Poem 200 Woman Work

This poem possibly written during the women's movement represents the woman as hard-working. It shows Angelou asking for an escape from it all but also intends to show it's audience that, although the work women do is often over-looked, they are very demanding jobs to go through day in and day out. In the first stanza the structure is longer than compared to the other stanzas and also manipulates rhyme scheme much more effectively than the last stanzas. This adds to the fast flow of the first stanza which is meant to perhaps overwhelm the reader a bit to get them to feel how the woman doing the work is overwhelmed. Also the long structuring of it represents how the work is seemingly never ending and possibly makes their thoughts often scattered. The last four stanzas are perfectly four-lined structured which represents the speaker's thought processes as more calm and pleasant thoughts to think about. The last line that states, "the cotton to pick" suggests her being a black woman but nonetheless everything stated represents all women which I think is the main focus of this poem.

In the last four stanzas Angelou uses personification many times. Directly addressing different types of weather as if they were people and stating, "snowflakes cover me with white cold icy kisses". This personification reinforces the idea of finding an escape in the outside world, mostly in nature. She is not addressing people which effectively represents that she probably can not because most people back then did not view a woman's work as a tedious job to do. Instead by personifying the sunshine, rain, dewdrops, storm, snowflakes, mountains, ocean, leaf, and stone she shows how her job is otherwise casted out by society and the only refuge she can find is among nature. Also she carefully chooses the diction she uses which adds detail to the piece significantly. For example instead of just saying "Storm, blow me from here with your wind", she adds a detailed "fierce wind". This added technicality represents how in order for her to escape something strong enough must come along.

Overall this poem I found to be effective and easy to analyze because women of these times often fought for representation. They were often mis-interpreted and viewed as fragile and not capable of important tasks. In this poem, Angelou effectively signifies to her audience that a woman's work is not all dolled up and easy to do. I can also see how this poem probably was regarded with criticism if ever published in her time. She was probably viewed at, especially by men, as a whiner. That is not the point of the poem, though. The whole idea is meant to represent women as essential people in society and show that they too need to escape from their busy lives, too.