THE WIFE
by Emily Dickinson
She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.
If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,
It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl and weed,
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.
This week in Feminist Political Thought we read Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Emily Dickinson's, "The Wife" (really because I just like Emily Dickinson and have been pondering this poem for some time).
The students suggested that the poem connects with Wollstonecraft insofar as both maintain that if women are forced to take on a limiting role, then the world will lose out (for Wollstonecraft, a good wife would not let aspects of her independence wither away).
This poem reminds me a lot of Tocqueville's view of marriage as a harsh reality for American girls who have had charmed childhoods.
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