Resisting Defense in Moore’s “Armor’s Undermining Modesty”

Abstract

Although there are a handful of compelling readings – among which I would single out those of Ellen Levy and of Heather White and Luke Carson – of Marianne Moore’s “Armor’s Undermining Modesty,” none of them properly account for the significance of the opening lines, which stop short of clearly representing the speaker’s defensive reaction to an assumed “pest.” From the tone we might infer relative calm and restraint; indeed, part of the poem’s appeal lies in the knowing, mildly ironic quality of the voice, which seems sure-footed despite the eccentricity of its steps. Even so, the poem indeed does develop from a moment of misidentification – “At first I thought a pest/ must have alighted on my wrist” (lines 1–2) – that may also have involved annoyance, perhaps even recoil or brief panic. That this misidentification and the defensive attitude implicit in it are key themes is clear enough; nevertheless, the reader is left in the awkward position of having to entertain the speaker’s reflections in the wake of an error. Moreover, nothing in the speaker’s approach suggests an explicit attempt to recover trust, even though her tone and attitude may inspire confidence. In fact, it is precisely because of this refusal – which accommodates her frank concessions to irony – that the speaker does come across as being invested and in earnest. She does not speak from some moral high ground or enclave of virtue. Yet it is difficult for the reader to accost her; it is as if each statement – decisive enough when considered in isolation – turns out to have been born of accident or coincidence. Here I am mindful of the readings of Levy (70–71) and of White and Carson (77), both of which provide ample evidence of the poem’s continual generation of new intratextual connections by means of homophony, pun, oxymoron, rhyme, alliteration, and so forth, since such inflections complicate the thematic thread. The poem’s procedure, then, is aligned with its interest in contingencies, even though it knows itself to be driven, like the reader, by the desire for https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2023.2184246