I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed Essay Questions

Discuss this poem's use of metonymy.

The speaker uses metonymy as a vivid way to differentiate her mental and physical desires. Physically, she is attracted to the listener, but mentally and intellectually she is repulsed by them. The words "pulse" and blood" are used metonymically as stand-ins for lust, so that the speaker's desire is linked to the body and to vitality. Meanwhile, the speaker's rational mind is represented metonymically with the word "brain." Thus it is still represented through the language of the body and bodily organs, and these two areas—desire and rationality—are presented as intertwined yet distinct.

How does the speaker represent and describe her femininity to the listener?

The speaker methodically cites stereotypes about femininity and women's internal life in order to express her sexuality without extensive consequences. Millay's speaker mocks, and takes advantage of, norms that situate women as either sexual and sinful or innocent and virginal. She describes herself as subject to womanly "needs and notions," presenting herself as weak-minded and innocent. However, she then uses this innocence as a way to justify her sexuality, framing desire as an instinctive result of poor self-control and therefore of innocence and inexperience. Thus, the speaker ironically uses the dehumanization of women as a way to articulate her desire.