“lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind” – Virginia Woolf
Subjugating women has always been one of the very favorites of the society we are trapped inside. This paper tends to critically analyze the gender roles and female experiences during those times in which, the poem ”Breaking Out” and the short story “The Exercise Book” are placed.
Piercy’s ‘Breaking Out” holds meaning in terms of its technique and thematic elements. Both aspects contribute to the poem’s overall meaning of activism and the need to forge a statement of defiance in a world where conformity is expected and enforced. Piercy’s poem is one of transformation, where individuals can envision what they can be as opposed to what is expected of them.
From a structural point of view, there is no definite convention to which the poem must adhere. Stanzas of four lines to three lines alternate. There is no defined rhyme scheme. In its openness to form Piercy seeks to give articulation to the condition of freedom that the subject of the poem, herself as a child, experiences at its end. Piercy delivers a poem from a narrative point of view, reflective of her own growth from a child to an adult. The experience of the ruler and the discipline she experienced at its hand becomes the critical aspect of the narrative of the poem.
The surface meaning of the poem, is a reflection about how Piercy as a child experienced discipline in the form