Alice Walker is a multifaceted author, excelling in both prose and poetry, and her works are deeply influenced by her experience as an African-American woman. She is very concerned with women’s plight and rights and explores the topic in most of her bibliography. While one may be more familiar with the author’s novels, Walker’s poetry is no less striking. Particularly, in Women, the speaker uses a sad yet motivating tone, literary devices such as symbolism and free verse to develop the theme of African-American women’s fight.
In Walker’s Women, the speaker’s retelling of her mother’s generation is in a sad tone which gradually changes into that of encouragement and motivation to highlight the struggle of those women. The speaker dolefully describes the daily chores that African-American women had to do “ironed,” “starched white,” “battered down doors,” and “how they led armies” (Walker line 9, line 10, line 7, line 12, line 13). In the same tone, the speaker refers to the appearance of these women as “husky of their voice,” “stout,” and “fists as well as hands” to indicate how it reflected their battle (Walker line 3, line 5). Shamase and Dhivya, who are well-versed specialists with a focus on African women, agree that African-American women’s lot is conveyed through the tone of sadness and encouragement (9210; 47). Plant, a Ph.D. scholar invested in Africana culture and literature, believes that Walker’s works are inspired by her female ancestors’ harsh experience following the Civil War (10). Altogether, the poet uses a tone denoting both sadness and encouragement to immerse the reader into the atmosphere where African-American women of the past lived and survived.
The speaker also uses the literary device of symbolism to emphasize women’s everyday struggle. It also reinforces the sad tone and the theme of combat for their children’s future (Plant 20; Dhivya 46). The speaker uses military symbols throughout the poem to conceptualize the struggle: “armies,” “headragged generals,” “mine,” “fields,” and “boobie trapped ditches” (Walker line 13, line 14, line 15, line 16, line 17). Those concepts also have an antique air around them, which helps one feel the spirit of that time and, perhaps, the Civil War. Thus, the military symbolism reflects the idea that the women did not merely tolerate their harsh lives; they fought for themselves and the future generations, sometimes literally.
Women’s tone is strengthened by the use of free verse, allowing for the poem’s reading as a single verse, which would emphasize the idea of liberation through education and enable more interpretations. The 27-line poem does not have a formal structure or a rhyme scheme, but its rhythmic beat creates a sense of a determined, awed, and violent tone: “how they battered down doors” (Walker line 7, line 8). The absence of a rhyme scheme and the use of the plosive sounds (“b,” “d,” “t,” and “k”) allow the poet to intensify a chaotic image. Later, they serve to confirm the women’s victory in the end: “battered,” “bobby-trapped,” and “down” (Walker line 7, line 17). In her life and writing, Walker greatly values education and freedom, so the poem could reflect those phenomena and the poet’s frustration with her ancestors being deprived of both (Plant 35, 77). Overall, the free verse allows the reader to interpret Women in various ways and even change its tone as they see fit, but Walker’s vision remains valid.
Throughout the poem, Walker uses an ambiguous tone, varying from sad to violent, military symbolism, and free verse to highlight the struggles of her predecessors, African-American women. The imagery created by those means blur the lines between the past and the present, as the community’s battle for survival continues, acquiring new forms and adversaries. However, the poem reassures the reader by implying that victory eventually comes, although the cost might be high.
Works Cited
Dhivya, E. “Women as Victims: An Analysis of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” Language in India, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, pp. 47–53.
Plant, Deborah G. Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times. ABC-CLIO, 2017. Google Books, Web.
Shamase, Maxwell Z. “A Theoretical Exposition of Feminism And Womanism in African Context.” Gender & Behaviour, vol. 15, no. 2, 2017, pp. 9210–9222.
Walker, Alice. Women. 2020. Web.