Working Title: “Gretel” by Andrea Hollander Budy
In the contemptuous poem “Gretel”, Andrea Hollander Budy depicts female stereotype in the form of a fairytale. She describes it as women belonging in the kitchen cooking and cleaning for the rest of their lives as if women are only qualified to do that. While the initial tone is one of hopelessness, the tone shifts to one of a grim tone. These shifts in tone and the subtle use of imagery emphasizes the unreasonable stereotype of women belonging in the kitchen.
Early in the poem, the author, Andrea Hollander Budy, creates a helpless mood by reveling “A woman is born to this: sift, measure, mix, roll thin.” These starting words of the poem show the imprisonment of women within a certain standard set by society. With the uses of imagery in this poem, it helps the reader see that women are viewed as not being capable of doing anything other than having no choice on which path to take in her life because she is already born to something and the character seems hopeless because she is trapped in a house doing what society proclaims women are destined to do for the rest of their lives.
Under those circumstances, she tries to “lose it” suggesting that she wants to escape the life she was “born into” because it goes on to say that “one day she begins that long walk in the unfamiliar woods and means to lose everything she is.” She tries to have independence by going out on her own to vanish her old life to start a new one. The mood