William Carlos Williams’ “Proletarian Portrait” features a shape similar to “The Red Wheelbarrow.” The poem’s function is also similar to “The Red Wheelbarrow”; it makes a statement through a brief description.
While the poem about the farm implement offers the simple claim regarding the importance of the tool, the portrait of the proletarian is a bit more complex, and it also has three more lines in a couplet and a single line.
The poem portrays its subject in a total of eleven lines: five couplets and a final single line. Although somewhat awkward in its presentation, the poem offers a glimpse at its subject, a young woman.
While the reader of this poem cannot know if Williams intended to elicit the mystique of the Marxian class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that is exactly what happens when the reader encounters the term “proletarian.”
As a member of the “bourgeoisie,” Williams offers what he thinks to be a sympathetic look at the young woman’s plight. But is the woman too poor to buy proper shoes, or is she a bourgeois housewife who just has not bothered to replace an old pair? The colorful little drama never confirms the ambiguity for the reader.
First Couplet: “A big young bareheaded woman / in an apron”
The speaker identifies the subject as a working woman. She is young, large, her head is uncovered, and she is wearing an apron. The apron, however, could indicate that she is a housewife, and nothing in the rest of the couplets proves otherwise.
If the use of the modifier “proletarian” in the title attaches only the young woman, then the reader infers that the woman may be a restaurant worker. It is not impossible that the speaker, however, has observed a bourgeois housewife, standing outside of her house. In that case, the term proletarian is inaccurate.
Second Couplet: “Her hair slicked back standing / on the street”
The young woman whom the speaker has observed standing outside in the street has her hair “slicked back.” A restaurant or grocery shop worker would likely do her hair this way, but there is no reason why a middle-class housewife who does not employ maid-service would not also wear her hair this way while cleaning her house.
Third Couplet: “One stockinged foot toeing / the sidewalk”
The speaker then offers the additional information that the young woman is wearing stockings, and the one bare foot’s toe is helping her balance, but the reader does not know why the woman’s foot is “toeing / the sidewalk” until experiencing the next couplet. But again, there is no information to confirm that the young woman is actually “proletarian.”
Fourth Couplet: “Her shoe in her hand. Looking / intently into it”
As expected, however, the woman has one shoe off. She is peering into the shoe. Again, the reader must wait to learn the purpose of this act.
Fifth Couplet: “She pulls out the paper insole / to find the nail”
The fifth couplet features the woman’s action of pulling out the insole of her shoe, and it also explains why she is tearing her shoe apart: she wants to locate a nail.
Final Line: “That has been hurting her”
She wants to locate the nail, because it has been digging into her foot, and that hurts.
Commentary
When poets rely on stereotypes and stock responses, they expect too little of their readers, but sometimes poets ask too much of their readers. They say, in effect, “trust me, this is how it is or was.” But the reader who refuses to remain credulous or to be tricked will not immediately accept as fact what is stated, even though it is dramatized or poeticized. Williams has not proved his claim in the poem. Using a loaded word like “proletarian” has rendered him suspect, and he never convinces the reader that the image he describes is what he says it is.
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