Living in Sin Themes
The Home
By this point you're probably sick of us pointing this out, but once more, all together now: "The studio is a metaphor for the woman's relationship!" Every aspect of the studio in "Living in Sin" c...
Love
For a poem about love, "Living in Sin" is kind of a downer. Love is treated in terms of the contrast between idealistic ideas and realistic relationships. We don't really know what went wrong in th...
Dissatisfaction
In "Living in Sin," the contrast between what the woman thought her relationship would be like, and what it is actually like, shows some serious, mega-value-sized dissatisfaction. But even though s...
Women and Femininity
The woman in "Living in Sin" does not put a lot of effort into keeping up the household, but the man seems to put in no effort at all. This inequality is reflective of gender roles in the 1950s, wh...