The purpose of this research is to examine the issue of gendered speech as reflected in selected twentieth-century poems. The plan of the research will be to set forth the way in which male and female poets use the language to express the emotional life and social experience of women with reference to X.J. Kenne dy's "In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day," Ruth Fainlight's "Flower Feet," and Anne Sexton's "Her Kind," and then to discuss how the patterns of ideas expressed in these poems appear to re flect certain embedded social experiences that the poets seem unable to escape.
What is most striking about the drunken woman's monologue of memory is that it appears to violate virtually all social conven tions associated with appropriate fe male speech. According to Tannen, women, especially those who find themselves the center of attention or in a position of pres tige, appear to be compelled to "do a certain amount of conversa tional work to make sure they maintain the proper demeanor to fit their sense of what makes a good person, which entails not seem ing to parade their higher status" (Tannen, Talking 177). The evidence of the poem's title is that the woman at the barstool understands the difference be tween the experience of social priv ilege and social defi ciency. Yet despite this attention to social decorum, the fact is that the "lady in skunk" has lost all sense of proper social demeanor. Indeed, if Tannen is to be used as an interpretive guide for Ken nedy's poem, she seems to have only a memory of having been a good person on one hand, and seems de termined to parade her mem ory of a "a lady as proud as could be" (971).
The content of the lady's memory amounts to a recitation of wealth, beauty, and material comforts that were consumed and then squandered. Further, the lady appears to have been a good-time girl whose experience of the good life was at the side of rich men. The lady indirectly acknowledges that this was...