Marge Piercy’s Secretary Chant
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“Secretary Chant” Pastiche: The Cat-called’s Cry
My hips are but a resting place,
My clothes are
an invitation.
My breasts are daisies,
waiting to be grabbed and picked.
My body is a mannequin,
on display for all to see.
My body is an occupied land,
which I have given up rights to.
My name has become Baby,
Sweet thang. Honey. Mamasita.
My legs are automatic doors,
opening for anyone
that wants to get in.
My arms are coils,
meant to be wrapped around
someone elses body.
My lips are strawberries,
sweet and ready to be devoured.
My eyes are black holes,
easy to get lost in.
But take a look at me anyways.
See me. See me. See me,
For what I am.
Because I used
to be human.
Statement of Intent/ Analyzation of My Essay
The themes addressed in Marge Piercy’s “Secretary Chant” sparked my interest while reading it. Her central message of feeling lost and objectified within her workplace, to the point of being robbed off her sense of identity, resonated with me. The interpretive question that I then chose to explore was “How does Piercy use metaphor to effectively portray her loss of identity and sense of self?” Supporting literary features were onomatopoeia, assonance, and alliteration.
Throughout “Secretary Chant”, Piercy compares various parts of her body to inanimate office supplies/objects, which shows that her identity has become comprised of nothing more than her job. Humans are often considered unique and distinct unable to be duplicated. Office materials, on the other hand, are created in factories, and are easily disposable/replaceable because they are all the same. As a result, Piercy is inadvertently saying that because she is objectified as a secretary, she, too, is disposable, and she has lost all her individual character traits and qualities that make her human. Thus, metaphor is her most prominent literary element.
She begins her poem with the line “My hips are a desk (1)”, which demonstrates from the get-go that Piercy has become fully immersed in her work, to such an extent that her desk has become an extension of her body. This in turn creates an image of Piercy being less-than-human, which contributes to her overall theme of feeling objectified. Often, when women are objectified, they are regarded as inanimate items, their only purpose being to serve the person (typically a man) objectifying them. Similarly, by likening her hips to a desk, Piercy shows that they no longer serve a purpose as a part of her body, aside from being somewhere to place folders and such on top of.
She later goes on to write “My head is a badly organized file (9),” at which point, the tension in the poem increases dramatically. Piercy creates a very ironic image with this line, which helps create a stark contrast between her job and her personal life. Her job as a secretary is to keep everything nice, neat, and organized. But because this job has overwhelmed and consumed her, she feels that she is no longer able keep her own mind organized. By incorporating irony into this poem, Piercy conveys a sort of desperation, and loss of control.
In line 18, Piercy writes, “From my mouth issue canceled reams”. She uses the image of canceled reams being issued from her mouth to symbolize the fact that she has been silenced; there are so many things that she’d like to say but she isn’t able to. This ties back