Answer:
Her smile is fake. She was somewhere else in her head. She is detached from the situation. The audience thinks that she is delighted to be dancing in front of them. This is about who she is and who she presents herself to be to others. It is really all in the audience's mind that she is enjoying herself. She is very unhappy. It can be really difficult to look at how things are and then trying to understand someone's inner thoughts and self.
The audience is almost predatory and she is graceful and wants to contain her dignity. The speaker in the poem is also pointing to the injustice of society and how she is being dehumanized. Harlem was a poor and mostly black neighborhood. She could get a job there and took it so she can afford to live.
This poem is really about social justice and how these young girls are exploited
Explanation:
I did not write your essay, but I know that you can do it with this information :)
The answer is, "were". I hope this helps.
I'm pretty sure it is a metaphor
You start to see in it premonitions of her suicide. The title suggests being on the edge or having slipped off it. Since the poem is about a "perfected woman," one starts to read it as the poem about Plath herself dead, perfect. The central figure then becomes the woman Plath thought she would become by her suicide, with the relief and defiance, the all-encompassing knowledge ("she is used to this sort of thing") she would then possess, as well as her frightening qualities ("blacks crackle and drag") that, in her superior way, she can take for granted, although we, the reader, cannot.
