How Aunt Maud Took to Being a Woman
by Ruth Stone
(published in Persimmon Tree and elsewhere)
A long hill sloped down to Aunt Maud’s brick house.
You could climb an open stairway up the back
to a plank landing where she kept her crocks of wine.
I got sick on stolen angelfood cake and green wine
and slept in her feather bed for a week.
Nobody said a word. Aunt Maud just shifted
the bottles. Aunt’s closets were all cedar lined.
She used the same pattern for her house dresses—
thirty years. Plain ugly, closets full of them,
you could generally find a new one cut and laid
out on her sewing machine. She preserved,
she canned. Her jars climbed the basement walls.
She was a vengeful housekeeper. She kept the blinds
pulled down in the parlor. Nobody really walked
on her hardwood floors. You lived in the kitchen.
Uncle Cal spent a lot of time on the back porch
waiting to be let in.
Ruth Stone's poems are always accessible plus, just like this one.
The title tells us who we will be meeting, and we get a vivid character description. It is very easy to picture this woman and her house, as well as those ugly dresses.
But the real description of this woman comes from 3 seemingly tangental pieces.
First, in the title. It isn't just My Aunt Maud or something similar, it's how she "took to being a woman." This is later complemented by Aunt Maud being a "vengeful housekeeper." All Maud was, it seems, was a woman who did housework, and to her (or at least the speaker's perception of her) that was what being a woman was.
The other two "plus" descriptions involve other people. First, the speaker, who is the niece, got sick after eating a piece of cake she was not supposed to eat and drinking some green wine Maud thought (probably) was safe from a child's curiosity. It is safe to assume the cake was made by Maud, as we are told the wine was. But whereas Maud attacks her household chores, she is gentle with her mischievious niece. She puts her bed for a week and never mentions the theft, probably thinking that the physical pain was punishment enough.
The second, and to me it is both funny and sad, is the husband of Maud, Uncle Cal. He does not even appear until the last two lines of the poem, which speaks to his unimportance to Maud--he comes after the cooking, cleaning, sewing, baking, preserving, and pickling. Her husband stays on the porch for much of the time. At first, you might think that makes sense--his wife is like a tornado of activity in that house. He has to stay outside for his own safety and sanity.
But the kicker is the last line. We are told he waits to be let in! Not even that he waits to go back in, after the whirlwind of housework, but that he needs to be let in, like a dog or cat. Does Maud need to remind him to take off his shoes? Check his jacket for dust? Or is the house her domain to the point that he is like a visitor, needing an invitation?
Again, we don't know everything. But we know enough to get a clear picture of a formidable woman and why her niece felt compelled to write about her.
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