She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me. Unsuitable they smirked. It is true I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts too big for the silhouette. She knew at once that we had sex, lots of it as if I had strolled into her diningroom in a dirty negligee smelling gamy smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry on my neck. I could never charm the mothers, although the fathers ogled me. I was exactly what mothers had warned their sons against. I was quicksand I was trouble in the afternoon. I was the alley cat you don't bring home. I was the dirty book you don't leave out for your mother to see. I was the center- fold you masturbate with then discard. Where I came from, the nights I had wandered and survived, scared them, and where I would go they never imagined. Ah, what you wanted for your sons were little ladies hatched from the eggs of pearls like pink and silver lizards cool, well behaved and impervious to desire and weather alike. Mostly that's who they married and left. Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend. I would have cooked for you and held you. I might have rattled the windows of your sorry marriages, but I would have loved you better than you know how to love yourselves, bitter sisters. “Always Unsuitable” is a poem that speaks of a mother not accepting her son’s significant other. Through her use of precise diction, Marge Piercy cultivates a resentful tone from her lover’s mother towards her, helps to covey the poem’s message that a mother feels that no woman is good enough for their son. She expresses the disgust on the mother’s and other woman’s face, calling herself “the alley cat you don’t bring home”(line 14). By comparing herself to an alley cat makes her seem filthy and diseased filled. She also says she’s the dirty book and the centerfold that men masturbate to (lines 16-18). These are all things that a mother does not want their sons being around or doing. They feels it is inappropriate and grotesque. She explicitly states that she is not like the “little ladies hated from the eggs of pearls like pink and silver lizards”(lines 22-24). She has lived a hard life and survived many things she knows the mothers will not approve of. She further says that if she were like those women the mothers wanted her to be, their sons would hurt her and leave her. Lastly, she ends with her saying she could have taught them the true meaning of love. How to love their selves as well as others, but they won’t give her the chance. This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending. “Barbie Doll” has a melancholic and chagrined tone that emphasizes death’ s correlation with the importance of self-confidence. The nameless girl’s despair started during her transition from a young girl to a woman, puberty. The children in her class started to taunt her because of her “great big nose and fat legs” (line 6). She apologized most of her life; most of her adolescent years, she tried her hardest to change her appearance and emotions; until eventually she cuts them off. In the end, it tells of a scene where she is in her casket lines (19-25). Even in her stage of death, it is a disappointment because the only way she could get people to say she was pretty was with the undertaker’s cosmetics on her. This poem relates to every girl and woman. As females, we try to look our best from pre-teens until the day we die. So, the constant verbal attacks provoke us to change that we are. We try our best to meet society’s expectation of perfection by getting plastic surgery, becoming anorexic, and committing other bodily crimes. The reality if the matter is, there is no perfection. For some, they accept who they are. But the women like the nameless girl, they take their lives. The only way they achieve society’s acceptance is in death. The poem’s message is that you have to love yourself for who you are. You mustn’t change due to others expectations of you. |
AuthorInterpreting Life's Experiences ArchivesCategories |