Purdah
Purdah - meaning Summary
Confinement and Feminine Identity
The poem gives a persona of a veiled, jewel-like woman whose surface is polished and displayed yet shielded by screens and veils. Imagery of mirrors, birds, attendants and precious stones emphasizes both ornamental value and constrained visibility. The speaker signals latent, dangerous power — animal, vocal, and torn cloak — poised to unloose itself at the husband/guardian's approach. Themes center on confinement, identity, spectacle, and a threatened, suppressed agency.
Read Complete AnalysesJade -- Stone of the side, The antagonized Side of green Adam, I Smile, cross-legged, Enigmatical, Shifting my clarities. So valuable! How the sun polishes this shoulder! And should The moon, my Indefatigable cousin Rise, with her cancerous pallors, Dragging trees -- Little bushy polyps, Little nets, My visibilities hide. I gleam like a mirror. At this facet the bridegroom arrives Lord of the mirrors! It is himself he guides In among these silk Screens, these rustling appurtenances. I breathe, and the mouth Veil stirs its curtain My eye Veil is A concatenation of rainbows. I am his. Even in his Absence, I Revolve in my Sheath of impossibles, Priceless and quiet Among these parrakeets, macaws! O chatterers Attendants of the eyelash! I shall unloose One feather, like the peacock. Attendants of the lip! I shall unloose One note Shattering The chandelier Of air that all day flies Its crystals A million ignorants. Attendants! Attendants! And at his next step I shall unloose I shall unloose -- From the small jeweled Doll he guards like a heart -- The lioness, The shriek in the bath, The cloak of holes.
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