cannot cover all poetry but do, generally, indicate the one-sidedness inherent in discussing human activity from the point of view of one sex only.
It is also important, however, that centuries of dominance by the male point of view was not an accident. It is not as if women merely could not be bothered to write about their experience. Women's experience was, in fact, being defined by the men who wrote about their pursuit of them and women were seldom even allowed access to the means of expressing their own view of the situation. For male convenience women were divided into the good, epitomized in Christian thinking by the purity of the Virgin Mary, and the bad, epitomized by Eve who committed the first sin. This division is recognized in Stevie Smith's humorous poem "A Dream of Comparison" which is subtitled "After Reading Book Ten of Paradise Lost". In the poem the two women, who long symbolized the supposedly limited natures of all women, engage in a friendly philosophical argument about life after death. Eve, the sensual one, believes that everything ends with our death and there is a "Cessation of consciousness", while Mary, the spiritual one, believes in life after death.
In her witty transposition of symbols Smith has, after reading Milton's poem, given the two women intellectual dimensions that were absent from stereotypes of women. The two women discuss a matter that undeniably applies to them but on which they have never uttered a word before. Smith gives these two figures voices in the same way that Milton gave voices to Adam and to God. Thus, in giving voices and minds to the symbols of woman, Smith is staking her own claim on a voice. There is nothing strident or demanding in Smith's tone as she does this. Instead, though her barbs are sharp, she employs a tone of cool humor indicating that she assumes that rational thought is an essential part of any woman's humanity. This assumption applies to her vie...