“Marks” is a poem from Linda Pastan, it describes the daily life of a typical and traditional housewife, and the poem mentions her housework and the feedback she received form her family members which include her husband and two children. The poems then express her feelings towards the ‘marks’ she was given and she draws a conclusion ‘I'm dropping out’ at the end.
The poem was published in 1978, it is the time when the overall social status of women in United State have been improved. Indeed, a great progress has been made in the area of female right after the sign of Declaration of Sentiments. It specifically notes that “all men and women are created equal”, since then, women own equal rights as men in society (Stanton). This legal document in 1963 states woman have the right to vote, to earn salary and to receive education in a formal way. However, in the late 1970s, Linda Pastan shows her disagreement in her piece which the social status of women has met the basic standard. From her perspective, women still rely on family and positioned as second class in community. She indicates how female are being stereotype by general public through listing the duties of women, hence, strengthen the idea that women are born to support family.
In fact, Pastan shares her personal experience and express her dissatisfy feeling in “Marks”. She graduated with three degrees; got married in 1953 and had three children afterward. As a writer, she put her literature world aside and played the role of wife and mother to be more focus on her family work. Although being a modern woman, she finds difficulties in balancing her family life and career path (Cucinella, C. (2002). She reviewed the problems was cause by the social and family expectation towards her family identifies. As a result, she mentioned her exasperations in her works like “Pass/Fail” (1975) and “Marks” (1978). She takes these poems as channel to share her viewpoints, “poetry is not a matter of knowledge but of...