Body Representation and Gender Reformulation

Using feminism as a reading mechanism, many of Stevie Smith’s collected poems create a true image of the female’s body and call for reformulating her gendered role. Smith’s literary works are greatly influenced by her life. Though she did not call herself a feminist or like to be labeled so, her masculine name, her body shape and above all her viewpoints on women’s issues, reflected in her work, strongly link her to the feminist circle. Key concepts of the body and gender provide a lens by which Smith’s poems are minutely scrutinized; hence, a deeper analysis of her poems focuses on the formative influence of the body in the reconstruction of gender through the subversion of social agencies’ traditional role, especially marriage. Her poems show how the longstanding traditions of the androcentric society form/deform the female body. Her fairytale poems create a world of fantasy where the body is transformed not only to escape stereotypical gendered roles but to claim each other’s role. The paper reaches the conclusion that the stereotypical gendered role of woman can be reconstructed through a true representation of her body, which is best reflected in Smith’s poems.