The Prologue Gender Quotes

This is the first point in the poem where the speaker really addresses the subject of gender head on. Before this, she's dropped some hints about there being something wrong with her Muse (16) or her brain (24). Now, though, she comes right out and names the main problem she thinks people have with her as a poet: she's a woman. We should also point out that the "needle" in this line is really a symbol for women's work in general. It's not that her critics care if she sews or washes dishes or scrubs the floor, they just don't want her writing.

Now our speaker goes on the attack, and uses her classical learning to confront her critics. She wants to know why the ancient Greeks believed that all art was inspired by the muses, who were women, if women aren't supposed to have anything to do with art. Why would they make poetry into the symbolic child of a female (the muse Calliope) if women are so lousy at poetry?

Now she backs off. "Fine," she says, "men are still the best at poetry." She's encouraging her potential critics not to think of her as a threat. Instead, she just wants to be allowed to exercise her own talents, however small they might be.