Tuesday Teaching Memo: “A Work of Artifice” by Marge Piercy
A Work of Artifice
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.
I haven’t taught this poem since I was a High School English teacher, but it has stayed with me throughout the years. It especially rings out to me today because my little girl looked me square in the eyes and told me that she couldn’t like something because she was a girl. And every once in a while these past few weeks, she hits me with phrases like, ” this is for girls/that is for boys.” Where does she get this from? Not me. But at three, the world around her — kids at school, tv, commercials, and perhaps even her older brother — have told her that because she is a girl, she cannot like certain things. And I don’t like it. It goes agains what I want to teach her — what I want her to know about womanhood — that she can be anything, do anything she wants — and that being a girl is not a disability. She is not weak, small, cozy, and domestic. Her potential is limitless, relentless.
Marge Piercy’s poem is not about Bonsai trees — it is about female potential that is “dwarf(ed),” “crippled” and “bound.” The same way a bonsai tree is whittled and re-shaped into a small and domestic plant, so is a woman whittled — reduced to a small-minded and nurturing domestic animal. Both have the potential to be great, bigger than life itself, but society and its gardeners — people, in general — appreciate the tree and the woman better when they are small, cute, and manageable. If either grew too big — they would be out of control — out of man’s control. Thus both the bonsai tree and the girl have to be contained, bound, and shaped to miniature versions of their full potential when they are young, so that they know nothing more, they know nothing else.
And what is so wrong with being great, being just as big and strong and powerful as men? Why do they get the dibs on logic, power and ambition? Why are we associated with the home, the domestic, the artificial — the powerlessness? This is not what I want my daughter to learn — it is not how I want her to see herself. And I don’t know if my voice is loud enough, commanding enough to drown out the voices that tell her she is a girl, and therefore “domestic and weak.” How do I teach her to be empowered when the world tells her otherwise?
What stories do your daughters come home with that tell them who they are — what their nature as girls are?
Copyright© 2010 by Marina DelVecchio. All Rights Reserved.
Hi Marina,
Love the idea of posting a poem and responding to it. I’m a retired college English teacher with a 40-year-old daughter and 7 granddaughters (and 7 grandsons too but this is about girls/women). I came of age reading Piercy, Angelou, Rich and others who turned my head and thinking with their bold ideas about women–bold for the 60s & 70s. My daughter leaped upon the backlash to those times and is a stay-at-home-mom who didn’t finish college and is a Catholic convert with 8 kids. Nevertheless, I see the imprint of my modeling the value and power of women in the way she manages home and children, not to mention her thinking. Admittedly, it took a bit of a surrender before I could see this and admire her path as different as it is from mine. Thanks for bring Piercy back to my fore brain.
Love this post and the poem is phenomenal. I completely agree. I have 2 boys, ages 3 and 6 and just this year my older son has begun to tell me what he can and cannot like. He used to love pink and purple, flowers and dancing. Now he is more aware of what other kids think. It saddens me. I wish that our society didn’t have to be so sexist and have so many ridiculous ideas that box us all in. Thank your for this insightful post.
Visit my latest article at SheKnows sometime if you have a chance. It’s called, “Women of Earth Take Back Your Birth”:
http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/818485/Plan-a-natural-birth-in-six-easy-steps
Lovely post. My daughters, ages 4 and 2 1/2, aren’t in school and haven’t made these assumptions yet. I have no doubt they will. They do love dressing up often in frills and tutus, but sometimes in super capes while playing, “Yay! I’m SuperMan!” Though they barely recognize the guy on Daddy’s comic books.
However, only just tonight I was so sad to hear my oldest say, after I stated my dislike for a certain song and her sister followed suit, “I shouldn’t like that song, if nobody else does.” It broke my heart, that wanting to be what everyone else is, so soon, too soon. I had to correct her then, to let her know she has her own feelings, her own things to love and that’s just as important as anything.
I’ve been thinking alot about these things lately. I have three daughters, the middle one is struggling with eating disorders. She is 12. I just blogged about my struggles. The post before it was all about gender neutrality in this society…. Lovely poem.
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!
Great work keep it coming
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Thanks, Pauline.