"The Young Housewife," Gender, & Sexual Expression

"The Young Housewife" is a particularly good example of William Carlos Williams' well known use of imagism, where he weaves an entire implicit narrative into a single moment; the subject of the poem, the young housewife, has her story told through the way she's framed by other objects. We see her through the eyes of an empowered and voyeuristic speaker, whose perspective exemplifies the sociological phenomenon known as group dominance, the process of which is illustrated by the way the poem's images objectify and constrain the housewife.

From the beginning, there's a clear power differential between the speaker and the housewife. She's "behind / the wooden walls of her husband's house" (2-3) while the speaker is in a car, free to move around. In the 2005 study conducted by Alicia Gonzales and Gary Rolison, they explore a similar power dynamic, specifically the way that race, gender, and socioeconomic status correlate to access to sexual capital. In this study, sexual capital is defined as the "freedom of a liberated body and imagination, as well as how expressive and adventurous we are with our sexuality" (Gonzales and Rolison 725). The study's data comes from 3,159 responses to the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey, a questionnaire about "adult sexual attitudes and behaviors in the United States" (719). The responses were compared against the respondents' social group and environment, for example their gender, socioeconomic status, and/or level of religiousness. The researchers found that overall, compared to the white, male control group, women have less sexual capital, meaning they're "less likely...to enjoy or explore avenues
of sexuality" (Gonzales and Rolison 726). Additionally, white men that responded to the survey indicated that they had more sexual capital, that they were more open and assertive in their expression of their sexuality.

In this way, Gonzales and Rolison's work is an academic exploration of the paradigm Williams draws on in "The Young Housewife" because not only is there a clearly defined difference in power between the speaker and the housewife, the implicit characterization of the housewife is more than just a little sexualized. For example, when the speaker describes her, he makes specific note of the fact that she's "shy, uncorseted" (7). The lack of a corset is a reference to the speaker's awareness of the housewife's sexuality, but the additional characterization of her as shy assures us that the speaker is also very aware that she is unable to express that sexuality confidently. This is in stark contrast to the speaker who is watching her "again" (5) go about her morning routine. The speaker's access to sexual capital means they have the freedom to acknowledge their and others' sexuality without the self consciousness implied when the housewife tucks "in / stray ends of hair" (7-8). The final and most poignant image in the poem reflects both the idea of an imbalance in power and in sexual capital. In this last image, the speaker draws a parallel between the housewife and "a fallen leaf" (9) just as his car tires "rush with a crackling sound / over dried leaves" (11-12). First, that the housewife is represented by a leaf fallen from the tree is degrading in that it shows her life as something vibrant and desirable is over, that living "behind / the wooden walls of her husband's house" (2-3) is a dry echo of what her life could have been. Secondly, the repetition of the image of the leaf is intentional and further emphasizes the way the housewife's shyness and marital status puts her at the figurative mercy of the speaker's freedom, represented by the car tires that carry him over and past the once vibrant leaves, the woman who has "fallen" (9) to the role of housewife.

Works Cited

Gonzales, Alicia M., and Gary Rolison. "Social Oppression and Attitudes Toward Sexual Practices." Journal of Black Studies 35.6 (2005): 715-29. JSTOR.

                Web. 5 Oct. 2015.
Williams, William Carlos. "The Young Housewife." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. D. New York/London: W.W. Norton, 2012.
                 Print.

NOTE: For other interpretations of "The Young Housewife," see these selected literary criticisms. If  you're interested in more information on the relationship between relative social status and sexual capital, see the Works Cited. Can't get enough of the idea of young housewives? Sylvia Plath provides an additional and more expansive view.