What's That Smell In The Kitchen Analysis

“What’s That Smell in the Kitchen?” by Marge Piercy examines the universal experience of American women under gender expectations of the 20th century. Having every women as its main character, the poem criticizes and challenges the social expectations that systematically confine and oppress them. There was no place in the American Dream for American women, who were suppressed under its ideals. The poem is set in the historical context of mid to late 20th century America, when success meant a house, children, a working husband, and a stay-at-home wife who does all the house works. In a sarcastic tone, the poem mocks how women were expected to “bring [food] with calico smile” on their face, an imposition that women only belong in the kitchen. Additionally, the imagery imposes that happiness is the only acceptable emotion for women, an erasure of the fact that women are also complex beings with nuanced feelings, reducing them to dumb machines that only know how to smile, nod, and cook. The “calico smile” also portrays the dangerous perception that women actually enjoyed their oppression, while in fact they were frustrated with the lack of freedom and opportunities. Furthermore, the work also calls out the treatment of women as men’s belongings and accessories with the metaphor of “Once I was roast duck/on your platter with parsley.” This is a painful demonstration that women were only treated as a pieces of meat for men’s satisfactions, and

Through the symbolic burning of food and a hostile, mocking tone towards gender roles, the poem declares a war on the patriachical standards that suppressed women. In the long struggle for gender equality, this work marks the initial anger that mobilizes the movement from the center of oppression. It is a violence that is needed to spark discourse and