A Work of Artifice

About the Poet: Marge Piercy

• Background: Born on March 31, 1936, in Detroit, Michigan, Marge Piercy is an American progressive activist and writer.
• Early Life & Education: She was the first member of her family to attend college, earning a scholarship to the University of Michigan. A severe bout of German measles and rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood left her unable to do much besides read, which cultivated her profound love for books and taught her that "there's a different world there."
• Personal Life: She currently lives with her husband, Ira Wood, in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, in a home she designed herself and where they have resided since the 1970s.
• Notable Works: Her extensive literary career includes Woman on the Edge of Time; He, She and It (winner of the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award); and the New York Times Best Seller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
• Core Influences: Her work is deeply rooted in her Jewish heritage, Communist social and political activism, and strong feminist ideals.

Central Theme & Extended Metaphor

• The Bonsai Tree: The entire poem utilizes the extended metaphor of a bonsai tree to symbolize a woman. The bonsai represents a tragic loss of growth, a lack of freedom, and an existence devoid of the space needed to truly flourish.
• Societal Confinement: Piercy questions the societal expectation that women are merely objects of "interior decoration." Historically, women were confined to domestic interiors, expected to focus solely on household tasks, and ordered to understand their restrictive "limits."
• Artificial Restriction: Just as a bonsai tree's roots and branches are harshly pruned and tightly bound to prevent it from reaching its real size, women are systematically tied to domestic responsibilities to keep them artificially small.

Poem Summary

• Stolen Potential: The poem opens by noting that the nine-inch bonsai tree, sitting in its "attractive pot," originally had the vast potential to grow eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain, living a wild life until split by lightning.
• The Gardener's Role: A gardener represents patriarchal society; he carefully prunes the tree and whittles back its branches every single day to suppress its natural growth.
• Gaslighting and Manipulation: As the gardener cuts the tree back, he "croons" to it, falsely telling the tree that it is its inherent "nature" to be small, cozy, domestic, and weak. He manipulative makes the tree feel "lucky" just to have a pot to grow in.
• Early Conditioning: The poem powerfully concludes by stating that to effectively "dwarf" the growth of any living creature, the process of restriction must begin very early in life.
• Symbols of Oppression: The poet lists chilling physical and psychological examples of how women are pruned back: bound feet, crippled brains, hair put up in curlers, and hands cultivated merely to be soft enough for someone else to "love to touch."