Mary Saunders
April 19, 2009
“A work of Artifice” by Marge Piercy uses the symbol of a bonsai tree to represent women’s rights. Throughout the poem, the tree is described as being small and helpless. The tree has the potential to grow to be eighty feet tall, but instead it is carefully pruned by a gardner that only lets the tree grow to nine inches high. This careful pruning of the tree is a representation of men holding women back and not allowing them to reach their full potential in their lives. The poem describes the gardener crooning to the tree, “It is your nature to be small and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in.” Many men throughout history and even in the world today have this same attitude towards women that the gardener has towards the tree. They say that the women are lucky to be safe, protected and cared for by men when in fact all women really want is to be treated equally.
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