The speaker of Maya Angelou's free verse poem, "Men", is a mature female, who looks back on her youth and its lessons, as she seems poised to repeat a painful mistake. She begins by remembering how, in her adolescence, she often stared through window curtains at men passing on the street. She first identifies some of these figures as elderly men and alcoholics. Others, however, are younger men, whom she now describes as “sharp as mustard,” an expression that likely refers to their keen sense of style and proud posturing.
Watching Behind the Curtain: Confinement and Virginity
In line seven, the speaker tells the reader, “Men are always/Going somewhere.” The fact that we know she once watched these men from behind curtains indicates that she was inside, confined to a house. This is an environment in which she would likely spend the greater part of her life, whether it be while raising children, caring for relatives, or keeping house. Until the late 20th century, women did not get to enjoy the same freedom of movement as society granted men. Angelou’s positioning of her speaker behind curtains emphasizes the reality of traditional womanhood.
Yet, the curtains also have a symbolic significance. They represent virginity, like the bridal veil and the unbroken maidenhead. Hiding behind this curtain, the speaker is still an innocent, still filled with fantasies and yet unaware of the probable result of fraternizing with the men outside the window. Angelou’s speaker declares she is “Fifteen years old/and starving for them.” Experience has not yet tempered her hunger.
Predatory Instinct and Exaggerated Posturing
Perhaps some primal instinct causes these men to stop beneath her window as they pass. Angelou writes, “Under my window, they would pause,/Their shoulders high like the/Breasts of a young girl.” The men pose for the presence they sense behind the curtains. They hold up their shoulders with inflated masculinity, in much the same way a young girl might show off a figure not yet overwhelmed by gravity.
While Angelou refers to the men’s tailored stylishness and their hidden physique when she writes, “Jacket tails slapping over/Those behinds,/Men,” her line construction also reveals an amusing insinuation. She follows “behinds” with a comma rather than a period, suggesting a modifier will follow. Since “Men” appears immediately in the next line, the reader might interpret “Men” to be additional clarification for “Those behinds.” The speaker seems to take a clever jab at the men, calling them “behinds,” perhaps for reasons the second stanza explains.
A Girl’s Education Begins
While the first stanza is restrained, the second is both visceral and metaphorical, communicating deeper, more difficult knowledge by way of figurative expression and symbol. In lines one through three, the speaker explains that men are initially gentle, handling a woman as if they were “the last raw egg in the world.”
Soon enough, they tighten their grip. The speaker explains, “The/first squeeze is nice. A quick hug./ Soft into your defenselessness” This “defenselessness” means the girl is entirely unsuspecting. And the squeeze might reference either a man’s possessiveness or his casual cruelty. Initially, it doesn’t hurt. It is interpreted as a tease, an affectionate tug. But as the frequency of his cruelty increases or his grip tightens, it begins to hurt, and the girl’s education begins. The speaker reveals that she learns to dissemble, placate, and hide her fear, even when she is being strangled. She writes, “Wrench out a/Smile that slides around the fear. When the/Air disappears,”
The stanza’s final eight lines deepen the metaphor, relating the girl’s throttling to her loss of innocence, even her loss of virginity. Angelou communicates the process in almost graphic terms:
Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,
Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.
It is your juice
That runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.
After this, the girl will not be the same. Angelou seems to focus on the change in the girl’s body, which “has slammed shut. Forever.” Each full stop in punctuation underscores this brutal finality. It is unusual that, with such a violent loss of innocence, the body slams closed, rather than remaining open, violated. However, this may point instead to the emotional and mental impact of the experience. The girl likely responds to the trauma by walling it off, where it cannot be easily accessed, in a place that has no doors. The stanza’s last line reads, “No keys exist.”
Meaning of Closing with “Maybe”
In the third stanza, the reader is transitioned from these agonizing recollections back to the window. Now, however, the figure looking out from behind the curtain is past her adolescence and has had the disastrous experience with men she’s already explained in metaphor. Still, she watches men pass by the window, declaring they know things and move towards some destination with purpose.
She, by comparison, remains static as before. Having experience with men firsthand, the speaker knows the suffering they bring, and she indicates that she is now content to remain an observer. Yet, the final, single-line, one-word stanza declares “Maybe.” It is a statement that suggests she might again be tempted out of her confined life, which both comforts and traps, and into another exquisite but painful experience.
Savannah Schroll Guz - Savannah Schroll Guz holds a Master's Degree from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1997-1998, she was a Fulbright Scholar and worked as a ...
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