Poem “The Secretary Chant”: A Feminist Analysis Essay Example

would view her as nothing more than a phone call answerer, meeting scheduler, and a coffee fetcher. The speaker’s tone is robotic. Her movements, actions, and tasks are so redundant that there is no thought process needed to do them.

Not only is her body dehumanized, but, so is her mind, “My head is a badly organized file. / My head is a switchboard/ where crossed lines crackle” (ll 9-10). There is no creativity imagination in her voice, her mind, or her body isn’t hers. She is the machine. This poem digs down to the core of corporate America’s culture and views toward women in the predominantly male workforce. Women were faxers, copiers, staplers, and phone answers. It was not their place to think, question, intrude, or create. In the case of this secretary, she has succumbed to the redundancy of her tasks.

She has lost her voice, “Buzz. Click. ”(ll 7). Pericy’s use of sound is very powerful. She has no words to say, no ideas to speak, no opinion to give; she is a machine disguised as a woman. Just what her male superiors want and expect of her.

• Press my fingers
• and in my eyes appear
• credit and debit.
• Zing. Tinkle,
• My navel is a reject button.
• From my mouth issue canceled reams. (ll 11-16)

Her eyes, once windows into her soul are now expressions of currency. Where there once were words, out come receipts. She is fully mechanized, there are no human facets left.

She is just what they want her to be, a beautiful machine. But, there is a “reject button”(l 15). Maybe there is hope for her to regain her humanity back after

all. What happens if the reject button is pressed? Does she come back to life, or is she simply rebooted like the machine they have made her out to be? She is stripped of all woman and human capabilities. “Swollen, heavy, rectangular/ I am about to be delivered/ of a baby/ Xerox machine. ”(ll 17-20). She delivers copiers not babies. There is nothing left of her, no even the ability to reproduce.

However, the most powerful lines are the ones that end the poem.

• File me under W
• Because I wonce
•  was
• a woman. (ll 21-24)

She is aware of what she once was, a woman. The speaker is aware of what her mind, body, and thoughts have become. They are all mechanical components and products of her occupation. Piercy has created a fiercely strong and vivid image of women’s roles in the workplace in 1973. They were there to do all the work that an established man wouldn’t do. And she has lost her humanity because of it.