Marge Piercy's Literary Analysis

Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist and social activist, born in Detroit, Michigan on March 31st, 1936 into a Jewish family which was deeply affected by the Great Depression. Being the first in her family to attend college, Marge started out as a disinterested student and only began to love books when she was sick with rheumtic fever and could not do much but read. Books taught her that there is a different world out there with horizons that were quite different from what she could see . Because of her flare for writing, Marge won the Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction in 1957. This scholarship gave her the opportunity to not only finish her education but also spend some time in France. Her formal schooling ended with an M.A from Northwestern

Piercy is known for her feminist writings. She often, in her novels and poems, focuses on feminism and other social concerns with varying settings. Some of her famous works are Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), He, She and It (1991), To be of Use (1973), Summer people (1989), The Longings of Women (1994), The moon is always female (1980), Circles on the water (1982), Art of Blessing the Day (1992) and Early Grrrl (1999). All of her books share a focus on women’s lives. As of 2014, Marge Piercy is an author of seventeen volumes of poems, fifteen novels, a collection of essays, one non-fiction book, a play o-authored by her third and current husband Ira Wood and one memoir. In the poem, Breaking Out, Marge Piercy depicts the humiliation and oppression faced by a young girl. The young girl being the poet herself, narrates the factors that led her to take her first ever act that signifies breaking free from the accepted norms of a patriarchal society. In the beginning of the poem, the poet talks about two doors that usually stand open but are leaning together like they are whispering things into each other’s ears. Having said that, the poet is actually talking about two different perceptions- first being to adhere to the societal rules and silently endure everything that she is or