Analysis of The Looking Glass

In the poem ‘the looking glass’ written by Kamala das, it tried to show how women are confined in their physical activities. She actually used irony to state all the facts. She criticized the women that it’s easy for them to get love by a man. If the men and women both get naked in front of a mirror the women will see that the men are stronger and they will admire their beauty. The writer criticizes this thing by calling themselves “Softer, younger, lovelier” (6, das). She meant that women are symbol of beauty and women like to be introduced in this way.
And she states how every single nasty thing is attractive to the women and they are admiring them. She provokes the women to give them everything and she used all the physical terms like “the scent of Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts, the warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your Endless female hungers.”(11-14, das) which are the common things about femininity. Kamala tried to show the women that the way they are behaving and admiring themselves their role is nothing but to fulfill the physical needs. And she stated that women were being so dependent on the men that they can’t forget them when they are gone. All the happiness, all the lightheartedness goes away with them. They are making themselves so weak that they can’t live a happy life without a man.

Singular Vs Plural- What to choose?

“No verb is singular because it is the school that acts, or the tribe, the group, the species or every verb is singular because the only I there is is a we.”(4, Doty)
Generally, when we talk about a class we initially mean all the students in that class though we use singular verb for it. We use singular verb because we talk about all the students as a united class. In this article, through this line Doty might have wanted to express the unity among the mackerels. They all were there for each other even they were dead. Though they had particularly separate entities, still they didn’t have any individuality. Their souls were inseparable. There was no existence of singularity in them. They were “all for all”. But all of them together were one and singular which made them even more special. That’s why Doty said, “the only I there is is a we”.
Doty also connected the human beings through this line, like the fishes there was also a “school of humanity”- though it was an example of unity, but there was nothing like that in between them.

The Looking Glass: A Tempting Depiction of Feminine Aspiration

The Looking Glass: A Tempting Depiction of Feminine Aspiration

           The poem “The Looking Glass” by Kamala Das is a descriptive poem, which elaborates the bold imagery of exploring female sexuality in her quest for love. This poem is composed in a free verse with no specific rules applied: the poet uses figurative devices like alliteration “admit and admiration, drab and destitute, living and love”, simile “as”, metonymy “looking glass” for the reflection of image when one is placed in front of it. The poem becomes irony to praise the male ego by admiring his strength only to highlight the soft, feminine self of the poet. Also, the poet frequently uses “the” article as in “the stronger one, the perfection, the shower, the shy walk, the jerky way” to make the descriptions more specific and visible to her readers.

In the poem, the sensuous imagery is created that presents an intimate scene where the female lust is undoubtedly thick in the air as described by the poet. She offers to him her whole female being which includes “the musk of sweat between the breasts, “scent of long hair” and “the warm shock of menstrual blood”. She also adds: “Gift him all what makes you a woman” meaning to the sense of surrender and to submit without any exceptions. Unfortunately, her womanly offers do not suffice to capture the man’s attention forever. She is unable to possess her man till the end in spite of her total surrender. The line “Getting a man to love is easy, but living/ without him afterward may have to be/ faced” suggests that bodily solutions are not enough to keep a man’s love for the female’s desires because in the end she ends up alone and “destitute”.

Life Of An Ugly Barbie Doll

The Barbie Doll is a poem of four stanzas, which describes the life of a girl born in modern society. The story of the poem begins by the birth of a girl. The line “presented dolls that did pee-pee/and miniature GE stoves and irons/and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” tells the reader about the usual toys like dolls, GE stoves, iron and lipsticks that a girl plays with. It also describe about the identity that they are given since they are child. The GE stoves and iron refers to the household work that they should do when they become adult. The lipsticks refers that girls should maintain their feminine beauty and be dominated under man. The author then uses an irony “the magic of puberty” to tell the reader the sudden change that modifies her body and makes her attractive. She also gets a big nose and fat legs with the change in her body.
Though the girl was healthy intelligent and strong but she was not as pretty as a Barbie doll as she had a big nose on her face and fat legs. So she was not able to portray her talent as she felt embarrassed due to her ugly physical appearance. She was selected in a play to perform the role of coy and everyone suggested her to change her diet so that she can become beautiful. But she was not able to do so. As a result of facing the humiliation of her physical appearance she cut her legs and nose and offered them to the society whish ultimately resulted to her death. This is what happens in reality, when a girl is born and she is not an epitome of a Barbie doll! Is it the girl’s fault that she is not beautiful? Why all the time a girl needs to sacrifice when she doesn’t have everything perfect? No one has the perfect answer. But the fact is women now, has become an object that whenever society wants they can keep them or discard them.

Girls in Society (Barbie Dolls by Marge Piercy)

The first stanza of the poem, Barbie Dolls discusses the expectation of female role in man dominated society and all girls are not fit for this social role. Next, the second stanza states that if a girl is not beautiful enough though she is physically strong and intelligent, she will be a thing of fun. The third and fourth stanzas express that the girl should be make her according to the demands of society. So, she tries her best to be acceptable to the society even by sacrificing herself. In the last stanza, Piercy shows an irony that the girl is looking pretty at last. In fact, she is accepted by all when she is death.
Actually, Marge Piercy shows the girls’ status in the society where she uses a girl child as a representative of all girls in the world. Basically, the poem discusses the cultural and social demands on girls. The poem starts with a beginning at birth and ending with death of a girl. Here, the poet’s attitudes towards the subject of the poem and towards the reader are depression and sadness. Finally, the message of the poem is− we should not judge one according to image rather than one’s own merit and significance.

The Looking Glass by Kamla Das

The poem ‘The Looking Glass’ by Kamla Das contains rhythm in its all one verse and regularity in the length of the lines. The poem has been written in a very simple realistic language, using almost no metaphor except in the last line which makes it very easy for the reader to understand. The poem is all about the love between the male and the female, specially the physical love of them which also affects them mentally as well. The tone of the poem is very much impassioned in the beginning while describing the love-making between them. But later the tone becomes gloomy while describing the threatening consequences if someday there comes separation. She (author) says, it is very easy to step in the world of love, to roam around there and enjoy the passion, warmth and physical satisfaction love gives, but it becomes horrendous to bear the extreme pain when that love goes away from the life.
The author has mainly focused on the woman’s emotion and acts in a love relationship and according to her, it is easy to make a man love a woman if she allows her womanhood completely be expressed in front of him. In a love relationship, the man loves it if “he sees himself the strongest one” and the woman “much softer, younger, lovelier.” They become so close to each other that nothing remains personal between these two people. The woman knows every single details about him, even she knows every single external parts of his body, all the personal movement of his physic and also she makes him known toall the personal details of her body in the same way. Thus they become each other’s. But it is difficult “living without life” means to live if the person, she has made her “life”, by giving all she had, leaves her. She will lose all the curiosity in everything in the world, she will lose the interest in her life. Everybody in the world will seem “strangers” and she will be struck to the past when he was with her. Her thirsty body which he used to quince by his love will become “drab and destitute” where no thirst and shine will be remained.

In poem introduction the poet Kamala Das has introduce not only herself, but her single voice is the voice of millions of innocent ignorant, suppress women of India. She expresses the voice of these women wonderfully which is the aim of every Indian woman, but unfortunately very few people get this chance in their life. The biggest challenge face by Indian woman is the conservative traditional norms of society which surpass her emerging emotions in the point of generation. This is the reason that most of women in such society are not able to response to the stimuli of violence and they are surviving insensitive lives. Though Indian woman is very creative she has many abilities but she become scapegoat in every single step of her life in the name of religion and traditions. And in this epic journey of her life she unable to find her own identity and most of the time she lives in the utopia of her own wishes. Sometimes, in the garden of her wishes thousands of colorful flowers with spelled aroma are start to bloom everywhere. She considers herself the queen of her own kingdom. Sometimes the ocean of fire burn her small kingdom and she start to cry while sitting in the corner of her burned palace of happiness. In the real life problems are created by the society which smashed her innocent heart into innumerable pieces and by the end of day she is asked to be brave.
In this poem she is asking from the society that why you people not let me to live my life according to my own choice, you are asking me to become like other noble people its means I have chance to do something in my life but I have no freedom of choice. In addition to these she also describe marvelously about the transition of childhood into adult and the new challenges faced by her. Like she experience love in very different way when she grown-up. Then she wants to suppress her feminine quality and she start to dress up like a man. In this time again society becomes obstacle for her and she was asked to become a good cook, a nice embroiderer, etc. In the end part of poem she describes the human behavior. She is saying that everyone in this selfish world is concern about themselves. She used a metaphor “sword in its sheath” to describe egocentricity of human beings. Such attitude of human compels other people to become self-centre and finally everyone starts to say “I” when you ask from them, who are you?

Thoughtful reading of the poem “The looking glass”

In “The Looking Glass,” Kamala Das uses fearless imagery as she explores female sexuality in her search of love. At first I was shocked and embarrassed at my finding of such a sexually clear-cut poem. However, upon further examination, this poem is quite interesting as I can get the sense of longing and emptiness as the writer experiences the connection and then the separation from her man. “A man to love is easy but living without him afterwards may have to be faced”-this specific line suggests about the separation of a woman from her man. I felt that she uses the theme of sexual love to overcome her feelings of loneliness.

The poem is really straightforward in its diction. In truth nothing is hidden from the reader. “Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of long hair, the musk of sweat between breasts, the warm shock of menstrual blood,” are lines that one may feel shy to write but writer wrote these lines in a pleasing manner. But here writer clearly writes down about many examples of one’s sexual excitement. Kamala Das also tries to draw out the image of a lustful relationship between male and female. “Only be honest about your wants as woman”-in this line writer makes an effort to tell every woman to acknowledge about their want of sexual satisfaction. This makes the tone of the writing very passionate.

When we drop things, we are letting that thing go. Dropping towel in this poem indicates the tendency to please the woman and put his needs in front of the woman. Another literary device used is “burnished brass”. Burnished brass is a polished metal. Kamala Das compares body to a brass because when a woman receives sensuous touch from a man, her body shines like a “burnished brass”. Without the companion of the man who once stood by her and touched her body, her body turns from bright to dull.

Expressions of a Woman’s Love

In the poem ‘The Looking glass’, the poet Kamla Das has created a great imagery of physical love between a male and a female but mostly she focused on the female part where she showed the physical beauty and the emotions and necessity of a woman. According to her, it is easy for a woman to get the desired love from a man because her beauty and physical appearance are great attractions for a man. The structure of the poem is simple, not divided into stanzas and the language of the poem is also easy to understand. Also the poem has no rhyme scheme. Kamla Das did not use difficult word or examples of abstract things. Her metaphors and verses are realistic as she talked about body of male and female which are known to all. As in the first sixteen verses of the poem her description is about body and love and desires of male and female so from those verses anyone can easily anticipate that the poem is about physical love but after reading the last eight verses it appears that the poem is not only about physical love but it is also about the desires and emotions of a woman and how she feels when her loved one is not with her.
In the poem, Kamla said that it is easy for a woman to get the desired love from a man and the way is to be honest with him about her desires. ‘Stand nude before the glass with him’(3), I think in this verse she tried to tell us about honesty and transparency in a relationship. Also Kamla spoke about the physical appearance of male and female because men are stronger physically than women and men love this fact. If a woman appreciates and shows a man how fragile she is in front of him, it makes him happy and then it becomes easy to get him as her own. The physical love between male and female is natural and so the poet said ‘A man to love is easy’(17) but the pain of losing him and living with all his loving memories after he leaves is very difficult for a woman. When a woman loves a man, she gives him everything-her love, her body, her admiration but when he leaves, he takes her everything with him and then the woman becomes a ‘destitute’ shell which has nothing left inside it.

The essence of love “The Looking glass” By Kamla Das

Looking Glass by Kamal Dass is a lyric poetry. It is a short poetry, having twenty four lines, and there is no break in the lines and every line is linked to the proceeding line. It has no rhyme scheme and no rhythm. And every line is capitalized. Though the poet has used simple words, they are actually giving beauty to the poem. Poet has not made it verbose using several metaphors, similes and other contents of poem. It is simple and that is the beauty of this poem.

Author herself is the speaker in this poem and her intended audience are the women who are logging for love. In the first line she is ensuring all women that they can easily find a lover. From second to seventh line she is giving tips to women how to get a man to love her. She is actually showing what a woman can do for her lover. The most precious quality of a woman is her modesty, but in front of that man she become “nude”, only because she wants her man to believe he is much more “stronger” and she is more “softer, younger, lovelier”(3-5). She becomes happy by offering her whole life to her beloved.By doing so woman is accepting that whatever she has is his now, there is no more secrets and privacy form him. In lines seven to twelve she is telling to enjoy every moment with that person. Observe and feel his every action and share his very private moments of life and these are “the details that make/ Him a male and your only man” (12). It is not only about sharing the man’s private life; it is also about sharing her own private life with him. Gifting him everything that is unique and beautiful about her and which makes her woman. So the man will be all hers and in line seventeen she is again repeating that “getting/ A man to love is easy”(16-17)

Though the poet has only talked about love and happiness till seventeenth line, form line eighteen to twenty four she is writhing about imagery horrible world, without the lover. She is using “living without life” for that life. Every part of the body is in a state of nostalgia. The eyes become tired of searching and his last words always echo in her ears (20-22). In the last line poet is using metaphor “burnished brass” for the body which was healthy and full of life when she was with her lover, but now it is life less and has no destination (23-24). After losing dear ones a person loses his/her individuality. The only thing which stays the same is as the topic suggested “the looking glass”. It is still there staring at you, which was with you when you were spending the most beautiful moments of life. It reminds you that how bland is life without him.