Angela & Uncle Jerry analyze Blank Space from 1989, the fourth of five songs Taylor Swift submitted for consideration for induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, focusing on its satirical and feminist dimensions.
Key Insights
Uncle Jerry identifies the song as a satire on Taylor Swift's public persona, noting that the apparent shallowness of the lyrics is intentional — she is parodying the media's caricature of her as a serial-dating, man-devouring celebrity. He frames the speaker as a 'carnival barker' selling a faux-shallow image, with truncated grammar and rapid-fire clichés reinforcing the salesperson persona. The rhythmic pattern is so strongly driven by dactyls and iambs that the chorus fits ballad meter and can be sung to 'The Yellow Rose of Texas,' 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett,' or the Gilligan's Island theme song. Uncle Jerry connects the 'insane' label applied to the speaker to the feminist literary tradition explored in Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic, arguing that Taylor Swift is in some way the modern madwoman — a powerful woman tagged as crazy for wanting to control her own life and music.
Literary Analysis
Uncle Jerry applies a feminist literary framework drawn from Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic, connecting the song's recurring 'insane' label to the patriarchal tendency to pathologize women who step outside culturally devised norms. He draws parallels to Jane Eyre's Bertha Rochester (literally incarcerated in the attic for mental illness) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, arguing that Taylor Swift embraces the 'mad woman' label much as Jane Eyre claimed agency despite being plain and powerless. Uncle Jerry also examines the prosody in detail, identifying the dominant metrical feet (dactyls and iambs) that push the song toward a sing-songy quality, and demonstrates that the chorus is in ballad meter by singing it to multiple folk tunes. He reads the bridge's use of 'boys' instead of 'men' as a deliberate infantilization that inverts the cultural habit of calling women 'girls.' The song's blank space is connected to the historical tradition of dance cards and to the philosophical concept of tabula rasa.
Concepts Explored
Literary Devices
References
Literary Quotes Referenced
Taylor Swift quote on writing Blank Space: 'Writing that song was a journey. It was one of those things where I'd be writing lines years before I ended up constructing the song.' Taylor Swift on her media portrayal: 'From 2012 to 2013
they thought I was dating too much because I had dated two people in a year and a half... She's a serial dater. She only writes songs to get emotional revenge on guys. She's a man hater.' Taylor Swift on audience reception: 'Half the people got the joke
half the people really think that I was really owning the act that I'm a psychopath. Which is fine. Either one is fine as long as they know the words.'
People & Figures Mentioned
Connections Across the Work
Shared themes appear across the archive
Recommended Reading
The Madwoman in the Attic; Jane Eyre; The Yellow Wallpaper
In the Archive
In the archive:
Blank SpaceView song →4 themes traced
15 motifs traced
21 literary devices explored
8 literary references noted