The Song of the Shirt

The title of Thomas Hood’s poem “The Song of the Shirt” is immediately at odds with the first stanza’s tone and subject matter. While the label “song” typically indicates a lighthearted or comic tone and the subject of a “shirt” indicates something lowbrow and common, Hood quickly makes clear the sophisticated and serious topic of his poem: a look at the oppressive and pitiful living and working conditions of London’s poor as viewed through the lens of the poem’s seamstress protagonist.

The poem opens with the grim image of a woman “in unwomanly rags” (Line 3), working at her home in “poverty, hunger, and dirt” (Line 6). She is overworked and “weary” (Line 1) yet still hard at work, “plying her needle and thread” (Line 4). While the seamstress is indeed singing a “song” (Line 8), her “dolorous pitch” (Line 7) makes it less a song “for the entertainment of any companions” and more of a “cry from an anguished heart” (“Thomas Hood, Early Victorian Christian Social Criticism, and the Hoodian Hero,” Robert D. Butterworth, p. 437).

The juxtaposition between the title and actual tone and subject matter of the poem persists with Hood’s choice of poetic form.