In stanza two, she says that “tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes/ (there is) not a softness anywhere about (her)” (lines 16 and 17) when she’s wearing “only whalebone and brocade” (line 18.) The term ‘whalebone’ refers to a whalebone corset, which is a very hard material that is restrictive to movement. By describing her actions as ‘tripping,’ a modern day feminist reader is reinforced that she is not coping in her current lifestyle where she is limited to living in a strict manner. In the next stanza, she says that “underneath (her) stiffened gown/ Is the softness of a woman” (lines 32 and 33.) This develops the idea that the way she dresses is a deceiving appearance, because she is not as stiff and stable on the inside as she comes across on the outside. Deep down she is soft and sad, in mourning of the loss of her lover, yet she cannot express these emotions due to the expectations and restrictions of women during the Victorian era.
The Road not taken is a poem is about actual and figurative roads: the roads we walk and drive on, and the roads we take through life. As the speaker of this poem discusses, for every road we take, there's a road we don't take. Wrong turn or not, the roads we take can end up making significant changes in our lives. And we'll always wonder about the roads that we didn't …show more content…
We can hear his footsteps in the steady rhythm and rhyme, with the occasional diversion to look at the colors of a particularly brilliant tree. With lines a little shorter than the average metrical poem (a poem that follows a set pattern of rhythm) and stanzas a little longer than the average rhyming poem, the sound of "The Road Not Taken" isn't like many other poems, just like the speaker, who tries to be different from everyone else when he chooses his path.Still, we can hear in the sound of the poem that the speaker isn't speeding ahead, but proceeding slowly and carefully, as he's not quite sure he's on the right path. The most obvious indication of this hesitation in the sound of the poem is in the last stanza, where the speaker repeats the word "I." This sounds like the speaker has stopped walking for a moment, and even the birds in the wood have stopped to listen to how the speaker will end the