The Fallen Leaf

I think it’s interesting how the wife in “The Young Housewife” is portrayed as submissive in such a short poem. You immediately get the idea that she is submissive to her husband when the poet describes the house and “her husband’s house”. Even though she lives there and she calls it home just as her husband does, it is considered his house because he is the dominant figure. Since she is a housewife, as indicated by the title, she is not working and making money, therefore she isn’t paying the mortgage or the bills, so the house does not belong to her it belongs to her husband. The poet watches the housewife as she walks outside “to call the ice-man, the fish-man, and stands— shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her— to a fallen leaf.” She is described as being shy. I picture a shy housewife as someone who doesn’t stand up to her husband—she acts to please him. Also in that quote, I found it interesting that the poet compared her “to a fallen leaf.” To me, a fallen leaf seems lost. It is lifeless without its support system, the tree. To compare the woman to a fallen leaf is to call her lifeless. And someone who is her husband’s property so to speak and is submissive to him is lifeless because she doesn’t have a voice in the marriage or in the house.

I also found the last stanza to be very interesting. The poet is driving off and as he does “the noiseless wheels of my car— rush with a crackling sound over— dried leaves.” I interpreted this to further signify the male dominance over a female that has already been illustrated in the poem. The male in the car is driving over the dried leaves, which represent the young housewife (aka the fallen leaf). The crackling sound insinuates that his car is crushing the leaves as it rolls over them, which is representative of the fact that the husband is essentially crushing his young housewife into submission. It’s sort of like his dominating role is crushing her spirit because she can not be herself and speak up.

In Rachel Blau Duplessis' critcial essay of "The Young Housewife" she also notes the controlling nature of the men in the poem, most especially the poet. The poet holds control over the woman because "he has the power to resist, yet remark on, the sexual undertext when she, 'uncorseted' and 'in negligee,' 'comes to the curb / to call the ice-man, fish-man . . . .'". The poet also shows his control over the woman as he rolls over the leaves, which symbolize the woman, with his car. Also, Duplessis notes that the "reuful and dismissive" nod the poet gives the woman expimplifies his control over her.