Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 16-18
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
- A little enjambment takes us directly over from the previous stanza as the speaker continues her thought.
- Like silent mushrooms, women were expected to stand mutely by while the men did all the talking.
- But still, these lady mushrooms are growing. They find "crannies," or little cracks, and they push through them. They find whatever small "holes" they can, and they "shoulder" their way through.
- This makes us think of how women had to work extremely hard to find their place in the world, especially if they wanted to be more than a housewife.
- The image also reminds us a lot of birth. Like a baby emerging from its mother, the lady mushrooms are pushing their way into world.
- This language might also be a veiled reference to the way women of the time were expected to be stereotypical housewives, whose main job was to have babies and raise them.
- It could also represent how the woman's movement was, in a way, in its infancy at the time.
- (Check out "Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay" to see how this baby imagery carries through the whole poem.)