Question

Many times the tone suggests the attitude of the speaker what kind of attitudes are suggested by the words virtuous poor sinner? He is but a man what of this? Why is this

Answer 1

The tone suggests the submissive attitude of the speaker and the contempt she feels for him along with her hurt pride.

EXPLANATION:

In the heart rending poem ‘A Farmer’s Wife’ by the feminist poet Volga, the poet expresses through the farmer’s wife the sorry plight of a poor Indian house wife.

The farmer’s wife is the narrator in the poem. Her drunkard of a husband commits suicide when the crops fail leaving her and her children in utter penury. The money lenders swarm to the farmer’s helpless wife to extract her husband’s debt. It is with regret and a broken heart that she speaks out which is narrated through her in the poem.

With a tone of extreme sorrow she addresses her dead, drunk husband as virtuous and calls herself the poor sinner having lived after him. Her attitude is ironic here.    

She phrases the rhetorical questions ‘Why of this? What of this?’ with an attitude of anger and hurt pride at her dead husband for abandoning her and her children and not thinking even once of what is to become of them. The tone of the narrator is of sorrowful anger here. She is angry at his manhood which instead of protecting her has left her defenceless.