What is the line-by-line analysis of Sujata Bhatt's poem "Muliebrity"?

To write a line-by-line analysis of “Muliebrity” by Sujata Bhatt, you will have to consider a number elements. Let's look at a few these to get you started on this assignment. You will want to talk about both the poem's speaker and main character. The speaker is the primary observer who narrates in the first person as she thinks back about how she used to watch the main character, a girl collecting cow-dung. The girl is engaged in a daily activity that isn't a very pleasant one, but she becomes the object of the speaker's meditation because she is so intent upon and absorbed in her task.

You will also want to talk about the poem's structure. This poem is written in free verse, so it lacks any consistent rhythm or rhyme scheme. It is more like a prose reflection written in poetic lines. Think about how this allows the speaker to express ideas freely yet creatively.

This poem is filled with vivid sensory details, even though the poet uses simple, straightforward language. Lines 3 and 4 provide the setting—the main road in a particular place—but this mundane setting comes alive with the speaker's description of sights and smells. Notice how meticulously the speaker identifies each of the smells. We can almost catch of whiff of them as we read. Notice, too, how the speaker says that those smells are “surrounding me separately / and simultaneously” (lines 11–12). Each is distinct, yet they blend together to create the whole effect.

The poem's meaning expands in its last lines as the speaker says that she has been unwilling to use the girl as a metaphor or image, yet she cannot get the girl out of her mind. She does not want to relegate the girl to a mere poetic device, so she composes an entire poem about her alone. She focuses on the girl's power and greatness “glistening through her cheekbones” as she goes about her duty and finds a “particularly promising / mound of dung” (lines 17–18). We would not usually associate power and greatness with cow dung, but that is the point of this poem. The girl throws herself fully into whatever she is doing, allowing herself to live life to the fullest even in the midst of her dirty task.

Can you analyze "Muliebrity" by Sujata Bhatt?

Sujata Bhatt's "Muliebrity" is a free-verse poem of eighteen lines, contained in a single stanza. The title is an uncommon word meaning "womanliness" and does not appear in the text of the poem. The word "woman" does not appear either, since the subject is always called "the girl." The Latin word "mulier" is a more general word for womanhood than the upper-class "femina," and "muliebrity" refers to the essential qualities of a woman without any of the ideas of social graces and prettiness that are contained in the word "femininity."

The poem describes a girl gathering cow dung in a basket. It begins with visual imagery, the movements of the girl's hands and waist, but quickly moves to a litany of smells that evoke rural and semi-rural India:

and the smell of cow-dung and road-dust and wet canna lilies,
the smell of monkey breath and freshly washed clothes
and the dust from crows’ wings which smells different –
and again the smell of cow-dung as the girl scoops
it up.

These images, the poet insists, mean nothing but themselves. The initial phrase "I have thought so much," is repeated twice during the course of the poem, but although she has thought about the girl, she has also "been unwilling to use her for a metaphor." She cannot forget the girl because of the "power glistening through her cheekbones," but does not want to use her as a symbol of something else. The difficulty of writing so simply and directly in a poem is ironically reflected in the title, which suggests precisely the type of symbolism the poet says she is trying to avoid.