Queen Jane Approximately

Introduction

This is a love song – of sorts. The narrator clearly wants a relationship with the person he calls Queen Jane but it’s far from certain that his feelings are reciprocated. The song is primarily concerned with the psychologies of each. Both narrator and addressee are complex characters, neither of them fully in control of their own destiny.

The song is in the form of a monologue. Curiously each of the five short verses begins either ‘When’ or ‘Now when’, indicating that none of the events has yet taken place. They’re merely predicted. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that the predicted events referred to are spread over an extensive period of time – perhaps years, starting from the addressee’s childhood. Because of this, and despite the monologue form, the words can’t be part of an actual conversation. They might be better seen as the narrator’s working out a strategy for convincing the addressee that she’d be better off with him.

The narrator

Throughout most of each verse the narrator seems confident in his predictions. By the end of each verse that confidence has gone. Prediction has given way to a heartfelt plea:

‘Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?’

The narrator’s desperation is made further apparent by his repeating the line each time he utters it. And the negative opening ‘Won’t you’ (rather than, say, ‘You must’) makes it apparent he doubts whether she will come and see him.

This lack of confidence is accompanied by another very human trait – a lack of self-knowledge. When the addressee has experienced one disaster after another, the narrator predicts that she’ll be:

‘… sick of all this repetition’

It’s the repetition of failed relationships, as distinct from failure itself, which he knows will upset her. It’s ironic, then, that he should blithely go ahead with repetitions of his own. First there’s the word ‘all’ – ‘all your invitations’, ‘all of your creations’, ‘all of the flower ladies’, ‘all of your children’, ‘all the clowns’, ‘all this repetition’ !!!, ‘all of your advisers’, ‘all the bandits’ and ‘all lay down’. Then there’s his question in the refrain, ‘Won’t you come see me…?’ which gets asked in exactly the same form no less than ten times. Furthermore his attempt to win her can itself be seen as a repetition of the very sort of thing he knows she’s sick of.

There’s more. The words ‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ together occur a total of twenty times (not including in the refrain). The effect is to highlight the addressee’s problems or failure to deal with them. Making her the focus of attention like this seems extraordinarily inept, and even more so given that the narrator knows she’s:

‘… tired of herself’

It’s not as if he’s building her up, giving her confidence.

However, while the narrator may be unwittingly clumsy, there might also be some method in his madness. The repetition of ‘all’ would seem to have to be for the purpose of exaggeration  – to make the addressee’s lot seem as bad as possible so as to get her to come flying to him. Such a tactic would seem necessary since he says little to recommend himself. The only self-recommendation he has is that he’d make no demands on her:

‘And you want somebody you don’t have to speak to’

Overall, his ineptness together with his doubts make success seem unlikely.

Family relationships

­The first three verses almost certainly look forward to different times. In the first, which concerns the addressee’s relationship with her family, she seems to be in her teens. In the second she’s probably been married, is perhaps divorced, and has a number of children. While it’s plausible that she had these children while still living at home, the ‘creations’ the father says she’s tired of, this would seem unlikely.

A cause of the addressee’s misery becomes clear in the first verse. It’s her family:

 ‘When your mother sends back all your invitations’

We don’t know the circumstances so we can’t condemn the mother out of hand. Nevertheless, the narrator makes her seem cold and controlling in that the addressee doesn’t seem to be having a say regarding the invitations. Her father, in attempting to put the sister in the picture by ‘explaining’ how things are, comes across as gentle but insensitive:

‘And your father to your sister he explains
That you’re tired of yourself and all of your creations’

Now all the family know that there’s something wrong. How must that make the addressee feel?

We needn’t take the song as an outright condemnation of parental ineptitude, however. The second verse puts things in a different light:

 ‘And all your children start to resent you’

Time, we can assume, has moved on. A generation later, and relationships are markedly similar. It’s no longer the addressee who is fed up, though, but her own children who are fed up with her. It would seem she hasn’t learnt from her own parents’ mistakes. Either that, or parent child relationships are destined never to change.

Poverty

The second verse begins:

‘When all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you’

Why, one wonders, does the addressee need to borrow from ‘flower ladies’, and indeed why does she need to borrow at all? If its flowers she’s borrowing, while they could be connected with her creativity, it’s more likely they’re for a funeral. Her husband’s? This would explain why there’s no mention of a husband, something one might otherwise have expected given the emphasis on family members, including her father, in the first verse.

Now the flowers have to go back, and:

‘… the smell of their roses does not remain’

The tone is one of resignation. There’s no mention of regret. Like the husband, the smell of the roses simply isn’t there anymore.  It’s as if in dying her husband has simply disappeared, leaving a gap. It’s the word ‘smell’ which creates the impression of distance. It’s noncommittal. One would have expected ‘fragrance’ or ‘scent’ if she’d been in a positive frame of mind.

If this is right, we can now see why she has to borrow. Without a husband, and with children – several, judging by the word ‘all’ in ‘all of your children’ – she is impoverished. We’re not told the reason for her children’s resentment, but it could be connected with her not having sufficient money to bring them up properly. Alternatively, it could be because they miss their father and see his absence as their mother’s fault.

Romance

In the third verse time seems to have moved on again for the addressee seems to have been making repeated attempts  to put an end to her widowed and impoverished state.  However, just as the narrator is inept in his attempt to win her over, so is she inept (in the narrator’s view) in her attempts to find another husband.

The narrator refers to:

 ‘… all the clowns you have commissioned’.

While there’s nothing explicit to indicate that these are suitors, the narrator’s plea in the refrain would support this if he’s seen as putting himself forward as a better alternative. This would account for the word ‘clowns’ – he’s dismissing his, apparently many, rivals as incompetents.

It’s noticeable that the narrator’s language has become militaristic. This may be to poke fun at the addressee although it’s unlikely he’s being consciously critical given his desire for a relationship. The clowns have been ‘commissioned’ – implying that the addressee sees those in a relationship with her as a type of conscript, or at least as someone she’s promoted. The militaristic language continues with their having:

‘… died in battle or in vain’

Those who died ‘in battle’ are most likely those dismissed from a relationship with the addressee having been unable to match her expectations. ‘Battle’ tells us what the relationship was like, but without the narrator committing himself to saying who was at fault. Those who died ‘in vain’ were simply unsuccessful even in getting started on a relationship with her.

The addressee might have won the battles – but with each victory, she’s also lost a potential lover. She might get ‘sick’ of this happening over and over again (‘all this repetition’) but the narrator creates the impression that the fault is hers. The militaristic language, and the fact that the ‘all’ in ‘all the clowns’ indicates that there have been a lot  of would-be lovers, makes the addressee seem uncompromising and hard to please. She seems to have inherited the harshness of her own mother.

Queen Jane

Although nothing is made explicit, there are indications in the first verse that the addressee has good qualities to balance this harshness. The reference to ‘all your invitations’ not only makes it clear that she gets invitations, but the ‘all’ makes it seem there are lots of them.  The effect is to make her seem popular.  And even though she’s supposed to be tired of ‘all’ her ‘creations’, this tells us that she’s both creative and highly productive.

The narrator also refers to her Christ-like passivity in ‘turm[ing] the other cheek’, although one can imagine a hint of irony, conscious or otherwise, given the aforementioned battles.

***

We might wonder why the narrator uses the soubriquet ‘Queen Jane’.  There are various possibilities. On the one hand it demonstrates both affection and recognition that she has good points. On the other, there might be a hint of irony. In calling her ‘Queen Jane’ the narrator could be seen as quietly alluding to an inappropriately high and mighty attitude.

Such a view is perhaps corroborated by the narrator’s use of the term ‘clown’ in a derogatory way for the would-be lovers. ‘Clown’ is a synonym for ‘jester’ or ‘fool’. Since jesters were traditionally employed by monarchs, the use of ‘Queen’ for the addressee and ‘clown’ for the lovers would seem to imply that she too has contempt for them. Approvingly or not, the narrator is implying she belittles them.

***

The ironic treatment of the addressee as royal continues in the lines:

‘When all of your advisers heave their plastic
At your feet to convince you of your pain’

The expression ‘all of your advisers’ has a formality which is suggestive of royalty. And so is ‘heave their plastic/At your feet’ if it means the advisers struggle to bow down or prostrate themselves in a show of obeisance.

‘Plastic’ with its connotations of mouldable as well as the more everyday cheap and nasty is suggestive of the narrator’s contempt for the advisers. Here one can sympathise. It would be absurd trying to convince someone of their pain. If someone’s in pain, they know it already.

The advisers’ actual aim is probably to make the pain seem to demand a greater response than the addressee is giving it. And that’s corroborated by the next line:

‘Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic’

Again the narrator choice of expression is contemptuous. Actions can be drastic, but conclusions can’t. Absurdly, the ‘more’ before ‘drastic’ would imply that the conclusions are a little bit drastic already but just not quite drastic enough. In this way the narrator presents the advisers as mincing their words in obsequious deference to the ‘queen’. However, it may be that what they really want – which the narrator is not prepared to admit for fear of losing out – is for her to do something decisive to make her life better.

The logical language the narrator opts for– ‘prove’ and ‘conclusions’ – also has the effect of making the advisers seem dishonest. It makes them seem to be trying to give their opinions the weight of logical argument.

If the narrator can be trusted, his ridiculing the advisers seems justified. But because of his vested interest we don’t know that he can be trusted. We don’t know the identities of those he’s calling advisers or that their advice isn’t genuine and what’s needed. If it is, his ridicule is out of place. It even seems hypocritical given that he makes no selfless effort himself to make her life better.

Bandits

In the final verse the addressee’s adversaries have become ‘bandits’:

‘Now when all the bandits that you turned your other cheek to
All lay down their bandanas and complain’

Calling them ‘bandits’ sounds mildly ironic as if the narrator, while still taking the addressee’s side, sees her as exaggerating her affliction. She’s treating those in her circle as out to benefit at her expense. What’s described as turning the other cheek, while it could indicate humility, might also imply that she turns away in disdain.

Real bandits are not likely to give up, however, or merely complain just because an adversary ‘turns the other cheek’. Furthermore, bandanas are not guns; they’re hardly the sort of thing even a defeated bandit lays down. Once again, these ‘bandits’ – like the advisers – could well just be people making genuine efforts to get the addressee to be more positive. We don’t know that they don’t have a point. It’s quite plausible that the addressee does need to get a grip, if that’s what they’re advising.

Conclusion

The song gives us a subtle portrayal of two people. Its design is curious in that it’s a monologue, but one that seems to be spread over a number of years. Nothing mentioned at any point has happened. The narrator seems just to be anticipating what might happen at various points in the addressee’s life and rehearsing his reaction.

The narrator is desperate to win the addressee.¹ For that reason we need to be wary of taking his accounts of her troubles at face value. These tend to take her side, at least on the surface, and we have to be alive to hints that she may not be as innocent as he makes out. If he’s besotted by her, almost certainly he’ll be making light of her faults. Alternatively his irony, perhaps driven by a vested interest in taking her side, might be a cover for genuine criticism.

While the narrator presents himself as a way for her to end her troubles, he does nothing to bring this about – unlike those he ridicules. Neither does he give her any indication that he’d be a suitable match. Instead he seems to rather tactlessly build his case on the troubles she’s having. The only thing he says to recommend himself is that she wouldn’t have to speak to him. There are also indications that he puts her off. In pursuing a relationship he’s repeating the very sort of thing he knows makes her ‘sick’. It’s possible, given his knowledge of her faults – subconscious or otherwise – that he’ll decide it would be in his interests to forget her. If he doesn’t, one wonders whether she won’t end up seeing him as just one more ‘clown’ to be defeated.

As for the addressee, her life so far has been hard. She’s presented as creative and popular in her youth, but as having a difficult time. Later she’s unsuccessful both as a mother and in love – possibly through her own fault. She comes across as hard on potential lovers, perhaps having inherited this hardness from her own mother together with a failure to earn the affection of her children. Despite this, and encouraged by the narrator, she seems to spurn advice designed to improve her life. The narrator affectionately calls her ‘Queen Jane’ but, beyond mild and possibly unconscious irony, the title doesn’t fit. Given her circumstances she at best only approximates to being a queen.

Note

1. It’s not really plausible that the whole song, including the refrain, is ironic and that the narrator has nothing but contempt for the addressee. He seems too aware of the vicissitudes in her life for such an attitude to be warranted.