Adrienne Rich\u2019s poem \u201cDialogue\u201d explores sex and gender in an interesting way through the use of pronouns. Over the course of two stanzas, Rich uses the pronouns \u201cshe\u201d, \u201cI\u201d, \u201cour\u201d, and \u201cwe\u201d while telling the story of a conversation. While it is not entirely clear if this conversation in between two different people or one person reflecting to themselves, it is my argument that is it the latter. Perhaps this could be commentary on the trans experience, with the narrator being a trans male, trans female, or nonbinary individual looking back on who they once were. The \u201cshe\u201d and \u201cI\u201d pronouns exist separately until they are brought together when Rich writes \u201cwe look at each other,\u201d as if the two halves of this person\u2019s identity are coming together to reflect.<\/p>\n
The second half of the poem is exclusively in italics and only uses the \u201cI\u201d pronoun. It begins with \u201cshe\u201d saying \u201cI do not know if sex is an illusion.\u201d While sex and gender are different, they are rather similar and are used interchangeably. If Rich is using sex in place of gender, this statement could be commentary on society\u2019s concept of men and women and how it tries to put people in boxes. If this is from the point of view from a trans person, then it could be their old self questioning their place in the boxes society provides. The rest of the italic section is this narrator who they once were in the past and what they did. The use of \u201cI\u201d in combination with the italics makes the second stanza appear to be an internal monologue of the narrator. The narrator\u2019s inner thoughts with the image of them talking to who they were before allows for the reader to see the changes that can occur with someone when they are allowed to be their true self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adrienne Rich\u2019s poem \u201cDialogue\u201d explores sex and gender in an interesting way through the use of pronouns. Over the course of two stanzas, Rich uses the pronouns \u201cshe\u201d, \u201cI\u201d, \u201cour\u201d, and \u201cwe\u201d while telling the story of a conversation. While it is not entirely clear if this conversation in between two different people or one … Continue reading Dialogue: A Conversation with Yourself<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4638,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4638"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}