In The Waiting Room

What does it mean to be a woman? How does one detangle their self from that definition? In class before taking out mid term we read a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, “In The Waiting Room” I was rather intrigued by it and wanted to go deep but do to the fact that we had our test i looked it over on my own time and read on Elizabeth’s background. Bishop writes this poem in a child narrative. “Her” child narrative. For example in line 6 “it was winter. It got dark”. This shows her age at the time but through the lens of a adult poet. Bishop poem is examining her own life, capturing themes such as the realization about gender identity, the women’s rights movement and WWI. She is explaining it thought the wandering mind of a child in a dentist waiting room with grown-up people, overcoats and magazines. (lines7-10)The last two stanzas describes her going back a forth from her memory and the present. Example she writes “Then I was back in it. The war was on. Outside...” While she examines the unanswerable question of what being a woman means, Bishop also struggles to find how her identity is defined within the context of this large, gendered identity. She collapses herself with her Aunt Consuelo's voice...(her Aunt’s identity).  She even talks about women, that their outward physical looks “trousers and skirts and boots” and questions is that what it means to be a woman? She sees the stagnant and society’s criteria on womanhood based on that time. And when she reads The National Geographic of tribal woman and children she realizes that being a girl is different from being a woman in so many ways.

I really enjoyed this poem looking up information during the time period of Elizabeth and thinking about what it means to be a woman. The realization of becoming a woman, be labeled as one...and knowing that all the struggles women faced and still face has helped shaped us but not define us.