19 pages • 38 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopThe Shampoo
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Prevalence of Nature
Nature plays a leading role in “The Shampoo.” Although the poem is about washing another person’s hair, the speaker spends most of their time in the realm of nature. The poem starts with a dense image of rocks and lichens on their way to “meet the rings around the moon” (Line 5). In Stanza 3, the speaker returns to nature imagery with the “shooting stars” (Line 13). The speaker washes their dear friend’s hair, and the activity brings them closer to the natural world—the moon, the stars, and the rocks. The theme of nature suggests there's something natural about what the speaker and their friend do together. Washing the hair of their “dear friend” (Line 9) isn’t an imposition or strenuous work but an effortless activity that happens on its own—similar to how the lichens “grow / by spreading, gray, concentric shocks” (Line 3) without external assistance.
At the same time, hair is natural—it’s something that organically grows on a person or animal. Looking at hair from this perspective, the nature theme and the theme of hair, or washing it, entwine. The close friend’s hair makes the speaker think of nature because their hair is a product of nature, so it has the traits of bright stars or gray shocks. The “gray, concentric shocks” (Line 3) might refer to the gray streaks in the friend’s hair. In A Miracle for Breakfast, Marshall says Lota’s hair had “wide silver streaks on either side.” The biographical detail furthers the claim that, all along, the speaker is talking about their friend's hair, which makes them think of nature because the friend’s hair and the speaker's desire to wash it develops naturally.
The Transcendental Quality of Identity
The theme of nature relates to a second critical theme in “The Shampoo”: Identity. In Bishop’s poem, the power of nature seems to subsume human identity in certain parts, with the speaker sacrificing themselves in favor of minute observations about nature. They also depict their friend’s hair as a natural phenomenon that’s not explicitly connected to an individual human.
Nature helps the speaker and their friend leave their human identities. They escape the confines of their bodies and selves by becoming one with nature. “The shooting stars in your black hair,” observes the speaker in Line 13. The friend’s hair contains the shooting stars. They’re a part of the friend, and since the speaker is tending to their friend’s hair, they, too, access a transcendent identity. Together, the speaker and the friend create an activity that allows them to cast aside their distinct identities and form a union with nature that “the heavens will attend” (Line 7) or favor.
In 19th-century America, Transcendentalism became a powerful movement, with writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson advocating the minimization of individual identity in favor of a greater union with nature and the world. In his essay “Nature” (1836), Emerson writes about a transcendent moment in the natural world:
Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God (Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” 1836. American Transcendentalism).
As in Emerson’s essay, nature allows the speaker and their friend to depart from common individuality or “mean egotism” in “The Shampoo.” The speaker and their friend either latch onto nature or each other through pronouns like “our” (Line 6) and “us” (Line 8). The friend’s hair “vanishes” into nature, and the speaker can disappear into the magical activity of washing their friend’s hair and become “a transparent eye-ball” or a sharp observer. The natural world lets the speaker and their friend transcend their isolated identities or egos. They don’t exactly become a “particle of God” but their transcendent identities curry favor with “the heaven” (Line 7).
Time and Spirituality
Bishop arguably demonstrates the power of nature and transcendence through the theme of time and spirituality. Things happen in “The Shampoo”—time passes, but the speaker and their friend don’t feel the impact of time. The lichens “grow” (Line 2) and are “spreading” (Line 3), yet in the memories of the pair, “they have not changed” (Line 6). There is a stillness emphasized by the paradoxical Line 1, “The still explosions on the rocks.” There’s both motion and the suspension of motion and change.
The alliance with time brings in “the heavens” (Line 7) since time can be cruel and stressful, so heaven is a worry-free zone partly because time doesn't interfere. Generally, heaven isn't depicted as a place where people have to rush off to school or work. The “heavens will attend” (Line 7) or stay with the speaker and their friend “as long” (Line 8) as they’re together. As a couple, they can create a wondrous, mystical atmosphere in which “Time is / nothing if not amenable” (Lines 11-12). Bishop capitalizes “Time,” which turns the common noun into a proper noun—a specific person or place that bends to the wishes of the couple, who, through the washing of the hair, form a union with nature, which in turn creates a spiritual, timeless paradise.
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