Poem “Warning” By Jenny Joseph

Jenny Joseph (May 7, 1932 - January 8, 2018 ) was an English poet, best known for the poem "Warning". "Warning" by British poet Jenny Joseph is a celebrated poem about embracing eccentricity, freedom, and rebellion in old age. The Poem inspired the Red Hat Society celebrating aging with boldness and joy. This write up has been arranged for educational purposes.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Poem “Warning” By Jenny Joseph

Jenny Joseph (May 7, 1932, Birmingham, United Kingdom - January 8, 2018 ); was an English poet, best known for the poem "Warning". "Warning" by British poet Jenny Joseph is a celebrated poem about embracing eccentricity, freedom, and rebellion in old age, best known for the opening lines, "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me". The poem is written in free verse: unrhymed without a regular metre.

Jenny Joseph’s most celebrated poem, “Warning,” was written in 1961, when she was just twenty-eight. It first appeared in The Listener in 1962 and was later included in her 1974 collection Rose in the Afternoon, The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, and her Selected Poems (1992). However, the poem gained remarkable popularity in the United States in the early 1980s after Liz Carpenter—former executive assistant to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and press secretary to First Lady Lady Bird Johnson—ended an article in Reader’s Digest with “Warning.” The article reflected on rediscovering joy in life after recovering from illness, and the poem’s inclusion struck a powerful chord with readers.

USA is a trend setting country where things are hyped up by the power of media; therefore, soon after, the greeting-card industry embraced the poem, led by graphic designer and calligrapher Elizabeth Lucas. Joseph herself credited Lucas for much of the poem’s success, writing; "“To her business acumen and energy I owe a hospitable following in California and later throughout northern America, more social, as I said, than literary.”

In 1996, a BBC poll named “Warning” the United Kingdom’s “most popular post-war poem,” confirming its lasting cultural impact.

Its iconic opening lines—

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me”—

The Poem then went on to inspire the Red Hat Society, an international social organization celebrating aging with boldness and joy.

Such was the poem’s popularity that an illustrated gift edition, first published by Souvenir Press in 1997, has since been reprinted forty-one times.

Jenny Joseph's “Warning” was also included in the anthology Tools of the Trade: Poems for New Doctors (Scottish Poetry Library, 2014), and a copy was gifted to every graduating doctor in Scotland that year. Ironically, Joseph herself disliked the colour purple, which is precisely why she chose it for the poem—a quiet act of rebellion that mirrored the poem’s spirit of playful defiance.

In 2021, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford announced that the one-millionth image digitised for the Digital Bodleian project was Joseph’s first handwritten draft of “Warning,” a fitting tribute to a poem that continues to inspire readers across generations.

The central idea of Jenny Joseph's poem "Warning" by Jenny Joseph is an, at times, humorous, light-hearted, and rebellious call to embrace nonconformity, individual freedom, and self-expression, particularly in old age. The poem encourages defying societal expectations of maturity and responsibility to live authentically, rather than waiting to live freely until one is old. Jenny Joseph's poem "warning" encourages breaking social rules, such as spending money recklessly and indulging in playful, non-conformist behavior.

The poem ultimately advocates for living life on one's own terms and finding joy in non-conformity. Therefore, the "Key Themes and Context" may be described as follows:-

Rebellion Against Convention: The speaker plans to reject the "sobriety" of youth and the polite constraints of middle age, such as wearing practical clothes, staying tidy, or setting a good example.

Freedom of Old Age: The poem suggests that aging provides the freedom to act without fear of judgment, acting in ways that might be considered "eccentric" or childish.

Imagery: The speaker vows to "gobble up samples in shops," "press alarm bells," "run my stick along public railings," and "learn to spit".

Popularity: Voted Britain's favorite post-war poem in a 1996 BBC poll, it inspired the Red Hat Society.

Origin: Joseph wrote it in her early 20s, explaining it was a "fantasy" of a middle-aged woman rather than a realistic depiction of aging.

Poem “Warning” By Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Conclusion

There is something to be said here about the time in which Joseph wrote ‘Warning’: the early 1960s, before second-wave feminism, the summer of love, and the sexual revolution greatly altered social attitudes towards women in Britain and elsewhere (and, indeed, altered women’s own sense of what was possible in their lives). She was only 28 years old when penned the poem, and she died in 2018 (58 years after poem at 86 years age), but had refused to wear purple in her declining years, saying the colour didn’t suit her. She must have discovered the old age has its own pace and joys and sorrows.

William Shakespeare has written a play "As you like it" in 1599, containing a Speech "All the World's a Stage"; conveying a message that just before the final stage, comes old age, turning the manly voice of youth into the childish trebles and whistling. It makes the body weak and the mind, dependent upon others. He termed it "Second Childishness"; the final stage, a return to helplessness, losing senses, teeth, sight, and everything else.

Poem 'Warning' by Jenny Joseph describes what the future has in store as one ages and throws off societal restraints and expectations. There are people who resent having to behave sensibly during adult life. Once the waywardness of childhood and adolescence is past, we know that we have a duty – to ourselves, but also to society at large and to our own reputations – to behave responsibly and carefully. Once, we were grow as adults, there are every day demands to pay, children to raise, jobs to be done and score of responsibilities to be undertaken.

Old age is a bounty as the final stage of life that comes after youthfulness. Every phase of life is a wonderful journey, if spent with love, because there is no age limit and barrier for love. Every man needs a companion in all ages of life and especially in old age. We must remember that old age is beautiful because by this time of age we are grandparents (paternal & maternal). We reach to this successful life stage after leading a meaningful life with family and friends. Poet Jimmy Osborne's poem "Seasons of Life" takes us through a metaphorical journey of four seasons in a year cycle through the whole life. The real "Warning" shall be taught as nature cycles, so does life, with each season or stage of life bringing unique lessons, and the key is to embrace these changes.