GRADE 11: TERM 1 POETRY

THE WOMAN: PAGE 87

A. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
 Kristina Rungano was born in Zimbabwe in 1963 and grew up in a rural part of that country.
 After school, she went to England where she studied computer science.
 She returned to Zimbabwe and started working at the Scientific Computing Centre in Harare.
 She has published two volumes of poetry, A Storm is Brewing and To Seek a Reprieve and Other Poems.
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B. STRUCTURE
1. The poem is written in free verse, without rhyme or regular metre, and without being broken into stanzas.
This has the effect of letting the reader see the endlessness of the woman’s tasks, without breaks for rest.
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C. THEME
1. The poem concerns the exploitation and oppression of women in a patriarchal society.
2. Poems dealing with the abuse and oppression of women have particular relevance in Africa, large parts of
which are still extremely patriarchal and where women have no rights whatsoever.
3. South Africa has become the first country in Africa in which the rights of women are upheld by the
constitution.
4. With her rural background, it is not surprising that the poet draws on traditional roles and chores of women
in rural Africa to highlight the almost routine abuse of rights suffered by women.
5. The psychological scars of oppression, the negative self-image, the feeling that oppression is deserved that
are experienced by the woman in Rungano’s poem are not unique and are suffered by many women.
6. When one considers that women are not as physically strong as men, and that they have the added burden of
bearing babies and nurturing them in the first years of their lives, the exploitation by their men becomes
even less excusable and less forgivable.
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D. TONE
1. At first the tone is one of resentment. She is ‘unhappy’ and ‘bitter’.

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2. The repetition of ‘And’ at the beginning and within lines speaks to the long list of tasks that the woman has
to undertake and the abuses and difficulties that she repeatedly experiences at the hands of her partner. The
exhaustive list of her ‘labour’ is not appreciated but expected and demanded.
3. The tone changes when she questions whether she should obey him and ‘Love, serve and honour her man’.
She accepts her subservient role begrudgingly.
4. It is important to distinguish between the poet and the speaker, because the poet is a sophisticated woman
who has lived in a First World country and is aware of the improving status of women in such countries.
The speaker, on the other hand, is a simple country girl who accepts without question her humble lot and
the abuse to which she is subjected.
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E. SUMMARY OF THE POEM’S CONTENT
1. The speaker describes how she has spent her day, carrying out the tedious and often very demanding tasks
expected of her by her husband, while he is out drinking with his friends.
2. He returns home drunk and demands to have sex with her.
3. She alone bears the responsibility of toiling in the fields, running her home, caring for her children and
seeing to her husband’s needs.
4. She concludes ironically that these things are her duty and that the man is, after all, ‘the fruit of the land’.
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LINES 1 – 6
1. The speaker describes a day in her life, and contrasts it with that of her husband.
2. She is returning from the well with a huge, heavy container of water on her head.
3. ‘Where young women drew water like myself’ (line 2).
a. This line suggests that her situation is common to other young African women.
4. ‘My body was weary and my heart tired’ (line 3).
a. The woman’s body is ‘weary’ from all the physical labour she performs, from her pregnancy, and from
the abuse of her husband. Her heart is ‘tired’ because of the emotional pain she experiences.
b. She gets no positive feedback or help from the man and she thinks the situation of women unfair.
5. ‘For a moment I watched the stream that rushed before me/ And thought how fresh the smell of flowers/
How young the grass around it’ (lines 4 – 6).
a. Immediately after drawing the water, she finds a temporary escape from her trapped world, as she gets a
brief ‘moment’ to enjoy the simple pleasures of her natural surroundings (the sweet smell of the flowers
and the freshness of the new grass) and to engage with other women.
b. Nothing that the speaker does is for her benefit or time. She cannot enjoy her natural surroundings as
she has a ‘duty’ to return home and complete her chores. This allows the reader to empathise with her
and with women in her situation.
c. ‘how fresh the smell of flowers/How young the grass around it’

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  The images of nature suggest beauty (‘flowers’), freedom (‘stream’) and youth (‘grass’). They
contrast with the drudgery of the woman’s life.
 She is young but is robbed of the beauty and freedom of youth.
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LINES 7 – 10
1. ‘And yet again I heard the sound of duty/ Which ground on me - made me feel aged’ (lines 7 -8).
a. Notice that the speaker does not say ‘work’; ‘duty’ shows how bound she is by what she has to do.
b. It is not her age that makes her feel ‘aged’ but rather her endless duties in a male-dominated home.
2. ‘As I bore the great big mud container on my head/Like a great big painful umbrella’ (lines 9 - 10)
[SIMILE]
a. The repetition of ‘great big’ emphasises the heaviness of the clay pot and the magnitude of her burden,
i.e. all the duties that weigh heavily on her spirit.
b. The words ‘painful umbrella’ almost constitute an oxymoron, two words of opposite meaning next to
each other. Umbrellas are supposed to protect, but this woman is not being protected at all. Both the pot
and her life are ‘painful’ to her.
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LINES 11 – 21
1. The speaker’s list of chores speaks of endless heavy, physical work. She is also pregnant, which makes the
labours more difficult.
2. As soon as the woman arrives home, she begins to prepare her husband’s supper (‘cooked your meal’). As
she prepares the meal, she recalls bitterly that ‘while’ she was working in the fields, her husband was out
amusing himself (‘drinking the pleasures of the flesh’). There is an imbalance and unfairness to this.
3. She ‘toiled in the fields’ (line 13) helped ‘only by the bearings of my womb’. It is unclear whether she is
referring to her current pregnancy, or whether she has already produced other children who can help her.
4. ‘Under the angry vigilance of the sun’ (line 14).
a. This is an example of PERSONIFICATION.
b. This line can be interpreted in two ways:
EITHER
 The sun is personified as an indifferent tyrant, watching her suffering. The relentless, scorching heat
from the ‘angry’ sun beating down on her shows her no mercy, making her labours in the fields even
more difficult. It is watchful, vigilant, almost as if it is spying on her, an ally of her husband, making
sure that she never lets up on her endless daily chores for a single second.
OR
 The sun is angry at the way in which she is being exploited and is keeping vigilance, keeping a
score, which will be settled one day.
5. ‘A labour shared’ (line 15).
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 a. There is a subtle hint of irony in these words. It is her husband who should be sharing the labour. He has
had a share in producing the child which she will labour to bring to life.
b. But just as he will have no part in the birth process, and does not care about the pain she will suffer
when she bears his child, so he does not care that she exhausts herself working in the house and fields. It
is a picture of utter exploitation and misery.
6. ‘I washed the dishes – yours -’
a. The dashes on either side of ‘yours’ emphasise that the dishes she is washing are those her husband has
used. She is pointing out how she has to serve him, and how unfair the situation is.
7. In addition to her labour in the fields, she has to sweep and tidy the hut (‘And swept the room we shared’)
and prepare her husband’s bed in the best part of the hut (‘Before I set forth to prepare your bedding/ In the
finest corner of the hut’).
8. The speaker refers to ‘your’ and ‘yours’ which shows that she sees this as work done to please him, while
he appears to do nothing. Men are dominant and when her husband returns home, he expects everything to
have been done in the fields and in the hut, his meal to be ready and his sexual demands to be met.
9. In return for this the woman gets nothing. Not even financial security is provided by her husband because it
is she who runs the little farm, produces the food, keeps the roof thatched, the floor treated and the house
secure.
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LINES 22 – 30
1. The woman describes how her husband comes home, in a ‘drunken lust’, demanding to have sex with her.
2. ‘You beat me and had your way’ (line 27).
a. Despite being a dutiful wife, the speaker suffers physical abuse. These words also strongly suggest that
the man rapes his wife. She has tentatively declined sex because she is exhausted and pregnant, and
fears for the well-being of the baby she is carrying (‘And how I feared for the child – yours – I carried’).
b. His response is to beat her and then to have sex with her anyway. Consequently, their relationship is not
one of mutual love; he forces her with violence.
c. The man does not consider or care about the needs and rights of his wife. He sees her as merely a
servant to run his house and his farm, and as one whom he can use for sex as and when he pleases. The
woman is, to all intents and purposes, a slave.
3. ‘At that moment/ You left me unhappy and bitter/ And I hated you’ (lines 28 – 30).
a. In a quiet, understated way, she speaks of her unhappiness, her bitterness and her hatred.
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LINES 31 – 36
1. ‘Yet tomorrow I shall again wake up to you/ Milk the cow, plough the land and cook your food/ You shall
again be my Lord’ (lines 31 – 33).

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 a. In spite of what she has been made to endure, the woman resignedly says that she will continue with the
burden of her life the next day – milking the cow, ploughing the land and cooking his food.
b. The woman understands the repetitive cycle of her suffering - she addresses her husband as ‘Lord’. She
understands that her life will always be one of domestic oppression.
2. ‘For isn’t it right that women should obey/ Love, serve and honour her man?’ (lines 34 – 35).
a. Even though the speaker questions her role as a rural African woman, she is duty-bound to accept it as
her lot in life and has no right to object/challenge, despite the cruelty of her life.
b. The accepted norms and conventions of patriarchal societies insist that women are inferior beings,
ordained to be obedient and servile/subservient to their husbands, no matter how badly they are treated.
The man is the master and women are expected to honour and slave for their men, who are life’s chosen
and superior beings.
c. She has to ‘obey’ her husband, although he in no way deserves her obedience; she has to ‘love’ him,
although he does not love her in return (if he loved her, he would try to lighten her load; he lusts after
her, which is a different thing). She has to ‘honour’ him, although the only one in this relationship who
deserves to be honoured and respected is herself.
3. ‘For are you not the fruit of the land?’ (line 36).
a. The final line is bitterly ironic and highlights the woman’s frustration and lack of choice. The use of a
rhetorical question referring to the man as ‘the fruit of the land’ also adds a sarcastic tone to the
hopeless inevitability of her relationship.
b. The speaker herself questions the relationship between man and woman: Is man the fruit of the land?
Who said he was? Is the truth not that man simply uses his greater physical strength, and exploits the
innate desire which a woman has to become a wife and a mother, to give himself a position of
superiority?
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