The Revolt of Mother

(“Every true woman feels …” – Speech of almost any Congressman)

I am old-fashioned, and I think it right
That man should know, by Nature’s laws eternal,
The proper way to rule, to earn, to fight,
And exercise those functions called paternal;
But even I a little bit rebel
At finding that he knows my job as well.

At least he’s always ready to expound it,
Especially in legislative hall,
The joys, the cares, the halos that surround it,
“How women feel”—he knows that best of all.
In fact his thesis is that no one can
Know what is womanly except a man.

I am old-fashioned, and I am content
When he explains the world of art and science
And government—to him divinely sent—
I drink it in with ladylike compliance.
But cannot listen—no, I’m only human—
While he instructs me how to be a woman.

Alice Duer Miller, born in Staten Island, New York, in 1874, began her writing career after her father’s fortune collapsed, funding her own education at Barnard College by selling stories, essays and poems. Successful novels, plays and screenplays followed. Two years before her death in 1942, she published a popular verse-novel, The White Cliffs, set in wartime Britain.

It’s in the satirical verse she wrote between 1914 and 1917 in support of the American women’s suffrage movement that Miller finds her true poetic tone – laconic but surprisingly sharp-edged. These short poems appeared in the regular column she contributed to the New York Tribune under the heading Are Women People? and were subsequently published in the collection Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times. The Revolt of Mother is from this briskly trenchant collection.

Miller’s approach to the suffrage argument reminds us that she was a skilled dramatist: changing persona, and examining her subject from different perspectives. Here, the persona is simply “Mother” – and, momentarily, a reader may wonder at the prim, correct voice setting out to pronounce its traditional values as the poem begins: “I am old-fashioned, and I think it right …” Then the strategy becomes clear: Mother isn’t setting out merely to establish her non-controversial rebellion against the man who sets himself up as an expert on women, women’s work and womanliness in general. The first four lines of each verse expose the vanity and presumption of man in the various spheres of his mastery, supposedly granted “by Nature’s laws eternal”. By the time we reach the sixth line of the first verse, we’re tuned into the devastating sarcasm inside the initially fluttering understatement: “But even I a little bit rebel/ At finding that he knows my job as well”.

The argument is developed despite the repeating pattern, and anger is audible in the heightened rhetoric of the compelling second verse. In the third, Miller again plays with the reader’s expectations. The poem’s first line is echoed, with a small, rather stunning, variation: “I am old-fashioned, and I am content …” Again, we take a breath. Is Mother even sincere in her assurance that male claims to supreme expertise in art, science and government are acceptable? The statement, “I drink it in with ladylike compliance” may be read as further sarcasm. At the same time, Miller, I think, wants to illustrate the limitations of the traditionally respectful attitude an undecided woman might adhere to, and which might stand in the way of political change.

Not all the poems in the collection use rhyming verse-forms, and Miller’s “list poems” illustrate particularly sharply the need for clear political thinking to focus the passion for justice. See, for example, Our Own Twelve Anti-suffragist Reasons, a set of paired contradictory opinions beginning, “1. Because no woman will leave her domestic duties to vote/ 2. Because no woman who may vote will attend to her domestic duties. /3. Because it will make dissension between husband and wife. /4. Because every woman will vote as her husband tells her to”. The lack of evidence-based reasoning is beautifully exposed – and is a reminder that Miller had a gift for logic as well as words. In fact, she taught maths for a time at her old college.

Miller’s work influenced the achievement of American women’s suffrage. But she can’t simply be seen as a feminist poet of, and for, a distant time. It’s shocking and salutary to realise how relevant her question “Are Women People?” remains in numerous social and religious contexts today.