Poem Notes

They Did Not Expect This is the story of a marriage that has gone wrong. A couple who married young are described as having taken a metaphorical "wrong turning". Small things irritate them, before they finally find "accommodation", a way of coexisting although living largely separate lives.

The couple in Vernon Scannell’s poem They Did Not Expect This marry young, when they have only the "beauty of youth’s season" to build their relationship on. They act "quite unquestioningly", without thinking. This results in their metaphorical journey through life taking a "wrong turning", so that they end up together but unhappy. Their lack of knowledge of each other is echoed in the way "their eyes are strangers", so they cannot even look at each other, and they look to tea-leaves or the remote chance of winning the football pools to escape the life in which they are trapped. This relationship was clearly built on the wrong foundation,

In Scannell’s poem, the couple are in a "cold, furnished room", which represents the temperature of their relationship. Their "hope" becomes a stuffed animal on the mantelpiece. This is almost a domestic version of pathetic fallacy, in which the weather echoes the emotions of the protagonists. Similarly, in Havisham, the narrator’s mental disarray is matched by her yellowing dress and the skewed mirror.

which is the opposite of the "cold" room in They Did Not Expect This. The couple also find that on their journey the wind and rain "chilled" their blood, while any kind of endearment “burnt” their tongues, being too hot in comparison.