Why God Had Made Miss D So Little And Mrs A So Big - Analysis

A riddle that doubles as a judgment

Burns’s little quatrain pretends to be a simple question—Ask why God made one thing small and another huge—but it’s really an argument about how humans assign worth. The speaker compares a GEM with the granite: the gem is tiny, granite is massive, and yet the poem assumes we prize the gem. The central claim arrives as a confident explanation of divine intention: God meant that people would set / That higher value on the smaller thing. In other words, size is not the measure; perceived preciousness is.

Smallness as advantage, not defect

The poem’s key tension is that its logic flatters the gem’s smallness while quietly insulting the granite’s abundance. Granite is described as so huge, almost as if being plentiful makes it dull. The gem’s tininess becomes a mechanism for value: because it’s small, it can be set apart, lifted, displayed, owned. That assumption carries an edge. If worth depends on scarcity, then value is less an inherent quality than a social habit—something people set by agreement. The religious framing (God made) gives that habit the sheen of destiny, even though it might just be human appetite and status-making dressed up as theology.

What the title hints at without saying

The title’s odd specificity—Miss D and Mrs a, one so little and the other so big—suggests a social application: bodies, reputations, and marriage labels can be treated like gem and granite. The poem never names these women in the stanza, but the comparison invites a sharper, slightly cruel question: are we being asked to admire the small one because she is rare, or because she can be more easily idealized and possessed? The tone stays brisk and proverbial, but the implication is that valuation often says more about the valuer than the valued.