Woman's Work By Julia Alvarez Summary

It is quite clear right from the start what will be found in the poem by its title of “Woman’s Work.” Julia Alvarez brings her readers into a house where she describes the work she had to do and how she felt about it, for she is the speaker. This poem is made up of five triplets and one quatrain at the end. The rhyming patter of the poem is ABA, CDA, EFA, GHA, AIA, AJAA. She uses a variety of poetic devices to convey her themes of the relationship between mother and daughter, the role of a woman and the work that they do. Starting with the first triplet, the mother is the first to speak saying “who says a woman's work isn't high art” in line 1.1, which was a challenging statement to her daughter. This is clarified in 1.2, along with an emphasis on how even as the mother spoke she was at some kind of womanly work by using the imagery of “scrubbed the bathroom tiles.” Perhaps the daughter and mother had been discussing or maybe the daughter said something that made that of housekeeping not sound like a skilled job. The mother explains to her daughter that she should treat the house like the address was her heart (1.3), which is a simile. It could even be

They would work even when the “sun would bar in summer,” (3.7) which surely the daughter was not happy about. What kid would want to be in the house cleaning, especially in the summer time? It sounds like she would have to sweep over and over until the task was perfectly completed until the mother was “satisfied” (3.8), which continues to demonstrate the idea of “practicing” a “woman’s work.” The daughter feels trapped like a “prisoner” as she goes working for her mother in her “housebound heart” (3.9). “Housebound heart” keeps the poem feeling warm, even if the daughter does not seem too happy about her