The Selected Works of Georgia Douglas Johnson by Georgia Douglas Johnson

These two opposites, valleys, and towers, provide the reader with some additional insight into how this speaker sees the world. The bird, now being used as a metaphor for a woman’s heart, soul, and freedom, is flying over the “turrets” and “vales” of life. Through its flight it is attempting to find some peace, but it knows anything it finds will be temporary, as will be shown in the second stanza. The bird is said to be “soft winging” or softly flying, but is still restless in it’s movements. In the second line the speaker compares the traveling heart of a woman to a “lone bird” that flies over the world.

This is a very important restriction to keep in mind.Īs the poem progresses the state of a woman’s freedom becomes more and more perilous and depressing. But it is important to note that this freedom is not physical, it is only within a woman’s heart that this happens. She begins by describing how the “heart of a woman” is able to travel out from her body and take flight “with the dawn.” This description of freedom initially seems perfect, as if there is nothing more than one could want than to be able to travel with the dawn. It is this first description, that takes up the majority of the first stanza, that will be longed for, and purposefully forgotten in the second stanza. The poet begins this piece by having her speaker describe one state in which a woman can exist. In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. In the final lines of this piece, the cage in which the woman is trapped is described as being a “shelter.” This “shelter,” meant to keep a woman from falling to any harm, is the structure that harms her the most.Īnalysis of The Heart of a Woman Stanza One This confinement seems absurd and incomprehensible to the woman who was just living in so much freedom. The bird is once more imprisoned in an “alien cage” that is meant to keep it safe. In the second stanza, the day has ended and the woman is forced back into the reality of her world.

She flies over valleys and turrets and travels through all the feelings that call her home. A woman’s heart, described as a softly flying bird, travels over all the varying landscapes of the world below. The poems begins with the speaker describing how at dawn a woman’s heart is able to fly forth from her home like a “lone bird.” This is the only way that a woman is able to experience, even for a time, true freedom. ‘ The Heart of a Woman‘ by Georgia Douglas Johnson describes the freedom for which women yearn and the shelters in which they are imprisoned.

The Selected Works of Georgia Douglas Johnson by Georgia Douglas Johnson