A WORK OF ARTIFICE
| The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning. But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, It is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch. Analysis In this poem, I took it to be that the 'bonsai tree' was actually a woman. They live in the 'attractive pot', which would be a nice home. Marge Piercy writes, that the bonsai tree "could have grown eighty feet tall" which was its potential. If it had not been suppressed so much by the gardener, then it would be more than nine inches on height. The gardener is a man who has suppressed a woman, and because of that, she can no longer grow, for her personality has been severely diminished. The 'gardener' (man) tells her that she must be "small and cozy, domestic and weak" and continues to tell her "how lucky [she is] to have a pot (house) to grow in". By saying this, the woman/bonsai tree is being severely suppressed by the man/gardener because he is telling her that she has to act a certain way. She must take care of domestic activities and tasks, which depresses her. She writes that "one must begin very early to dwarf [a woman's] growth" in the way that she has been dwarfed. |
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