Question

What does this poem teach us about women and men in

Answer 1

The question is incomplete, and the full version can be found on Commonlit

Answer:

Gilman´s poem describes the obstacle in her path, and symbolically the obstacle in all women´s lives, as the prejudice, a male presence that won´t let her go on. She overcomes this obstacle by just ignoring it, which becomes clear in the last stanza: "I walked directly through him, as if he wasn't there". The idea that we can not change the minds of those who want gender discrimination to remain, but we can still overcome them as long as we can working on bettering society. Knowing the kind of resilient spirit that the women who fought for female rights during the late nineteenth century had to have to be able to succeed makes me humble and at the same time, it inspires me. There´s still a lot to conquer on female rights, and ignoring those who want to deter that movement is as difficult as necessary.

Explanation:

This poem reminds me of the movie Hidden Figures(2017), where three women suffer discrimination while working for NASA, despite their having skills much needed at the time. I always wonder at how these characters seem to keep their heads down throughout most of the discriminative events they suffer. Under a new light, I can imagine that they chose to ignore the bad so they could focus on doing their jobs, and that´s what made them so important.