The Grandfather in Maggie Smith's Goldenrod: A Character Analysis

Overview

The grandfather in Maggie Smith's Goldenrod is a figure glimpsed through the fractured lens of childhood memory. He appears only in the poem Talk of Horses, where the speaker recalls visiting his big country house with his new (third) wife. The grandfather's story is one of apparent stability—a large home, talk of horses—that collapses into loss: divorce strips him of almost everything. He functions as a symbol of how the past rearranges itself in memory, of the gap between what we remember and what we understand, and of the way survival after rupture is passed through generations.

Plot Role

The grandfather occupies no active plot in Goldenrod. Instead, he is a mental image that “swims up” in the speaker’s mind. The poem’s opening lists other random memories: Avon lipsticks, cherry trees. The grandfather is one more piece in a collage. His role is to demonstrate how family members exist as fragments, and how those fragments resist neat narratives. The speaker asks: “All these pieces, / what do they add up to?” (from Talk of Horses). The grandfather’s place in the story is not to drive action but to embody the mystery of other people’s lives.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

The poem offers only external observations from a child’s perspective. The grandfather’s motivations are not stated, but his actions imply certain traits:

Pursuit of new beginnings: He remarried (third wife) and lived in a big country house, suggesting a desire for a fresh start after earlier relationships.
Detachment or obliviousness: The grandmother rented a small apartment and worked at a mall while the grandfather seems to have enjoyed country life with horses. The speaker notes that the third wife “seemed so dazed, we secretly / called her The Spun Pheasant,” hinting at a household that may have been disorienting.
Vulnerability to loss: His later divorce cost him “almost everything,” indicating that his choices, perhaps financial or emotional, left him exposed.

These traits are inferred from consequence rather than direct description. The grandfather is not portrayed as cruel or malicious; rather, he comes across as a person who lived his own life, unaware of how that life looked to others.

Chronological Arc

The grandfather appears in a single temporal moment within the poem, but his arc can be reconstructed:

Before the speaker’s memory: He marries his third wife and acquires a country house, possibly with horses.
During the speaker’s childhood: The speaker visits the house, perceives a dazed step-grandmother, and hears talk of horses the speaker may never have seen.
Later in life: The grandfather loses nearly everything in his divorce.
The present of the poem: The speaker, now an adult, recalls these fragments while also reflecting on the grandmother’s later mental decline.

The arc shows a trajectory from apparent success to ruin, but the poem does not moralize. It simply sets the pieces side by side.

Relationships

With the Speaker (Grandchild)

The relationship is distant. The speaker remembers the house, not the man. The grandfather is not described as warm or engaged; the speaker does not recall conversations or affection. This distance is typical of how children perceive grandparents: as backdrops rather than active participants.

With the Grandmother

The poem contrasts the grandfather’s country house with the grandmother’s small apartment near a mall where she worked. The divorce left the grandmother in constrained circumstances, and later she “lost almost everything in her mind.” The grandfather’s divorce from her is never described, but its aftermath shapes the grandmother’s life. The speaker does not assign blame, but the juxtaposition suggests inequality of outcome.

With the Third Wife (The Spun Pheasant)

The third wife appears dazed, earning a nickname from the family. The speaker does not know her story. The grandfather’s choice to marry someone who seemed disoriented may reflect his own need for companionship or his inability to heal. The divorce that later lost “almost everything” likely involved her as well.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision: Remarrying and moving to a country house.
Consequence: Creates a lavish but fragile lifestyle that later collapses in divorce.
Decision: (Implied) Not maintaining closeness with the speaker’s family.
Consequence: The speaker remembers the setting more than the man; the relationship fades into a handful of images.
Decision: Not protecting assets or navigating the divorce poorly.
Consequence: Loss of “almost everything,” mirroring the grandmother’s loss of mind—two kinds of ruin on either side of the same split.

The poem refrains from judging these decisions. It treats them as facts to hold up next to each other.

Theme and Symbol Connections

The grandfather connects to several of Goldenrod’s central themes:

Survival and Resilience After Loss: The grandfather survives his divorce but is diminished. He becomes an example of someone who outlives a version of his life, echoing the epigraph: “and then I outlived my life.”
Memory and the Past: The poem’s structure shows how memory stores random details (lipsticks, cherry trees, talk of horses) while losing the whole. The grandfather is a character made of gaps.
Nature as Mirror and Metaphor: The country house, horses, and cherry trees represent a pastoral ideal that proves unstable. Nature does not protect; it simply exists alongside human failure.
Language, Naming, and Perception: The speaker’s uncertain language—“didn’t they have horses?”—shows how perception shapes memory. The grandfather’s life is reduced to a guess.
Motherhood and Parental Love: Though not directly about parenthood, the poem touches on how parents and grandparents become haunted figures in the adult child’s mind, influencing the speaker’s own approach to loss.

For more on these themes, see Survival and Resilience After Loss and Memory and the Past.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does the speaker mention horses she may never have seen?

The phrase “talk of horses” suggests that the grandfather’s new life was described to the speaker, not witnessed. This highlights how much of family lore is secondhand. The horses become a symbol of a promised but unexperienced reality—much like the grandfather’s happiness.

2. Does the poem blame the grandfather for the grandmother’s later mental decline?

No. The two losses are juxtaposed but not causally linked. The grandmother “lost almost everything in her mind,” which may be dementia rather than a direct result of divorce. The poem refuses to assign blame, letting the parallel stand as a mystery.

3. What does “The Spun Pheasant” nickname reveal about the speaker’s family?

It reveals a mix of pity and black humor. The nickname indicates the family perceived the third wife as confused or out of place. It also shows how families create shorthand for discomfort, turning unease into a joke.

4. How does the grandfather’s story connect to the poem’s epigraph?

The epigraph “and then I outlived my life” fits the grandfather: after the divorce, he lost almost everything. He continues living but in a diminished state, outliving the life he built. The collection explores this condition across generations.

5. What is the significance of the grandfather and grandmother losing “almost everything”?

The word “almost” is crucial. Neither lost everything entirely. The grandfather kept something (the poem does not specify), and the grandmother retained a few memories that could surface. The collection elsewhere explores what remains after loss—what survives the dark. See Ending Explained and Questions and Answers for further discussion.

Conclusion

The grandfather in Goldenrod is a minor character whose weight comes from how little we know. He exists as a reminder that family members are not fully knowable, that our stories about them are incomplete, and that loss touches both the one who leaves and the one who stays. His presence in the poem enriches the collection’s meditation on memory, survival, and the meanings we assign to the fragments we carry.