Work Of Artifice

Females all over the world have at one point or another felt oppressed by men. Either by culture telling women to cover up their bodies, unequal pay for women, or the simple yet destructive words we don’t think twice about “you run like a girl.” Marge Piercy’s, “A Work of Artifice,” on the surface is about a gardener and a manipulated bonsai tree. However, as you dig a bit deeper (no pun intended), the audience soon see that Piercy’s purpose is to portray a much heavier topic of women’s oppression. Piercy has exemplified in her title, word choice, and metaphors her idea of women’s inferiority.
Piercy isn’t shy from the beginning when she titles the work, “A Work of Artifice.” If it had been titled “A Work of Art” the entire poem would have been altered to a more positive tone. An artifice is a clever trick, an act of cunning, or ingenuity. The title is saying that a work of trickery is taking place. The title emphasizes the subject of the poem. The gardener is crooning to the tree that it is meant to be small and weak, and he ignores the fact that it could be huge and wild. The same is true for the male telling …show more content…
Women aren’t meant to be so restrained, and the caged lives they are forced into are through a state of mind that is inflicted and enforced by the gardener, the males. Ordinarily, bonsai trees are impressive examples of human skill but in the poem she makes bonsai trees victims of the gardeners. Piercy is