Pichayathida Siriwechdaruk (Bee) 1204

On To a Poor Old Woman

In the poem To a Poor Old Woman, William Carlos Williams portrays his

Modernist value and his want to create works that the subject was centered on the everyday

circumstances of lives and the lives of common people through the change in focus of the

subject. To a Poor Old Woman is a descriptive poem written by Williams in 1935. The

poem describes an old woman, who is eating plums and enjoying the plums solace on the

street. The action of eating by using hands on the street and the fact that the woman is being

comforted by the plum that she eats reveals that she might be poor. The subject of the poem

is a Poor Old Woman, which is unconventional during the time that the poem was written

as most poets would celebrate womens youth and beauty, such as the poem To a Young

Lady written by William Cowper, which uses an ideal woman as the subject. The change in

subject captures the lives of the common people by focusing on the poor individual, instead

of the ideal one. Moreover, the actions of the lady described by the narrator such as

munching a plum on / the street a paper bag / of them in her hand (1-3) and ...she gives

herself / to the one half / sucked out in her hand (9-11) reveals that the beauty in terms of

nature of a human and the survival of an individual was focused on within the poem, instead

of the beauty in terms of looks, which is more traditional. Williams usage of a Poor Old

Woman as a subject illustrates the idea of breaking the pre-existing traditions by diverting

the focus of subject from an ideal woman to a more realistic one who focuses on her survival

rather than her appearance. The action of the woman as described by Williams also supports

the loss of focus on the appearance of people and emphasizes the beauty of human nature.

Furthermore, the usage of the Poor Old Woman as a subject emphasizes that Williams

focuses on the lives of common people, in this case, the poor, instead of the ideal lives of

people.