Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

Millay weaves imagery throughout her poem, “Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” that, directly or indirectly, indicates two states of being—that of being shut tight and inaccessible, and that of remaining loose and open and available. While a burial casket may be open for viewing before it is lowered into the ground, its ultimate purpose is to enclose—entomb—a body, and not a living body, but a dead one. The coffin transforms, then, into a sort of hope chest that is devoid of hope, as it is “(l)ocked and the key withheld” (Line 3). If it is a hope chest, it is a receptacle for the trousseau, or the linens and clothing a bride collects prior to and in anticipation of her marriage. This closed casket/hope chest is a strong metaphor for a woman’s virginity, something a girl of the day was encouraged to safeguard until marriage, as proof of her moral worthiness. The speaker in this poem will not withhold her love “in a lovers’-knot” (Line 5), a thing pulled tight, nor “in a ring” (Line 5), which encloses. Instead, she will offer herself “in the open hand” (Line 9), “unhidden” (Line 10).