Alexadnra Nowack
Women still face a social stigma against them in some areas. Passage one, a poem by Marge Piercy, compares a bonsai tree to a woman. The second passage is an essay by Margaret A. Whitney that compares an old fashioned mother and her athlete daughter. Both stories show the effects of society's influence on women's personal growth through the analysis of literary elements.
The first passage uses the structure to show how China's society restricts women through the use of short lines, in comparison to the rest of the short poem. Lines 20-24 are a good example of this. "The bound feet/the crippled brain/ the hair in curlers/ the hands you/love to touch." The purpose of the short and blunt sentences is to renew the theme of restriction. Another literary element used is personification, where they liken the tree to a woman. Lines 12-14 exemplify this, as women are often thought to be small, weak, and domestic. Also line 11, where the gardener is talking to the tree, as if it a person. The next essay, however, uses a different approach.
The second passage uses juxtaposition to show how society's expectations in women have changed over the generations. This mother has a very different view of how women should be than her daughter does. The mother's meekness is contrasted with the daughter's confidence time and time again throughout the essay, and the mother herself says that she gave up on attempting sports, because her quest for education stopped her from doing what she enjoyed. In the essay, Margaret said that society, and herself, had always imposed a message on women, "be quiet, be good, be still," and that her daughter completely ignored those messages. Another literary element used in the essay would be allusion, where Margaret alluded her daughter to Lady Astor, after she got herself filthy and bedraggled after running.
Thusly, these passages have shown how society's influence on personal growth have effected women. Through the use of structure and personification, the first passage shows how China's society restricts their women and often renders them unable to do anything, by binding and dwarfing them. The second passage used a contrast between an old-fashioned mother and her seemingly radical jock of a daughter, as well as alluding the girl to a famous feminist. This showed that the mother still held beliefs of another era, whereas her daughter was just doing what came naturally. As can be seen, even in today's open society, women are still having issues with restrictions due to gender.
