The Secretary Chant By Marge Piercy

During the late 19th and early 20th century in America, the rise of Feminism challenged the traditional gender roles. The female authors of this time period represented realistic aspects of women’s struggles, which often reflected limitations from society and their own lives. The three female authors who advocated women’s struggles in their writings were Sojourner Truth, Willa Cather, and Edith Wharton. In the speech to the American Equal Rights Association, Truth reveals that women do not have rights to present their voices in the court. Cather addresses women’s devastating labor life after the marriage in “A Wagner Matinee.” Likewise, in “April Shower”, Wharton portrays men’s criticism upon economically successful women. American female authors of the late 19th and early 20th century demonstrates the ideas of Feminism by men objecting to representation in politics, prohibiting career over marriage, and criticizing economic self-sufficiency.

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The author uses clear diction when she depicts the unique metaphors of the Angel in the House. By telling the story of the Angel of the House, she showed extreme disgust for the woman who were ever in her situation in which she was “bothered” and “tormented” to ignore her calling. Although the Angel was ultimately “pure” Woolf killed her. Woolf symbolically kills the Angel in the House and tells her audience that all women must take responsibility for killing her too. “Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.” Saying this empowers her audience, and Woolf achieves one of her foremost goals of the speech in informing women that they have the power to extricate themselves from patriarchy. Men are not going to consider women as human beings until women are willing to fearlessly assert themselves.

Eavan Boland’s poem “It’s a Woman’s World” illuminates the fact that history has shaped an unfair role for women in today’s society. Boland criticizes the gender bias with regards to the limitations placed on women and their job choices despite their ability to be just as successful in the workplace as men. Regardless of the fact that the bias against women in the workplace is often overlooked, Boland aims to show the shared reaction of women to the gender bias prevalent in our society by using short sentence fragments, repetition, and a fire motif throughout the poem.

Back in the day almost everyone viewed woman to be the person who cleans, cooks, has children, and obeys her husband. Even woman themselves had this view hammered into their minds at such a young age, the views that women are inferior to men. This stigma of woman can be found traced throughout Virginia Woolf’s essay of two meals, a meal for men and a meal for women at a college. She uses numerous composition techniques and effectively disperses them throughout her narrative. By doing so, she accurately demonstrates her views on society’s stigma of a woman's role in an eloquent manner.

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Surely, she craved to write—meaning to work here—endangered her husband’s position as an authority. He would not have control any longer toward the narrator—his wife. In the 19th century upper class and middle class women were not expected to earn their own living. Women rarely had careers and most professions refused entry to women. In the middle of the 19th century it was virtually impossible for women to become doctors, engineers, architects, accountants or bankers. After a long struggle the medical profession allowed women to become doctors. It was not until 1910 that women were allowed to become accountants and bankers. However, there were still no women diplomats, barristers or judges. Women were allowed to become teachers majority of women became teaches but this was also a low paying job.

Throughout the ages, women have been graded on their performance and instructed on what is supposed to be their purpose. In the poem, “Marks,” by Linda Pastan, the speaker expresses her distaste for being graded on how she performs her “womanly” tasks. Likewise, in the poem, “Women,” by May Swenson, the speaker seems to be comprised of a contingent of people from the time the poem was written – around 1978 – likewise, the speaker of “Marks” is a wife and mother of two children – a boy and a girl. The poem, “Women,” details how the people of the time feel about women and who they should “serve.” Since both poems seemingly depict the purpose of women, the poem “Marks” could be incorporated into the class discussion to show conflicting perspectives between women and the public about the treatment of women.

In Marge Piercy’s “The Secretary Chant”, the author uses images and sound to both dehumanize and mechanize the female speaker, while John Updike uses imagery and sounds to make the “Player Piano” come to life. Piercy uses images of the speaker, connected with various office equipment to give a vision to the reader of a woman living her life through the office equipment that is part of her very being. Piercy uses personification in reverse and other metaphors, such as metonymy, and paradox, to give an actual picture of the office machines actually performing their functions. And also through the operation of the office equipment attached to the speaker showing her only purpose in life. Sounds are

Marge Piercy’s poem, “The Secretary Chant”, takes a bold stance against the life of a secretary in the 1970s. She enlists the use of metaphors such as “My breast are wells of mimeograph ink” (5) in order to show the constant dehumanization the modern secretary faced. She expertly chooses office oriented words to emphasize her point. Piercy’s use of the word “Mimeograph” not only pushes forward the metaphor of the dehumanization of secretaries, but encapsulates her belief that secretaries are crafted from stencils, which they are constantly expected to fit the mold of.

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