Poetry and Feminism.1

Unfolded Out of the Folds
by Walt Whitman





Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is
always to come unfolded,
Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the
superbest man of the earth,
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man,
Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be
form'd of perfect body,
Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the
poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)
Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence
can appear the strong and arrogant man I love,
Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman
love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,
Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain come all the folds
of the man's brain, duly obedient,
Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,
Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;
A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but
every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman;
First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.

I'm happy to be teaching again--I definitely get a high from teaching (as well as a crash afterward, but probably that's from staying up all night preparing). I'm also happy to be incorporating poetry again into my classroom, this time in a course on feminist political thought.

This week we read Walt Whitman's "Unfolded Out of the Folds." Whitman is amazingly sane when it comes to women (in his prose he argues for women to have a role in politics). As you can see in this poem, he still preserves gender difference.

The kids loved this poem. They thought it respected women (in a way that they didn't think Tocqueville and Rousseau really did--they were always skeptical of both of those authors). They did a good job of seeing relationships between Whitman's poem and Rousseau, Tocqueville and Mill (all of the authors we've read so far). They saw hints of Rousseau's argument that women should be educated so that they would educate men. They also saw parallels with Mill and his argument that all be free to participate in public life, with Whitman's reference to justice being unfolded out of women.