When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl Essay

In a modern prose poem,“When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl” by M.C. Biegner, Walt Whitman, a nineteenth-century male poet, Whitman is described as an genderfluid character as the poem traces his transition from a little girl to a grown man. Because of this gender ambiguity the pronouns used to describe Walt shift throughout the poem from she to he as Whitman matures. The poem addresses the expected conformity attached to gender stereotypes by using Walt Whitman’s gender fluidity to present a contrast to these stereotypes. By imagining Walt Whitman as a “little girl,” Biegner encourages the reader to examine the existence of gender fluidity by breaking down the gendered stereotypes and through exemplifying traits of both genders in Walt. This analysis of Whitman is not distant to who he really was as a writer. He boldly names himself the “poet of the women,” (Whitman 24) claiming to have a deeper understanding of womanhood and maternity. Because

He counters the concept of “separate spheres” which was a “social construction of gender”, where the idea of proper womanhood was used to constrict women, while proper manhood empowered men (Johnson Lewis). The obstacles that divided men and women were gender stereotypical roles, as women as subservient “soft, irrational, emotional, self-sacrificing and loving” and men as “tough, rational, self-advancing, competitive, and harsh” (O 'Malley). The typical feminine roles were thought of as the private sphere, and masculine ones were public. This male dominance is shown by the fact that the “contribution of women in the society was limited and solely controlled under patriarchal authority”; men dictated the terms of everyday life for women leading to limited roles for women in political, legal, and economic matters