The speaker of this poem seems to be a slave, as well as, taking on the role of being a caregiver for her own family. She has the responsibility of taking care of everyone in the household, while holding down the entire home. It is her job to take care of everyone else, but she does not have the slightest of time to even think about what she wants out of life.
The first stanza has a rhyming scheme, "children to tend/clothes to mend/ cane to be cut/clean up this hut" (1-12). It is a sing-song approach because she takes on the identity of her chores. The reader does not see her behind the list of things to do, it is just a continuation of the day; sunrise to sunset of her working. The title "Woman Work" is derogatory because it seems that what she does is of little importance, that only a woman, in the eyes of a slave owner, only a woman of color, would be capable of doing such a tedious task because it involves little thinking. However, the work she is doing is the hardest work to do. The title seems to put woman below men, that their status could never be equal to that of a man.
The last three stanzas do not have a rhyme scheme; they instead focus on nature and the elements it includes. This is the speaker's desire to be seen as an individual opposed to the work that she must complete everyday. This could be her inner aspiration to break free of this monotonous lifestyle, and be one with nature and herself and her own thoughts. Nature has no rules or barriers and that is what the speaker wants to experience out of life because she has always had a responsibility and a duty to uphold. "Sun, rain, curving sky/ Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone/ Star shine, moon glow/You're all that I can call my own" (27-30). If she is unable to experience the freedom of work, she at least wants the opportunity to see the beauty of nature unfold and just be.
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