"I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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"I, being born a woman and distressed": Analysis
In "I, being born a woman and distressed," Edna St. Vincent Millay, in a departure from poetic as well as social convention, admits a sexual desire clouding speaker's ability to connect mentally and emotionally to a lover. The poem, in sonnet form, is about a woman experiencing an all too common conflict most women undergo: a strong physical urge to a partner/lover and mild, if not at all, intellectual and emotional attraction. Thematically, "I, being born a woman and distressed" falls into romance genre, in a sense, yet is also a feminist poem, in a different sense. Specifically, "I, being born a woman and distressed" addresses man-woman relationship in a straightforward way – at least for physical intimacy. The intellectual and emotional connections are, however, left out for reader's/listener's imagination to figure out. From a Feminist perspective, "I, being born a woman and distressed" admits, in a unique departure from Feminist rejection of women's body as a space for man's control, women's necessary biological needs and perhaps inevitable attraction to a male figure. This is perhaps most evident in poem's very opening lines:
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast [emphasis added]
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The diction, as emphasized above, is direct and clear enough about every woman's state of intimate
love and physical attraction to men. To admit a man's dominance, “To bear your body’s weight upon my
breast,” is to entertain a notion Feminism has long resisted: men's control over women's bodies.
There is a shift, however, in speaker's mood and tone – a shift marking a common convention in sonnet form. That is, in first stanza (ending in a voiceless, explosive sound, /t/ , as if to mark a woman's distress yet also perhaps moans and sounds under a man's weight) a clear mood and tone of submission is notable perhaps best captured in “So subtly is the fume of life designed.” This sense of agony, frustration and submission culminates in stanza's closing line: “And leave me once again undone, possessed.” This is, if anything, a full disclosure of one of women's ...