What tone is used in the last stanza of marge piercy‘s “barbie doll” :
2 answers:
The poem begins with the birth of a “girlchild” who is immediately given all the toys she will need to learn how to be a good mother and wife. She has a “GE stove” and a baby doll which requires diaper changes. The girl is immediately being trained in her future subservient role.
She enters puberty and the insults of other children start to wear away at her. They say that she has “a great big nose and fat legs.” These judgements stay with this young woman for the rest of her life.
The speaker makes sure to emphasize all of the beautiful qualities this woman possess, but neither she, nor her peers are able to see and appreciate them. All they can see are her supposed “faults.”
In the second half of Barbie Doll, worn down by the words of others, the woman cuts off her nose and legs as an offering to the world that has tormented her. She dies, and is buried with a reconstructed face and “turn-up nose.” In death, the speaker ironically states, she has found the happy ending all women desire.
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