Poetry Review of A Woman to Her Lover

Poetry Review of A Woman to Her Lover

'A Woman to Her Lover' is a poem that voices out the change in

attitude of many women in the 19th century. It is about a woman

stating conditions for marriage to her husband. The use of the

conditional tense throughout the poem makes the poem appear like a

marriage contract. This is striking because it contains the conditions

of a marriage contract but from a woman. This would seem extremely odd

at that period of as women were treated as subservient and marriage

contracts would be made with men's interests at heart.

The idea of men treating women as inferior is opposed in the first

stanza. This stanza details the rejection of male dominance by a

woman. Men are described as, 'conqueror,' to women who are, 'bond

slaves.' The vocabulary in this stanza highlights the strong feelings

of the women and of her hate for her role in society. The writer uses

words such as, 'bond slave, bear, bend,' the repetition of the plosive

constantans in these words shows the resentment of the women to being

men's slave as these words are harsh sounding and produce scorn. The

word, 'bond slave,' depicts women as servants who having done their

purpose, 'bear children,' are useless. In the beginning of the stanza

the woman asks, 'Do you come to me to bend me,' and the reply is, 'no

servant will I be,' this statement is emphatic as the word order is

muddled up. I find this clever as it requires the reader to re read

the line and puts attention onto the defiant nature of the woman's

feelings.

In stanza 2 the writer scorns the treatment of women as objects of

perfection and shows disgust at the idea of a woman bein...

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...rriage for the woman. We can see a

development of the poet's thoughts and ideas by the words used. The

pronoun, 'we,' is used instead of, 'I, you,' before and this relates

to the ideas posed in the last stanza, equality. The husband is

called, 'comrade, friend and mate,' whereas before the word, 'fool,'

was used.

One strikingly odd thing about this poems layout is the exclusion of

punctuation. It seems as though the woman has forgotten the rules of

poetry and written freely. This is symbolic for the disregard of the

rules of patriarchal society and it seems as though women want to

break free from, 'conventions,' of society and this is a metaphor for

the poem in general. I feel that Walsh succeeded in her aim of

bringing women's views across and this led the way to further

equality, i.e. women given right to vote.