A Feminist Perspective: What’s That Smell in the Kitchen

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A Feminist Perspective: What’s That Smell in the Kitchen

Women burning bras in the 1960’s became a sign of the Women’s Liberation movement. However, this was not the beginning of the women’s movement. This began many years earlier in the late 1800’s. In Marge Piercy’s poem, “What’s That Smell in the Kitchen,” she gives a description of what the women in the 1980’s are doing to be a part of the women’s movement. According to Bell Hooks, "Feminism is a struggle against sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desires" (26). Piercy argues that women do not have the single goal of being servants to their husbands whether they are in the kitchen or the bedroom.

In the first and sixth stanza of Piercy’s poem, the “women are burning dinners” (597). Piercy uses the imagery of the women burning their husband’s dinners ...

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