Meaning & Analysis
When poverty enters a household, love or affection quickly departs.
Insights
Economic Strain on Relationships
The proverb metaphorically expresses how financial hardship often puts immense pressure on relationships—whether romantic, familial, or social—causing affection or intimacy to fade as struggles mount.
Conditional Nature of Affection
It reveals a cynical truth about human connections: love, friendship, and loyalty can be fragile, easily diminished or broken when confronted by the challenges of material want.
Disillusionment and Reality
By suggesting that love ‘leaps out the window’ when money runs out, the proverb alludes to the tension between romantic idealism and the harsh realities of daily survival, warning against illusions about love's endurance.
Longstanding Cultural Wisdom
The sentiment appears in English literature as early as the fifteenth century and recurs through later centuries, reflecting a persistent social awareness that material stability underpins many human bonds.
Universal Resonance
Variants of this proverb exist in many cultures, underlining the universality of the experience: prosperity attracts companionship, but adversity tests the depth and authenticity of relationships.
Psychological Dynamics
The proverb captures the psychological toll of poverty: stress, resentment, and unmet needs can erode goodwill, trust, and affection, illustrating how material conditions shape emotional landscapes.
Satirical and Ironic Tone
While the proverb contains a kernel of truth, it is often delivered with irony or wry humor, inviting reflection on the gap between society’s ideals about love and the realities of economic hardship.
Rhetorical Devices
Personification
Love is personified as an animated figure that ‘leaps’ or ‘flies’ out the window, making the proverb vivid and memorable.
Antithesis
The sharp contrast between poverty’s entrance and love’s dramatic exit highlights the proverb’s central point about opposing forces within domestic life.
Imagery
The proverb uses strong domestic imagery—doors and windows—to evoke the scene of a household disrupted by adversity.
Transcription
Quotations
Herof men say a comyn prouerbe in englond, that loue lasteth as longe as the money endurith.
It hath beene an old Maxime: that as pouerty goes in at one doore, loue goes out at the other.
(at doores and at windowes).
(at the door, love flyeth out at the window).
(out of the Windows).
(at the Door, Friendship flees out at the Window).
*When good Cheer is lacking, Friends will be packing.
(at the Door, Love creeps out at the Window).
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.