Because you still are beautiful, / though squared and stiffened by the pull / of what nine windy years have done. / You have three daughters, lost a son. / I see all your intelligence / flung into that unwearied stance.
My envy is of no avail. / I turn my head and wish him well / who chafed your beauty into use / and lives forever in a house / lit by the friction of your mind. / You stagger in against the wind.
This is the second part of a poem written from the perspective of a man thinking of a woman he once loved, a decade after her wedding. From this poem we take out that in the 50's middle class women are beginning to make careers on their own without the help of a male figure. In many cases women were working so that they could fund an education for their husband. From the poem, it is perceived that the man seems to resent having not followed his heart toward the woman he loved. The man is accepting of the fact that women can now make their own careers, and in this man, we see a beginning. The beginning is of the feminist movement. Rich eagerly awaits the day where women will all have the desire and ability to choose any profession they so desire. The problem according to Rich though, is that it has been several decades since the first feminists began, and there are still many prejudices and holds that are imposed upon women which keep equality from setting in.
Throughout history male writers have played a large part in prolonging progress towards men and women being considered equal. In male literature, numerous ways to keep unequal roles were to stereotype women and make it apparent that men and women play very different roles in life. On page 632, Rich writes, "And there were all those poems about women, written by men: it seemed to be a given that men wrote poems and women frequently inhabited them. These women were always beautiful, but threatened with the loss of beauty, the loss of youth- the fate worse than death.
