Heather receives a 50 euro book voucher for her pains!
Here is Heather's essay in full.
'SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW'--A CLOSE READING
by Heather Billington
I approach this task of providing a
close reading/critical analysis of a Beatles song with some trepidation.
Although I have been a fan of the group for (in a sadly clichéd admission) as
long as I can remember, I am also rather a sheltered one; even though I’ve
listened to what is now a fairly extensive selection of their music, I am not
by a long shot the sort of die-hard enthusiast that owns every single album in
its every possible manifestation. For years I only owned one album; happily I
am now in proud possession of a grand total of three, which surely marks me as
a proper fan. One of the three is Abbey
Road, in which I found the perfect song to subject to a close reading: the
fifth song of the Abbey Road medley,
“She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”.
"She
Came In Through The Bathroom Window" is a superficially careless song, seeming
almost a throw-away melody and lyric combination hidden amongst classics such
as "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something". The entire song is
ostensibly about an encounter that the Beatles had with a group of especially
enthusiastic fans, in which the fans allegedly took a ladder from McCartney's
garden, climbed into his house in London and stole a photo of his. Other
reports suggest that a groupie climbed in through the bathroom window of Ray
Thomas of the Moody Blues and spent the night with him, the recounting of which
inspired McCartney to pen both the riff and the first line of the song. That
being said, an infinitely more interesting system of interpretation is to
approach the lyrics with no preconceived notions as to their meaning, and
rather to read them repeatedly with a fresh eye each time.
The
song starts rather suddenly, almost as if beginning from halfway through
itself, perhaps due to the very short segue between it and the preceding
"Polythene Pam". It is prefaced by one of the band, generally
presumed to be Lennon, indistinctly and hurriedly saying something like
"oh, listen to that now" (the most popular interpretation, although
reports vary), followed by a laugh and a contrastingly ungarbled "oh, look
out!". This perhaps is a warning to the other three in reference to the
abrupt change in tempo following "Polythene Pam", but depending on
the lyrical interpretation of the song can take on more intriguing meanings.
The
lyrics of the first verse read as follows:
"She
came in through the bathroom window,
Protected by a silver spoon.
But now she sucks her thumb and wanders,
By the banks of her own lagoon."
There are conflicting reports as to
whether the last word in the third line is 'wonders' or 'wanders', with
official Beatles songbooks and various official Beatles websites differing
across the board, as do countless unofficial web sources. For the sake of this
essay I will settle on 'wanders', and can only apologise if I do so
erroneously. The first verse stands out as the only verse of the song to appear
on its own; the third verse immediately follows the second with no space in
between, whereas the first verse is followed by the chorus. This creates the
impression that the first verse is a sort of set-up of the bones of the song's
lyrical content, with the second and third verses providing the 'action'. There
are two interpretations of the lyrics of the first verse that proved to me
strongest and most striking and on which I have focussed. Both readings lay the
foundations for entirely different interpretations of the song as a whole,
although both assume the same sort of protagonist: a young female, perhaps in
her early twenties.
The
first interpretation takes the mention of "a silver spoon" to be a
reference to the social status of the unnamed "she", casting her as
upper class: she was been born with, as the saying goes, a silver spoon in her
mouth. The notion of her being "protected" by this would mean that
her status allows her to behave as she pleases with no ramifications; she can
enter a house via the bathroom window should she so please, and no-one will be
able to stop her. The next two lines, depicting her sucking her thumb and
wandering "by the banks of her own lagoon", lends a childishness and
naivety to her character, in this case as a result of her sheltered and
advantaged upbringing. The implication is that the woman has no idea how to
behave as an adult and chooses instead to "wander", a fundamentally
unpurposeful mode of transportation, in her own privileged world, as idyllic
and separated from the rest of the world (or sea) as a lagoon.
The
lyrics to the chorus, which read:
"Didn't
anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday,
Tuesday's on the phone to me",
indicate a worry on the part of the
of the singer stemming from their certainty that this woman cannot function in
the real world and will ultimately suffer as a result. The first two lines of
the chorus serve as a despairing appeal to nobody in particular, the lack of direction
in the question drawing attention to the fact that nobody will reply to it,
just as nobody has told the woman what life would really be like. The next two
lines, "Sunday's on the phone to Monday,/Tuesday's on the phone to
me" depicts the inevitable passing of time; life is going to continue
ceaselessly, no matter how unprepared the woman is for its onslaught. The fact
that Tuesday is on the phone to the singer illustrates that he knows all to
well that life is inevitable; Tuesday follows Monday follows Sunday, all are
linked inextricably. He understands this, and is rueful about his inability to
remove himself from the cycle of which he, and indeed all of the human race, is
unavoidably a part.
The
lyrics to the second and third verses, reading:
"She said she'd
always been a dancer,
She worked at fifteen clubs a day.
And though she thought I knew the answer,
Well, I knew what I could not say.
And so I quit the police department,
And got myself a steady job.
And though she tried her best to help me,
She could steal, but she could not rob",
provide the 'story' of the song. The
reference to the woman being a dancer highlights her whimsicality, dancing
being just as impractical a way to get from A to B as wandering. In addition,
working as a dancer at fifteen clubs a day is probably technically impossible,
which compounds the sense that the woman lives in her own idealistic world in
which anything can occur. The last two lines of the second verse depict the
woman looking for some sort of assumedly all-encompassing answer from the
singer, possibly to the question of how to get by in life. The fact that the
singer "could not say" indicates that his answer of how the woman
will fare in the world would not be a comforting one, which he would of course
not want to impart given his fondness for her as is displayed in the chorus.
The
third verse reads as the singer being so determined to aid the hapless woman
that he distances himself as much as possible from the real world, "and so
I quit the police department", and gets a "steady job" as
provider and carer for a soul so privileged as to be unable to function. The
singer's resulting to thievery indicates just how far he is from his 'real
life' in which he was an enforcer of the law, which gives a distinctly
melancholy tone to the song. The final line of the third verse emphasises again
the woman's incapabilities; "she could steal, but she could not rob"
could be read as a play on words in her being able to 'steal' as a method of
moving, typically impractical as befits her character, but unable to aid her
rescuer in what he has sunk to in order to help her. The chorus is repeated
immediately after the third verse, ending the song on the despondent certainty
that although the singer tries his hardest to save the woman from herself, it
is impossible to escape the cyclic motion of the days of the week and time
going on. The notion of a cycle is emphasised by the fact that the chorus is
repeated, having appeared earlier in the song.
The second interpretation that I gleaned
from "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" sets up a more gritty
story line. This reading of the lyrics of the first verse assumes that the
reference to a silver spoon indicates drug addiction; spoons are commonly used
in the process of injecting heroin, the understanding of which sets the
protagonist up as a drug addict. The reference to her being
"protected" by the spoon in coming in through the bathroom window
could mean either that she is breaking into a house but is numbed to the moral
implications of same as a result of her addiction, or that she is so high that
she is literally protected from the physical pain of unceremoniously crashing
into a house via a window. The lines in which the woman is described wandering
by her lagoon indicates that her primary existence is in her mind in the world
that she inhabits while high, and not in the real world.
The chorus illustrates the futility
of warning against the dangers of drugs; there is every likelihood that the
woman was repeatedly told not to go down that path: "Didn't anybody tell
her? Didn't anybody see?", but didn't heed any of the advice. The
reference to the days of the week being connected by phone lines can be read as
referring to the periodic contact an addict has with their dealer; they deal
with one client on Sunday, another on Monday etc., therefore the lines
"Sunday's on the phone to Monday,/Tuesday's on the phone to me"
illustrates the networking between addicts and the closed-off and close-knit social
groups they form.
The second and third verses read as
the miserable life of a hardcore addict. The woman's work as a dancer seems in
this context an inherently seedy occupation, and the fact that "she worked
at fifteen clubs a day" illustrates her weariness and the seemingly
ceaseless list of jobs she undertakes in order to finance her addiction. She is
depicted as looking for the answer to her problems in others: "And though
she thought I knew the answer", but is unable to find it anywhere:
"Well, I knew what I could not say." This is because her problems
stem from herself, therefore the only place that she could ever discover the
solution is within. The third verse depicts the singer misguidedly attempting
to help the woman by becoming a criminal in order to feed her habit, his
quitting "the police department" referring to his going against the
law. The reference to the woman trying to help the singer but only being able
to steal as opposed to rob highlights, rather depressingly, the good in her character;
to rob something is to take it by violence or force, whereas to steal is merely
to take it, indicating that desperate as the woman is she cannot bring herself
to use violence. However, the singer seems to have no difficulty in partaking
in robbery in the name of helping the woman, which concludes the 'story' read
in this interpretation by painting both of them in a dubious light, although
for different reasons. The conclusion of the song on a repetition of the chorus
indicates, similarly as is insinuated in the first interpretation, that the
singer's efforts are ultimately inconsequential; the cycle of addiction
continues infallibly.
There
are numerous similarities between both aforementioned interpretations of
"She Came In Through The Bathroom Window", yet each paints an
unarguably different and hopefully interesting picture of the events within the
song. One interpretation that unavoidably applies to both readings, however, is
that of John's shout preceding the song as is mentioned earlier in this essay.
Both readings of the lyrics see the preemptive cry of "oh, look out!"
as serving as both foreshadowing and as a warning to people not to attempt to
be saviours of others; you will not only fail them, but also ultimately fail
yourself in the process.
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