A Beautiful Lady

We like to listen to her dress,

It makes a whisper by her feet.

Her little pointed shoes are gray;

She hardly lets them touch the street.

Sometimes she has a crumpled fan,

Her hat is silvered on the crown.

And there are roses by the brim

That nod and tremble up and down.

She comes along the pavement walk,

And in a moment she is gone,

She hardly ever looks at us,

But once she smiled and looked at John.

And so we run to see her pass

And watch her through the fence, and I

Can hear the others whispering,

“Miss Josephine is going by.”

Poem Audio

"Unidentified Woman." Date unknown, Watts Family Papers, image no.  2017A001-0978., Eastern Kentucky University, Special Collections & Archives. Used with permission from EKU Archives.

About this Poem

By Erin Gregory

In this poem, Elizabeth Madox Roberts describes Miss Josephine, a young woman that is known for her beauty. 

Robert’s use of point of view creates an interesting perspective in this poem. She utilizes the collective “we” second person point of view throughout most of her poem, implying that this is a shared experience. However, in the last stanza, she uses “I”, placing our narrator as part of a larger group. The “we” could be read in a multitude of ways. For example, it could be assumed that “we” is the entire town, a group of local children, a group of teenage girls, a group of teenage boys, etc. Regardless, Josephine is a topic of local gossip – reflecting the social nature of small-town Southern America. Within that collective group, there is one particular person describing Josephine – the narrator, who captures the collective sense of being enamored by this mysterious young woman. 

Interestingly, Josephine’s beauty eludes us – we do not know what she looks like at all. Roberts illustrates Josephine through the clothes she wears rather than the features she has. Through the description of Josephine’s clothing, we come to understand her femininity and her character. The entire first stanza uses sensory language and imagery to describe Josephine’s dress and shoes, which characterizes Josephine as gentle and feminine. Her dress whispers, and her shoes are small and clean, only lightly touching the ground.

In the second stanza, her crumpled folding fan could be read as signifying a number of things – fans are often a symbol of feminine coyness or shyness, and are also associated with church in the Southern U.S.. It also adds to her mystery, as if she hides behind it and the collective “we” can only ever catch a quick glimpse of her face at a time. The same can be said for her hat of roses – it may shield her face from onlookers, making her become the roses, as they are personified instead, what with their nodding and trembling. 

The sense of mystery surrounding Josephine is only heightened within the third and forth stanzas. Her fleeting moment walking into town, or church, or wherever she is headed, creates a routine sense of excitement for the narrator and the collective we. There’s even a touch of possible romance with Josephine’s rare smile at John. The group running to catch a glimpse of Josephine through the fence and their whispering circle back around to the sense of a shared experience in this poem – placing Josephine on a beautiful pedestal that everyone admires.

Essay Audio