Question

Refer to Explorations in Literature for a complete version of the poem.

Which statement best expresses a theme in the poem "Love Is Not All" by Edna St. Vincent Millay?

A- They show the speaker's feelings and behavior at the start of her marriage, when she was young and less mature.

B- They suggest that the speaker has fallen in love with her husband now that they are married.

C- They show that the speaker's husband must also change if he expects their love to grow and last.

D- They indicate that it is impossible to predict how people will change or grow over time.

Answer 1

The answer is: A- They show the speaker's feelings and behavior at the start of her marriage, when she was young and less mature.

Answer 2

The correct answer is A.

The first 7 lines of the poem are a description of what love is not. Despite this negatory character, one can deduct this is exactly what the author imagined love was when she was younger. Further she also nostalgically recalls past feelings and she questions if she was capable of paying the price to experience it again. However, as a mature person, in the last line, she states with a confidence that she wouldn't be able to do so. She probably realized that love has rather different dimensions that these feelings she encountered at the beginning.