High Windows

From the first stanza, Larkin’s poem is positioned as the reflections of a person assuming that those who have what he does not are happy. While the speaker is not quite portrayed as envious, the certainty with which he “know[s] this is paradise” (Line 4) invites critique. For the speaker, the absence of the old “Bonds and gestures” (Line 6) of sexual repression mean that the new generation will all proceed “To happiness, endlessly” (Line 9). The poem’s speaker never outright expresses regret at having to live a life with these “Bonds” (Line 6) in place, nor does he identify his life as either happy or unhappy. However, the implication is that he hopes—no, “know[s]” (Line 4)—that the new generation will achieve the happiness his generation could not.

Rather than demonstrate its criticism of this point of view by having the speaker become disillusioned, the poem simply gives another example that reveals the problems with the speaker’s grass-is-greener thinking. The speaker imagines himself as a young man being observed by a member of the older generation. His imagined elder assumes the same thing he does of the new generation: that the new social freedoms will lead to widespread generational happiness.