Madam And Her Madam - Analysis

Work as a Kind of Weight

Hughes builds the poem around a blunt claim: the speaker is not being hired, she is being used. The first stanza sets the imbalance with quiet understatement: the employer wasn't mean, but she has a twelve-room / House to clean. The size of the house matters because it turns domestic work into something closer to hauling—an endless, impersonal load. From there, the tasks pile up in a breathless list: get breakfast, / Dinner, and supper, then take care of her children, then Wash, iron, and scrub, then even Walk the dog around. The speaker’s exhaustion—Nearly broke me down—isn’t melodrama; it’s the logical result of a job that keeps expanding because someone else’s comfort keeps expanding.

The Polite Word Madam, and the Anger Under It

The repeated address, I said, Madam, is both manners and pressure. The speaker keeps the social script—calling her employer Madam—even as she confronts her. That clash creates the poem’s central tension: the worker must be respectful while naming disrespect. When she asks, Can it be / You trying to make a / Pack-horse out of me?, she turns the job description into an animal image. A pack-horse is useful because it doesn’t get to object; it just carries. The question doesn’t ask for kindness. It asks for recognition that there is a limit, and that the limit has already been crossed.

The Employer’s Sudden Love as a Countermove

The poem’s hinge comes when the employer opened her mouth and answers with tears: Oh, no! / You know, Alberta, / I love you so! The name Alberta makes the relationship feel intimate—too intimate. Hughes suggests that affection can be a technique of power: the employer tries to dissolve a labor complaint into a personal bond. Her love arrives exactly when the worker asks for fair treatment, which makes it sound less like feeling and more like strategy.

That may be true—But Love Doesn’t Pay for Labor

The speaker’s final answer is the poem’s hard clarity. She grants the possibility—That may be true—but refuses the bargain: I'll be dogged / If I love you! It’s not just rejection; it’s a boundary. After being told to Walk the dog around, the idiom I'll be dogged bites back, turning the language of service into defiance. The tone lands as dry, funny, and furious at once: if the employer wants the warmth of love, she should not build it on someone else’s exhaustion. The poem ends by insisting that affection cannot be demanded as part of the workload, especially when the workload is already built to break someone down.