Today there are limited reserves,
Only scattered jars on the pantry shelves.
Neither Marilla nor Mrs. Rachel Lynde would ever let this happen.
But I grew up in a house with a sign on the door,
"Dull women have immaculate homes."
(This made me suspicious of L----'s mom.)
But I always planned to keep my floors swept
My pantry ready for guests. These days,
I vacuum once a week. You say that like I should be proud of you (I am)
But Anne broke the willow-ware plate
The critics say: a metaphor for breaking conventional form
I say: maybe housework isn't all it's cracked up to be
Whoa, do critics really say that? I need to read some LMM criticism. Or do they say it in general about breaking plates? DOES Anne break conventional form? like in her writing?
ReplyDeleteObviously I love this poem for many reasons.
They do! I went back into my old paper on the Anne series and found the relevant footnote: "Waterson and Rubio point out that Anne's first successful literary work is first written after Anne breaks a “patterned platter,” highlighting the importance of her break with conventional form (qtd in Wiggins 236)." It happens in Anne of Ingleside-- she takes a sketch she wrote in Anne's House of Dream's that has no plot (and that she believes therefore has no chance of being published), rewrites it, submits it, and it becomes her first acceptance!
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