The Young Housewife
The Young Housewife - context Summary
Published in 1917
Published in 1917 in Al Que Quiere!, William Carlos Williams’s The Young Housewife stems from his practice of noticing ordinary moments. The poem reports a brief, detached encounter: a driver-observer watches a young housewife performing routine tasks and likens her to a fallen leaf. Its spare, observational stance reflects Williams’s interest in everyday American life and the small, often-melancholic impressions such scenes can produce.
Read Complete AnalysesAt ten AM the young housewife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband’s house. I pass solitary in my car. Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf. The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
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