{"id":2022,"date":"2021-12-09T17:16:29","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T22:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2021-12-15T11:42:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T16:42:18","slug":"hippiechick-and-the-necessity-of-rural-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/chambers\/hippiechick-and-the-necessity-of-rural-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hippiechick” and the Necessity of Rural Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The poem \u201cHippiechick\u201d by Susan Saxe, originally published in her poetry collection Talk Among the Womenfolk<\/em>, republished in the 22nd issue of Country Women<\/em> in 1976 and situated within art of a floral, dreamlike landscape. The poem chronicles the sexist oppression that country women encounter.<\/p><\/div>\n

There is a prominent ideology stating that city women need feminism most<\/em>. When we think of feminist issues, these issues are often very city-centric: sexual harassment within the office, women not being able to walk the streets alone at night, gendered wage gaps in white-collar jobs, and more. Because of this, there is an idea that removing oneself from the city will also lessen the burdens of societal oppressions. There is an idea that rural communities are stuck in their ways and happy with them\u2014that rural women\u2019s liberation is a hopeless cause. Saxe\u2019s poem examines exactly why these ideas could not be further from the truth. Women in the countryside do massive amounts of labor\u2014both labor that is seen as traditionally feminine and labor that is not. One rural woman describes their disruption of popular conceptions about the kind of work that farm women do, proclaiming that \u201ccontrary to what the Farm Journal and Hoardes Dairyman<\/em> might lead one to believe, the women on farms in this country are doing a good deal more than baking cherry pies and tending the chickens…they are running big equipment, pulling calves and cleaning barns\u201d (Hoth 3). Women\u2019s role on the farm is not an easy one. On top of raising children and doing housework, these women are helping to run a farm that provides them with sustenance. It is these women, especially, that are in dire need of feminist policies such as wages for housework, more equitable distribution of domestic labor, and free childcare. Susan Saxe appears frightened at the notion of a woman returning to the country, commenting disapprovingly that \u201cyou have drifted, my sister, \/ Into the arms of disaster, \/ Back to the farm\u201d (17). Likely due to the enormous amounts of labor that women are expected to perform in the country, Saxe equates the farm to the \u201carms of disaster.\u201d Saxe uses listing to compound the undesirable aspects of country life, describing \u201cwrists scratched raw by blackberry thorns, \/ A baby crying upstairs, \/ The flies buzzing round. \/ It was from this, my sister, \/ That your grandmother fled\u201d (17). By stacking these responsibilities, Saxe portrays the many duties that rural women are burdened with.<\/p>\n

Though the grandmother of the rural woman being referred to fled the country for a better and perhaps easier life, there is clearly an allure to the country that would cause this woman to desire a homecoming. The continual use of the phrase \u201cmy sister\u201d connotes commonality between urban and rural women while acknowledging the political consciousness of the rural woman. It is not as if this exchange is one in which the urban woman is proselytizing to an ignorant country woman; this is an exchange between equals with different ideas about liberation. Saxe points out the gendered inequality present in many rural households, decrying that the \u201cman grows stronger \/ with each passing day\u201d while the woman\u2019s \u201cbelly grows bigger. \/ My sister, I\u2019m freaking out. \/ You\u2019re barefoot and pregnant\u201d (17). These few lines exemplify the absolute necessity of a feminist ideological presence in the country. It\u2019s true that many rural women exist in states of acute oppression and have a vast quantity of unique issues to be addressed. The effects of many social issues are felt most by people in under-resourced areas, such as the rural countryside. This poem embodies the line of deep solidarity felt between women of different identities that was often expressed in feminist poetry; poetry allowed women to connect across boundaries of race, class, sexuality, and place. Saxe begins the last stanza of the poem with a reminder of the necessity of rural women\u2019s liberation, warning that the woman says she does not \u201cneed liberation \/ Because you\u2019re natural, and natural is free, \/ But soon you\u2019ll be just two vacant eyes\u201d (17). In order to prevent the eventual burnout of these incredibly powerful and hardworking country women, a feminist analysis is necessary. Simply belonging to the land and being connected to nature is not enough to amount to women\u2019s liberation. Women\u2019s liberation must be accomplished across socioeconomic divisions and carried out to the greatest extent in areas where women are traditionally undervalued.<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

Hoth, Sandra. \u201cBelonging to the Land.\u201d Country Women<\/em>, no. 31, Country Women\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Editorial Collective, 01 Nov. 1978, pp. 2-3.<\/p>\n

Saxe, Susan. \u201cHippiechick.\u201d Country Women<\/em>, no. 22, Country Women Editorial\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Collective, 01 Dec. 1976, p. 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a prominent ideology stating that city women need feminism most. When we think of feminist issues, these issues are often very city-centric: sexual harassment within the office, women not being able to walk the streets alone at night, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chambers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3102,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/3102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}