JC
The Sound of Pen students spent a session exploring the significance of love in Taylor Swift’s ‘dorothea’. Here’s an essay built from the ideas discussed during that hour!
- MUSIC FOCUS: Taylor Swift.
- ACTIVITY FOCUS: Sharpen your ability to define a convincing and compelling essay.
Explore the significance of love in ‘dorothea’.
Love: a deep feeling of emotional connection; there’s no remedy for it; it makes the world go round etc. If you listen to Taylor Swift’s music, you know exactly what it is. Sometimes it’s a fairytale, sometimes it’s a fight… sometimes it’s a complete and utter fiasco.
For the two main characters in ‘dorothea’, love is certainly complicated. Mainly because their feelings for each other are somewhat conflicting. The speaker is absolutely consumed by feelings of love. “Dorothea… Dorothea… Dorothea,” they yell out. The repetition not only underlines their desperation to be heard by the girl they’re yelling out to but also indicates the non-stop way in which Dorothea whirls around their thoughts. Obsessed? You might say so. It also speaks volumes that Dorothea fails to respond. Despite the consistent prompts to do so, Dorothea remains silent. Who is love more significant for? Hmmm.
Perhaps the significance of the speaker’s feelings is evident, too, in the third syllable of Dorothea’s name. Thea was a Greek goddess and perhaps Swift’s choice of moniker hints at the songwriter’s desire to establish the speaker’s feelings for Dorothea. She is as significant to him as a deity: a provider of comfort, security and so much more. It’s an image cemented when the speaker declares in more explicit terms: “you’re a queen.” The regality of the metaphor underlines how much they look up to this person. And there’s even more meaning to be found in that name: ‘Thea’. Thea was the goddess of sight and vision, which makes sense given how Dorothea’s focus is on the future; knowing this allows us to identify the irony in the speaker’s ambition to drag their former lover back to the past.
Why is Dorothea so significant for Swift’s speaker? Perhaps because of those days when she was: “making a lark of the misery.” That word “lark” underlines the sense of fun and joy this person once brought to the speaker’s life. It’s evident that the speaker wants to return to a childhood (as symbolised by the “park”) so that he can live again in that perfect moment with Dorothea. The satisfaction he feels at remembering the way in which she could counteract his “misery” is accentuated by that alliterative ‘m’. Mmmmm. You can literally hear him enjoying his memories. Much as he’d savour a piece of cake (ideally of the wedding variety). And yet there’s a certain irony embedded here too! A “lark” is not just a word that means fun and mischief – it’s also a bird associated with the morning time. The new beginnings the lark represents are inextricably linked to its value – to yearn for that lark when it’s already in the past is surely madness.
That madness, though, is significant in itself – the speaker is in a desperate state. “It’s never too late to come back to my side,” they claim, and their anguish is easy to spot in the absolute nature of that adverb “never”. The speaker’s love for Dorothea is important enough that they’re willing to spend the rest of their life making themselves available just in case Dorothea should decide to return. Love as insanity? Maybe. Love as significant? Definitely. Look at how it can colour a person’s entire existence!
Does the love being explored have the same impact on Dorothea itself? Possibly not! But how can we even tell? Taylor Swift doesn’t allow the title character a voice here. Or does she? Perhaps, in fact, her silence speaks vociferously for how insignificant the speaker is to her. Clearly, for all the speaker’s mooning, Dorothea does not think as much of this ‘relationship’ at all. Look at the way the speaker shouts: “Hey Dorothea.” And yet even this kind of strongly-pronounced exclamation fails in its intention to make Dorothea pause and reconsider the ‘love’ in question. And while the speaker’s resulting sadness is evident in the alliterative ‘w’ (“When we were younger”) – a sorrowful sound if ever there was one – Dorothea has no such regrets about a love that may once have been significant, but has no bearing on her present.
Her new “shiny friends” have more significance for her: the superficial gloss inherent in that adjective “shiny” hints at where her interest lies now. And the mournful rhetorical question: “Do you ever stop and think about me?” speaks for itself. Dorothea doesn’t think about the speaker; whatever feelings might have once connected the two of them are no longer significant for her. Probably, the relationship was never as significant for her. The two characters skipped: “the prom, just to piss off (Dorothea’s) mom and her pageant scheme.” Prom is an important feature in American teenage life. Dorothea had no hesitation in stealing that experience from the speaker so that she could fulfil her own selfish wishes. She took advantage of the speaker’s adoration, and the significance of the love which that speaker still feels means he’d allow her to do the same again.
Throughout ‘dorothea’, the speaker absolutely translates their feelings as significant. For them, the love they experienced as a younger person has shaped the person they are right now. There is, however, no sense that this love is – or ever was – as significant for Dorothea herself.
ACTIVITY 1
Explore the significance of love in a text of your choice.
Use the structure employed by the Sound of Pen students above:
- BRANCH 1: for (character’s name), the love is so significant
- BRANCH 2: however, for (second character’s name), there is clearly a more important priority
For example…
…in ‘Othello’:
- BRANCH 1: for Desdemona, the love is so significant
- BRANCH 2: however, for Othello, there is clearly a more important priority
…in ‘The Great Gatsby’
- BRANCH 1: for Jay Gatsby, the love is so significant
- BRANCH 2: however, for Daisy, there is clearly a more important priority
…in ‘Whoso List To Hunt’
- BRANCH 1: for Wyatt, the love is so significant
- BRANCH 2: however, for Anne Boleyn, there is clearly a more important priority
Please do send your work in. I want to publish the most exciting answers and offer advice.