24 pages • 48 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopExchanging Hats
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Hats
Hats have signified a person's job, affiliations, and position within society throughout history. In “Exchanging Hats,” Bishop uses the hats to signify gender. The uncles put on a lady's hat while the aunts wear “the yachtsmen's caps” (Line 11). Bishop contextualizes hats as a symbol of gender roles by referring to the relatives' actions as a form of crossdressing and experimentation. Hats also symbolize thought, so when a person changes their hat, it represents a shift in their outlook. The hats also demonstrate the gender roles and the collective view of each gender.
Bishop makes the lady's hat non-descript. Its only role is to act as an accessory for the man to bring pleasure and get a laugh. People frequently use jokes to center themselves or form tighter bonds within a group. The uncles try on the lady's hat in front of their relatives, implying a desire to get in their good favor. For a long time, powerful families made political and economic alliances through marriages and the wife was considered additional revenue for the male heir. A wife signaled her husband's respectability, physical appeal, and monetary status.
In contrast, the yachtsmen's cap evokes either a maritime profession or enough wealth to pursue a maritime hobby. The hat gets to be more than its relationship to the other gender. Instead, the hat represents multitudes and specific functions. For many centuries in the United States, white men were the only people unlimited in pursuing wealth, power, careers, and identity. The aunts make an “exhibitionistic screech” when seeing each other in the yachtsmen's caps as if they are getting away with something they are not supposed to in public. Wearing the hat is not just fun and funny but also illicit and defiant since it signals women trying on a man's role in society.
Men, on the other hand, look down upon femininity and women. They view crossing gender boundaries as only good for a joke. The speaker's embarrassment at the uncles' flat joke signals to the reader that there is something shameful about the uncles' act. Because the speaker admits to sharing a desire to cross-dress, Bishop makes the uncle's mocking portrayal femininity a shameful act. Cross-dressing is not embarrassing or wrong, so it is shameful the uncles make a cheap joke of it.
Stars
Stars have evoked wonder, divinity, and questions about reality for people throughout history. In Bishop's “Exchanging Hats,” stars represent both possibilities and dread.
The speaker asks their uncle if he sees “any stars inside” his “black fedora” (Lines 25-28). When placed inside an everyday object, the stars transform into symbols of awe and imagination. The speaker makes a night sky from a black hat. It becomes more than physically beautiful but transcendentally awe-inspiring. People's association of stars with specialness and excitement makes the reader view mundane life as magical. Because the speaker asks about the stars, the reader understands that the stars are captivating and important. They also want to know why it is essential for the speaker to know if the uncle sees the stars.
On the other hand, the stars appear after the uncle has passed. They become linked with death. If the reader applies the stars' divine symbolism, they come to represent the afterlife. The speaker asks her uncle if he sees any stars, but he cannot answer her. Throughout the poem, Bishop destabilizes preconceived, widespread notions. She asks what it will mean if those notions disappear. “What might a miter matter,” referring to a bishop's hat, her speaker asks. Bishop proposes that simple explanations do not exist. Instead, people must become comfortable with uncertainty. Bishop leaves it ambiguous if the aunt is dead or in grief, and the speaker cannot know her experiences and feelings. Further, the speaker sees her dead uncle, but he and his knowledge are out of reach. The speaker will never get the answers they seek.
Beaches
The beach conjures images of tanning, swimming, picnics, and vacations. It is not a surprise that the reader meets the speaker's aunts at the beach in “Exchanging Hats” since the aunts' beach time revelries are a part of this leisure time tradition. The aunts' location hints that Bishop's poem is more about American culture at large than just family dynamics. Bishop already implicated the reader and their family members in the poem's themes by starting with the speaker using first-person plural pronouns. By having the gender play be at a site that is a cultural touchstone, Bishop underlines that gender roles are a shared American tradition too. Bishop subtly asks the reader to remember activities similar to the aunts' hat swap. She wants the reader to question their view of gender roles and whether they can be transcended, and if so, do they view that transcendence as humorous and temporary or as a more substantial, ongoing act.
The question of crossing boundaries fits the beach setting as well. Land meets the sea at the shoreline. They seem separate but actually mingle. The tides wash over the sand, taking some of the land with it. Sometimes the tide stays on the land and form pools in rocks and sand pockets. The sea takes and gives back driftwood. People drown in the same water that fish need to survive. The beach rejects binaries, like gender. As a result, the shore represents a space where someone can more seriously and substantially question gender.
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