The poem "In an Artist’s Studio" is written by Christina Rossetti.
Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was one of the Victorian era’s most influential poets.
This sonnet symbolizes the beginning stage of feminist poetry. It can be read as both an endorsement of the male gaze and a subtle critique of it.
In the poem, Rossetti describes a male artist
painting a female sitter or model,
who is transformed through the power of the canvas into a
saint, an angel, a queen, a peasant girl, and much else.
As readers, we perceive the state of confusion as we are led by author's descriptions of the scenes.
Is the male artist granting the woman power to ‘live’ all of these different lives through art,
or is he objectifying her, offering unattainable ideals concerning how women should be?
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Full Text:
In an Artist’s Studio by Christina Rossetti
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
Lesley Gore's coolly mutinous "You Don't Own Me" is richly scored, building from a minor-key dirge in the verses to a spirited chorus.
In an interview, Lesley Gore says "For me, it was not a song about being a woman. It was about being a person, and what was involved with that. Of course, it got picked up as an anthem for women, which makes me very proud."
This song symbolizes a girl proudly advocating for her full autonomy on her own body and soul. It represents resistence.
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Full Text:
You Don't Own Me by Lesley Gore
You don't own me
I'm not just one of your many toys
You don't own me
Don't say I can't go with other boys
And don't tell me what to do
Don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display 'cause
You don't own me
Don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me
Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay
I don't tell you what to say
I don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you
[Post-Chorus]
I'm young, and I love to be young
I'm free, and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please
The poem "Still I Rise" is written by Maya Angelouabout and it symbolizes
self-respect and confidence. Angelou reveals, who represents like other young women going through many stages of self-doubt,
expresses that she will overcome anything through her self-esteem. She shows how nothing can get her down. She will rise to any occasion and nothing, not even her skin color, will hold her back.
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Full Text:
Still I Rise
BY Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
The poem "Her Kind" is written by Anne Sexton. The poem attempts to capture this idea of the woman with multiple personalities,
expected to conform to societal rules and norms yet unable or unwilling to restrict the self, which is unstable.
Anne Sexton's words encourage many women to accept and appreciate the multiple identities within oneself.
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Full Text:
Her Kind By Anne Sexton
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.