Andrea Varnava
Prof. Jacobs
English 165W
September 22, 2010
A Form and Crux Essay Assignment
The poem I chose to interpret was Judith Wrights “Woman to Man”. After reading the
poem multiple times I’ve come up with two similar conclusions. My first interpretation of the
poem is quite a beautiful story about a woman who just found out that she is pregnant and is in
the early stages of her pregnancy. Whether this was an expected or unexpected pregnancy we do
not know. What I can tell is that she is honestly amazed with what her body is doing; and that is
creating a new life. I also felt that this was her way of telling her love, husband, or boyfriend
(someone she is actually involved with) about the pregnancy.
The first stanza is about the child she is carrying inside of her “the shapeless seed I hold”
(2) and that she is nourishing it to grow until its birth. The author mentions this by stating it
“builds for its resurrection day” (3). The Second stanza states that the unborn child or “the
shapeless seed” is still quite young where they know absolutely nothing about it. Meeting would
be the day of its birth or as the author would say its “resurrection day”. When Judith Wright
writes “This is our hunter and our chase” (9) I interpreted that as the unborn child blessed (or you
could say it hunted) them by choosing them to be its parents. The last line in the second stanza
“the third who lay in our embrace” (10) clearly means that it’s the unborn child between them. I
interpreted the third stanza as all the things that they have combined together to make this child.
It has taken parts of the woman and parts of the man to create this new human being. And
finally for the last stanza; I understood it as despite the fact that she is amazed at the life growing
inside of her at this very moment she is attempting to wrap her head around the whole situation.
Even though she is thrilled I understand that she’s also afraid of what’s next to come. Whether
that being complications during the pregnancy, labor, and the changing of life itself once this
child is in the world because she not only has herself to worry about but now she has this other
being as well. The woman being the speaker in this poem states this with the last line in the last
stanza of the poem “Oh hold me, for I am afraid.” (20). I feel that she has expressed her joys and
her fears with this man and that with his embrace and being there with her they can get through
this together.
The Second interpretation has me thinking just like the first, that this woman just found
out she was pregnant but the difference and has gone to tell “the shapeless seeds” (2) father with
the news of her pregnancy The difference in this case is that I don’t think they are together. The
line that makes me think so is “this has no name to name it by” (7) because the woman and the
man aren’t together the woman must question if he will accept the child. Not knowing if he will
accept the child means that she cannot know if he will give the child his name. With this
interpretation I could take “This is our hunter and our chase” (9) to mean the child is what hunts
them now after their chase which was their sexual relations. And lastly “Oh hold me, for I am
afraid” (20) could either mean please stay with me so we can get through this together but you
can also look at it as please stay with me and hold back all of the communities comments and
overall negativity.
Researching this poem was quite difficult due to the lack of information available;
however there was quite a lot of information on Judith Wright. Even the academic sites that I
searched didn’t have anything on “Woman to Man”. The only site that I found with even the
slightest mention of the poem was Literature Criticism Online which was apart f the Queens
College library database. All Philip Lindsay (the author of the criticism) basically states that
Judith Wright was way ahead of her time by talking about sex. “[In this essay concerning
Wright’s Woman to Man, Lindsay asserts that Wright is the first woman poet to speak of love
with a truly female voice.]” It was also stated the “of Judith Wright’s poetry it might well be
said that she is the only woman who has kissed and told. Other woman have sung of love, but
apart from Sappho-and she, after all, was a man in female skin-none have written honestly and
without shame of their desires. Usually we find that woman poets were sexually inexperienced
ladies, transmuting their desires into religious or metaphysical ecstasies…”
I was only able to find one other site that had something written about this specific poem.
Again many sites had some experts on Judith Wright but nothing on the actual poem. This is
defiantly not an academic website but I thought since my interpretation and this author’s
interpretation was vastly different it would be nice to add. The writer or author of the text feels
that the main idea of the poem is “based upon the female sexuality and sensuality, and that sex is
symbolic of life, or death is pregnancy fails.” Which I clearly don’t agree with; my first
interpretation is more of a sweet and tender moment in someone’s life and my second
interpretation is more the aftermath of a short but passionate affair. Yes the second interpretation
has more connotations of sex but it’s defiantly not the main idea. The writer or author of the text
also states that the title "Woman to Man" would mean something along the lines of a “woman is
offering herself to the Man, offering her body to create a child, through the act of sex. It also
means that the woman has something to give to the man, not only the pleasure, but through blood
and pain, a child.” Which I again don’t agree with I feel that she is opening up her life to this
man on a much deeper level because they are going to be bringing a child into the world. The
one thing that I would agree on is that there are metaphors in the poem.
Even though this poem is only four stanzas long it is chalk full of meanings. Each time I
reread it I can see it differently. I think the poem is written in black verse and there are four five
lined stanzas. There is a little bit of alliteration in the poem with “the selfless, shapeless seed I
hold,” (2) and there isn’t any repetition in this poem.
Works Cited
Accessing, By, and To Be Bound. "Judith Wright Woman To Man Essays -- An Analysis of
Judith Wright's Woman To Man." Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Paper, and Book
Report. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. <http://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=7051>.
Dziedzic, Nancy, and Christine Slovey, eds. "Poetry Criticism." Poetry Criticism 14 (1996): 33181. Literature Critisism Online. Gale. Web.
<http://galenet.galegroup.com.queens.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/servlet/GLA?dd=0&locID
=cuny_queens&d1=POEC_014_0009&srchtp=b&c=1&df=f&docNum=FJ3584950009&
b0=%22woman+to+man%22+wright+&vrsn=1.0&srs=ALL&b1=KE&d3=2&ste=10&d4
=0.25&stp=DateDescend&n=10&tiPG=0>.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Mary Jo. Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. The Norton Anthology of Poetry.
New York: Norton, 2005. Print.