Warning – post reading

Any woman, wherever she is, may claim that it is difficult to be a woman.
This statement becomes valid after reading the poem "Warning" written by
Jenny Joseph. Joseph writes with great grace and precision about a
challenge that the average woman faces - the weighty expectations that
society places on her shoulders. At the base of the poem is the frustration of
that average woman, and the difficulty of meeting society's excessive
demands: to be a good wife, kind, polite and always under control.
When I came to read Joseph's literary work, I tried to locate the main artistic
device she used to convey the message of the work.
And right in the first line of the poem I found it - synecdoche, which is a small
detail that represents the whole.
The first line says "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me".
Joseph refers to a certain detail, the clothing that society expects her to
wear, and through it she actually expresses society's overall attitude
towards her' and her character.
Through Joseph's use of clothing, we can understand an interesting thing:
clothing is what represents us in society. As an external thing that is
immediately apparent, it is the strongest expression of society's
expectations of us. Basically, says Joseph, each person dresses in the way
society "dresses" him. this is
definitely the greatest tragedy of the
heroine of the poem "Warning".
Although the poem "Warning" was
written about a woman in the 1950s,
society's expectations of women still
exist today in different ways.
Therefore, in my work I chose to
present three outfits of an average
woman:
1. The first is clothing that society in
the 1950s gave to a woman.
2. The second is clothing that society
nowadays gives to a woman
3. The third is clothing that the woman
chose hersel f from her own closet.