Summary
Set on a failing farm on an unnamed Canadian prairie, presumably during the Great Depression, “The Lamp at Noon” is narrated from a third-person omniscient perspective that alternates between the points of view of Ellen and Paul, a young married couple.
The story begins from Ellen’s point of view. In the couple’s house, Ellen lights a lamp, likely fueled by kerosene, just before noon. For the past three days, strong winds have been making a wailing sound reverberate through the house. The wind also kicks up dust on the prairie; the dust is thick as fog, blocking light to the home and making it necessary to light a lamp during what should be the brightest part of the day.
After lighting the lamp, Ellen stands motionless at the window, watching how the dust obscures distant landmarks and makes their farm appear completely isolated. She opens the door to see if her husband is coming inside to eat. Suddenly the racing clouds tear open and reveal the sun, which is the same color and quality of light as the lamp she lit. At the stove, she tests potatoes with a fork. She finds that looking at the dust storm has fixed her eyes wide open—she cannot close them.
When Ellen’s baby cries, she tries to hush him to sleep. She doesn’t rock him, fearing that, were she to take him out of the protective barrier of his muslin-tented crib, the dust in the air might cause him to contract pneumonia. Dust is everywhere inside the house, making her throat parched and coating the dishes she just set out. She worries that her husband is taking too long; she considers running out to the stable, but stops herself, assuming his grim, enduring nature he would lead him to despise her for being a weak and fearful woman.
The couple had argued bitterly yesterday and that day at breakfast. She wants him with her, to be assured by his strength, but she knows he would act aloof, still holding against her the angered words she had flung at him earlier. Tensely, she studies the clock and listens to the wind, which she personifies as being engaged in a game of hide-and-seek against itself. The first wind hides in the eaves and makes whimpering sounds, while the second wind attacks the first wind, shaking the eaves until the wind flees.
Ellen’s husband Paul enters the house and she rushes to the stove. Paul comments on the extreme wind and says he had to light the lantern in the tool shed. They glance at each other, then look away. She wants to go to him so he can soothe her, but she thinks she is in the right and mustn’t give in. He washes the dust off himself while she wipes the dust from the table. She says the dust is coming faster than she can clean it, and he tells her it’s the third day, so the winds will calm down tonight. With resentment, she mutters that it will only settle down until it starts again the next time.
The lamp on the table creates strong shadows on their faces. The prairie drought has lent Paul’s face a sternness and impassive courage, stripping his youthfulness and revealing a harsh virility that matches his essential nature. By contrast, the same poverty and adversity have led Ellen’s eyes to appear hollowed out, and her lips to look dry and colorless. She has lost the vanities she once enjoyed; she has aged without maturing.
Suddenly, in a pleading voice, Ellen tells Paul she can’t stand living on the prairie any longer, not when her baby cries all the time. She tells Paul they will leave; she tells him to say that they can leave. To her, the life they are living there does not count as really living. Paul holds the line he established that morning, telling her they will stay put. He accuses Ellen of thinking of herself, not the baby.
Analysis
The story’s alternating points of view provide the reader with a window into Paul and Ellen’s inner thoughts. This dramatic irony creates tension, as the reader knows more about the characters than they know about each other.
The story begins by establishing the desolate atmosphere of Paul and Ellen’s desert-like prairie environment. A wind storm in its third day has made the air so thick with dust that the sun is blocked and a literal shadow has been cast over the farmhouse. In the darkness, Ellen lights a lamp to be able to see in the house, even though it should be the brightest part of the day.
Beyond its light-giving function within the world of the story, the lamp symbolizes Ellen’s ability to see what her husband refuses to acknowledge: that they are living in a desert, and that the soil will never regain its fertility.
The first part of the story also establishes how Ellen’s eyes are fixed wide open. While her unblinking eyes suggest a lapse in sanity, they also symbolize her simultaneous clear-sightedness: she has looked into the storm and seen that their lives on the prairie are hopeless; with this knowledge, her eyes will not shut. She is incapable of achieving her husband’s stubborn blindness.
When Ellen’s baby cries, the reader learns that he is being protected from the omnipresent dust by a fine-clothed muslin tent over his crib. This information establishes how exposure to the environment might harm him. When Ellen worries that her husband is staying out too long but stops herself from going to him, the theme of gendered difference arises: she imagines that he will perceive her anxiety as weak, womanly behavior, and that he will despise her as a consequence. She understands that he has established a pattern of treating her outbursts with aloofness.
Once the couple is sitting, the lamp on the table exposes the differences in their faces: while it strips them both of youth, the lamplight seems to bring out Paul’s true nature while making Ellen age prematurely, against her true nature.
After a tense period of silence, Ellen introduces the story’s central conflict by reigniting the argument they have been having for the past day: she insists they must give up the farm and move to town. In a moment of foreshadowing, she warns that the baby’s life is at risk. But Paul’s delusion blinds him to her clairvoyance.
