Auden, W. H.: Miss Gee

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Cancer, Disease and Health, Women's Health
Summary	Miss Gee wants to be a good girl and keep "her clothes buttoned up to her neck." Time goes by. Finally, she gets on her bicycle and goes to the doctor about "a pain inside me." The doctor diagnoses cancer. Later, over dinner, he comments to his wife that "cancer's a funny thing" that attacks "childless women" and "men when they retire."
Commentary	This 28-line, seven-quatrain poem illustrates the damaging way in which illness can function as a cultural metaphor (see Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, annotated in this database). Cancer is a disease of repressed emotion and life-energy. Childless women have suppressed the life-energy, thereby becoming useless and cancer-prone. Similarly, retired men have lost the meaning (i.e. male self-identity as occupation) in their lives and are, therefore, vulnerable to the same fate.
Source	Collected Poems
Publisher	Random House
Edition	1968
Editors	Edward Mendelson
Place Published	New York
Annotated by	Coulehan, Jack
Date of Entry	01/02/96
Last Revised	09/26/96