I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed Literary Elements

The speaker is a woman in the process of describing her simultaneous desire and revulsion for another person.

The poem is an Italian sonnet composed of an octave and a sestet with an ABBA ABBA CDCDCD rhyme scheme, written largely in iambic pentameter.

Lust is described metaphorically as the "fume of life." The mixture of emotions is described metaphorically as the "season(ing)" of "scorn with pity."

Alliterative B sounds occur in the phrases "being born" and "bear your body's weight." Alliterative N sounds occur in "needs and notions." Alliterative St sounds occur in the phrase "stout blood against my staggering brain."

Assonant I sounds occur in "life designed," while assonant A sounds occur in "make it plain."

Even while describing the feeling that her body's instincts have overcome her mind's rationality, the speaker ironically assesses her situation with highly rational objectivity. Moreover, while the speaker presents her womanhood as the reason for her irrationality in a self-deprecating way, she does so as part of a larger project of expressing her preferences and articulating her humanity as a woman.

Sonnet

While no setting is named, the poem deals with norms and issues of widespread interest in Millay's 1920s America

Sardonic, ironic, dismissive

Protagonist: the speaker, and to an extent the speaker's rationality. Antagonist: the addressee, as well as the speaker's bodily desires

The conflict is between the speaker and the person she addresses, specifically regarding the speaker's simultaneous physical attraction to and interpersonal scorn of her addressee.

The climax arrives in the poem's final two lines, when the speaker explains explicitly that her attraction to the addressee is "insufficient reason / For conversation when we meet again."

In the opening line, the speaker describes herself being "distressed" by the "needs and notions" of femininity. While distress is here used in a highly abstracted sense, it foreshadows the speaker's real emotional troubles and internal conflict in the face of her attraction to the listener.

Early in the poem, the speaker delicately understates her speaker's physical attraction with euphemistic phrases like "to find / Your person fair" and "a certain zest." At the poem's end, she instead understates her interpersonal dislike of the listener, describing her unwillingness to spend time together with the phrase "insufficient reason / For conversation."

The poem broadly alludes to early twentieth-century sexual mores and gender norms in America.

The speaker uses metonymy to link various body parts to rationality or irrationality. "Blood" and "pulse" represent irrational bodily desire, while "brain" represents rationality.

The speaker personifies her blood as "treasonous" and her brain as "staggering."

The speaker hyperbolically describes herself as "possessed" when overtaken by desire.

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