The poetry surrounding femininity and womanhood is often a complex and divisive area of art. It presents diverse and frequently uncomfortable expectations between the beautiful imagery, the harsh historical reality and the coping mechanisms women develop throughout their lives of inequality. These mechanisms are particularly interesting to analyze through the prism of artistic self-expression and self-reflection. Often these works are an attempt at reclamation, with which an author is processing her experiences of belittlement within an uneven social order.
Julia Alvarez’s poem “Woman’s Work” is an example of feminist poetry, both thematically and emotionally. Questions about familiar relationships with other women, housework and heredity are discussed with fascination and resentment. The poem is told from a woman’s perspective, realizing she has way more in common with her mother than she once thought. Housekeeping and cleaning are used as easy markers for this similarity, with the memory of a mother in a lyrical heroine’s head proclaiming that they are to be considered forms of art. In her memories, the mother is talking to her back when she was a little girl and teaching her the ways of what she considers a woman’s work.
The little girl is irritated; she would rather be outside, spending time with friends and otherwise being a child. Indirectly, she is imprisoned at her mother’s house and forced to sweep the floor until granted permission to leave. The mother is perpetuating the pattern by training her daughter to clean at such a young age. This may be interpreted as part of a culture that the young should not challenge, even when it justifiably appears senseless to them.
As a child, the heroine resents her mother’s outlook on life and wants to distance herself from it as much as possible. She doesn’t believe that one day will resemble her in any way or capacity, which is evident from the semi-resentful approach in several lines of the poem. Her mother, the lyric heroine feels, was used to keeping a house “much better” than her daughter’s heart (Alvarez, 15). Naturally, the girl in question does not believe that one day she would resemble her mother in the approach to housekeeping and women’s work in general; she can’t believe such a thing is even hypothetically possible. And yet, with a cruel sense of irony that is perhaps somewhat autobiographical to the author, it becomes apparent that she is wrong.
As the narrator grows into a woman, she notices with a sense of apparent regret and irony that she has become much like her mother. By concentrating on the work at home and dedicating her emotional and mental energy to it, she learned to perceive it as a form of art, despite previously hardly considering it possible.
The transformation from a girl determined to never resemble her mother to another version of the same pattern is solemn and curious. It comments on ways in which people can’t possess any actual knowledge of what is and isn’t possible since nobody is granted the ability to see the future. Finally, it adds a layer to the discussion around the social concept of femininity and the gender work divide that has recently come to the forefront of public discussion.
Work Cited
Alvarez, Julia. “Women’s Work”. In Homecomings: New and Collected Poems., 1996, Plume.