poetry response #9

Holly Patton

Mrs. Jernigan

English IV-AP

28 March 2011

“To The Indifferent Women”

Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman

            To be perfectly informal and for lack of better word choice, Gilman’s sestina pissed me off (sorry Mrs. Jernigan). While her structure is impeccable, I can only think “So what?” as her demeaning message screams at me from the page. She accuses mothers of “avoid[ing] the care/ And toil for human progress, human peace,…[and] love.” She calls their homes a “little pool of undeveloped love.” Who does she think raises the women and men that change the world, that spread “strong and fruitful love”? Indeed some would not credit their mothers if their upbringing was unpleasant. But are there not millions of mothers in the world shut in their houses to care for the children that they love dearly? Does she think that they are always appreciative and grateful to be cooped up in their, as Gilman so sardonically states, “little homes”? Ask any mother and she will tell you that raising a child is no walk in the park. Yet they do it anyway because of the amount of love for people they want to send into the world. This makes Gilman’s seemingly contradictory.

            To be fair to Gilman, I know her desire for equality is legitimate and feminism was and remains to be a predominant topic in society. However she fuses the role of men and the role of women, wishing to erase gender boundaries, to join “woman’s life…with man’s to care for the world.” I am not saying that discrimination against women is acceptable (in fact, it’s disgraceful). But for Gilman to vehemently attack the role of a mother as useless and futile job shows a naïve perspective of life that could go back to an unfortunate upbringing or something of that sort.