I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed

I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed Character List

Speaker

The speaker is a woman addressing a potential lover. She speaks with a mixture of disarming candidness and cheeky, arch wit. She is straightforward and explicit about her feelings of lust for her addressee, creating a certain degree of vulnerability. Yet she is equally as straightforward when it comes to humbling the lover, explaining bluntly that she dislikes everything about them except for their physical presence. Moreover, she is highly self-aware about the ways in which she is perceived as a woman. She begins the poem by explaining that her irrational desires are merely a result of her femininity. In doing so, she turns stereotypes of women's weakness and irrationality to her advantage, using them with a heavy dose of sarcasm as a way to defend and articulate her sexuality.

Lover

Not much is revealed about the lover, who remains unidentified in gender and age through the course of the poem. What we know of them is filtered through the speaker's perception, which is starkly split. On the one hand, as far as the speaker is concerned, this individual is very physically attractive. On the other hand, they're unworthy in every other way. The speaker expresses scorn towards them, and clearly isn't a fan of their personality, since she doesn't wish to make conversation unnecessarily. Moreover, the poem suggests that this person also has a big ego, since the speaker goes out of her way to explain that she doesn't love or admire them.