The Changes of Womanhood in Marge Piercy‘s “The Secretary Chant”

The imagery used in this verse appeals to the sense sight. This helps the reader visualise what the writer is taking about. It also allows the reader to relate and connect more to the poem.

The poem is written in free verse, offers no type of rhyme scheme, and in one long stanza. This contributes to

Her husband moved her to a far away mansion to allow her “temporary nervous depression” to pass. However, her doubt in this treatment is clear. She openly disagrees with her husband’s diagnosis of her illness, as well as her treatment. She is self-aware and critical, knowing in that mental illness does not simply go away. Yet, she falls subject to the traditional gender roles of her time. She submits to the verdict of her husband, even claiming that she expects a man to laugh at a woman while married. In a way, it is not only her husband poor diagnosis that allows for her mental deterioration. It is also the woman’s submissive nature that is to blame as well. Even so, she is rebellious in her quest for freedom by writing about the yellow wallpaper in the

The poem is separated into two parts, each with sixteen lines, and is loosely based on an iambic pentameter metre. The rhyme scheme is ABAB throughout the poem, with the noticeable exception of the last four lines of part II, in which it changes to

The second half of the poem is very different from the beginning half because the lines that follow the first sentence

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

He uses this in the poem to give it rhythm to engage the reader and

mind. It suggest the poet see it as love or nothing and that he was

     The structure of the last three stanzas leaves us hanging from each one. If there was a song to this as music would rise in volume and pitch at each of the final stanza lines. If you read the poem right, the lines seem to echo in your head and slow your progress to the next stanza.

“Her room, where she could always find comfort and consolation. But her room, too, had been ruined. She had loved that room, the predominance of blue, her favorite color. And all her favorite things. Her special glass menagerie of frogs and puppys and kittens. The posters on the wall-New Kids and Bruce and messages like after the rain, the rainbow, so many posters that her father said he could have saved the price of wallpaper if he’d known about her poster madness. The room was her turf, her refuge, her hiding place. Where she could close the door and shut out the world, the C- in math- the worst mark of her life- the zits popping out all over her face, the agony of Timmy Kearns ignoring her after the first date. Her place of retreat to which she admitted only Patty and Leslie, with standing orders for

In the third stanza, a lot of imagery is used. The significant ones are present in the seventh and eleventh lines. In the first line, the poet writes, "A

The Secretary Chant by Marge Piercy shows how a woman’s job completely dehumanizes her. Marge Piercy is a poet who writes mostly about feminism. The poem uses metaphors and shifts to describe a woman who slowly feels like she is becoming the office. The descriptions of the woman only include physical characteristics. The poem never directly mentions her mind or heart, as if she no longer possesses them. The poem shows how dehumanizing the woman’s job is and how people are labeled as what they do rather than who they are.

The fourth line uses two verbs, which have internal rhyme to make the line flow

into the poem. The section of the poem that will be analyzed is the final ten lines (25-34). The

“The United States Women's National Team is paid almost four times less than the United States Men’s National Team, despite producing nearly $20 million in revenues for U.S. Soccer in 2015”. Some may argue that just because they are women they don’t deserve equal pay or the same rights as the men’s soccer players. This is one of many situations that contributes injustices against women. It is these injustices that Marge Piercy exposes in her feminist poem “A Work of Artifice.” Although to the untrained eye,”A Work of Artifice” may appear to be simply about bonsai trees, the poem actually uses an extended, implied metaphor or to emphasize the damaging effects of misogyny on women and to underscore the patriarchal ignorance that oppresses women.