Linda Pastan Women

Societies Expectations on Women

Society has been placing unrealistic expectations on women throughout history. Women are expected to be “perfect” in everything they do. If they weren't “perfect” they would be criticized in almost every way, and they wouldn’t be accepted into society. Men have been given a higher value in society, while women are seen as inferior to men. Women are expected to care for the home and to be completely devoted to their husbands. Throughout history, women have been treated as second class citizens. One only has to look at any place and time to see how women are treated, and to see that society has not really changed even today. The poems “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, “Marks” by Linda Pastan, and “Suicide Note” by

Janice Mirikitani, show that the expectations that women are put under can have dire consequences.
The pome “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy tells the story of a young adolescent girl, who suffered from society’s expectations of women and paid the ultimate price. The very first stanza is the most important in the whole pome “This girl-child was born as usual/and presented dolls that did pee-pee/ and miniature GE stove and irons/ and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.”(Piercy 1048). This is showing us how society has already imprinted or also called “brainwashing” the expectations of what a “perfect” woman should be. A woman’s place in the home, cooking the meals, doing the laundry, and looking “perfect” for their husbands. Once the young girl reaches puberty she is confronted rather brutally with the fact that she does not meet the standard of “perfection” according to her classmates “You have a great big nose and fat legs”(Piercy 1048). Despite the fact that she is a healthy, intelligent, and a strong young girl, society cares only for physical beauty. She felt so self-conscious about the fact that she did not meet the standards of “perfection”, she would apologize to everyone for her inadequacies. After being consistently criticized and tolled how to make herself better by “...to play coy/ exhorted to come on hearty,/ exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.(Piercy 1049). She grows more desperate to be “perfect” that she “cut off her nose and her legs”(Piercy 1049), even after she made alterations to her person to “fit in”, it wasn’t enough. In the end society’s expectations were too much for her, the stress of not being “perfect”, she ended her life. Only in death did she gain the acceptance that she craved “Doesn’t she look pretty?”(Piercy 1049). Young girls should never feel the need to change themselves to please those around her. The expectations of bing “perfect” can have a severe negative effect on young girls, especially during their adolescence, when they feel the need to fit in. Society’s expectations that are put upon young girls all the way into adulthood, are far too high.
The poem “Marks” by Linda Pastan shows us how the expectations of others cause a woman, a mother of two, and a wife, to take her own life.

The title of the poem “Marks” is a metaphor for “grades” that she receives from her family. She is constantly being judged by her family, by them giving her grades on her performance. The metaphor of the grading scale, helps to illustrate how her family is constantly judging her. In the first line of the poem, her husband gives her “an A/ for last night’s supper,/ an incomplete for my ironing/ a B plus in bed”(Pastan 1048). The grades that her husband has given her are not really grades, but a metaphor for being disparaged. He expects her to be “perfect” in everything that she does. Her daughter passes judgment upon her mother “My daughter believes in Pass/Fail and tells me I pass”(Pastan 1048). Even though her daughter said that she “passes”, the fact of it is, is that she is being judged at all. Her son said that she is an “average” mother, “...but if / I put my mind to it/ I could improve.”(pastan 1048). Throughout this poem we have seen the different grading systems which represent all of the expectations that she must meet. If she does not meet the standards of her family she was belittled. In the very last line of the poem she said “I’m dropping out”(Pastan 1048). She could no longer take the criticisms, the “grades” that her family was giving her. Not to mention her family’s expectations of her were too high, and she did not

believe that she could meet their standards. So the last line “I’m dropping out”(Pastan 1048), is also a metaphor for her committing suicide. Women are expected to be “perfect”, a “perfect wife” and a “perfect mother” as well as a “perfect homemaker”. The constant bombardment of criticisms of how she is lacking as a wife and as a mother were too much, and in the end she gave up.
“Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani, is about a young female Asian-American college student, who suffered from the expectations of her parents, which caused her to end her life far too soon.

Before she ended her life she wrote about what she was feeling and what she thought about in her “suicide note” to her parents. No matter how hard she worked and tried, she could never meet the expectations of her parents. She is so ashamed that she could not be “perfect” that she believed that she was “not good enough /not pretty enough/ not smart enough”(Mirikitani 751). This is repeated throughout the poem, which helps to emphasize her state of mind. She apologizes to her parents by saying "dear mother and father./ I apologize/ for disappointing you./ I've worked very hard,/ not good enough/ harder, perhaps to please you."(Mirikitani

751).