Do you agree that her poem presents a "quirky original view of the nature of women"? Justify your answer
To an extent it is acceptable to categorise Thoughts after Ruskin as a quirky poem as it is a very original perspective towards the role of women. Elma Mitchel turns everyday tasks that women do into a violent blood battle with the strong and intense verbs she uses. The first two stanza’s are readying the reader for the full blown turmoil they are about to read in the middle stanza, which describes her actions in the kitchen with ferocity. Kinaesthetic imagery is very prevalent in the middle stanza as she describes the scrubbing, scouring, steering and screaming. The use of the alliterating cacophony of sounds feels both unpleasant and physically excruciating for the person undertaking these tasks. In my opinion Mitchel decides to portray these typical domestic chores as a hyperbole to elucidate that women do not particularly enjoy doing these tasks, and contrasts Ruskin’s description of women completely revealing the truth behind the stereotyped assumption that these jobs are a women’s responsibility. Furthermore the middle stanza feels as if the poet took one big breath and blurted out all the tedious tasks that women are obliged to do, only separating the reoccurring verbs with commas, giving off the effect that the speaker is running out of breath- running out of patience and all of a sudden revealing the ugly truth that men -as Ruskin does- avoid believing that housework is a hard job.
On the other hand the statement could be correct in the sense that your average women would particularly describe her domestic tasks of such force therefore Mitchel adds an original element to her poem making in a unique perspective that no one has described before. By exposing the raw reality of the tasks that women are expected to do all of a sudden the whole poem becomes a big metaphors of boiling aggravation and tipping frustration at the ridiculously tedious things...