does nothing but overthink his situation.

The last stanza finally shows the truth of Miniver’s life outside of his grand fantasies. While his mind roams through a past he will never get to experience, he presumably sits at a bar and drinks his life away. Instead of using the heroes of the past as inspiration to become bolder and brighter, Miniver shrugs off his pitiful state and “call[s] it fate” (Line 31). He is resigned to his life, having convinced himself that there is nothing to be done about his predicament.

However, the reality of the current time is not to blame for Miniver’s shortcomings, though he refuses to admit it. He prefers to label himself as “born too late” to achieve anything of consequence (Line 29). The unfortunate truth is that in a different era, Miniver would have most likely come up with another excuse for his lack of character. Fate is blamed as Miniver’s ultimate foe, but his true adversary is himself.