Mushrooms              Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

 

I think this poem describes the minority; the oppressed. Mushrooms will slowly, but surely, grow. They don’t grow overnight, but over time, they WILL grow, and you couldn’t stop it. There was a very small population of people in the 1950s who believed in equality between men and women. It was a small community, so no one noticed it, and wives seemed more like humane slaves in the 50s. But this community grew, and grew. The line, “We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,” seems to describe women, how they were simply used to keep the house clean, or to bring food to the table. Men were portrayed as the ones who kept the world standing, while women were treated like idk. This is relevant to the Friday Everything Changed because that both the story and this poem revolve around gender roles.