📚 Poem Analysis : "Warning"

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Jenny Joseph was born on 7 May 1932 in South Hill , Birmingham to Florence and Louis Joseph, an antiques dealer. The family were non-observant Jews. Her father's career led to the family relocating to Buckinghamshire, and Joseph was evacuated to Devon early during the Second World War.
Warning’ is Jenny Joseph’s most popular poem. It’s become one of the best-loved poems among British readers of poetry, but its appeal extends beyond the United Kingdom. .
Everyone resents having to behave sensibly during adult life. Once the waywardness of childhood and adolescence is past, we know that we have a duty - to ourselves, but also to society at large and to our own reputations - to behave responsibly and properly.Once, we were joyous children. Now, as adults, there are a great many duties and tasks . children to raise, jobs to be done.
But when we grow old and are able to retire, we can throw off this social responsibility and do what we like. Or at least, now, as responsible and sensible adults, we can entertain the fantasy that that is what we will do in our old age. This is the dream or longing that Jenny Joseph so brilliantly and wittily gives expression to in ‘Warning’.
Even the title points up the poem’s status as light-hearted and witty. Joseph is warning the world of what she will be like as an old lady, but most of the things she mentions in the course of the poem are fairly innocuous (learning to ‘spit’ is perhaps the most antisocial), so it’s not as if we need to call this a serious ‘warning’ !
The first line of the poem, ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple’ is (rightly) famous for its memorable attention to detail (why purple?), the meaning of the statement comes to make full sense when one quotes the rest of that opening statement, which runs on to the second line: ‘With a red hat that doesn’t go!.
“In 1997, Sue Ellen Cooper of Fullerton, California, gave her friend a vintage red fedora and a copy of “Warning” for her 55th birthday. It made such a hit that Sue Ellen went on to found the internationally popular Red Hat Society. The members famously wear red hats and purple outfits to their public gatherings.”