Metaphors Appearances Quotes

These lines establish the size of the woman's appearance: absolutely humongous. We could even say elephantine. Of course, we know that pregnant women aren't actually the size of elephants and houses, but for this woman, that's what her dramatic change in size feels like.

Now that the whole elephant and house thing has given us an idea of the huge size of this speaker's appearance, we get an image of how disproportionate and awkward she is. She feels as if she's huge, like a melon, around the middle, and as thin as two tiny curling vines everywhere else. Sounds precarious, no?

Again, we get an image of largeness. It's weird that, throughout this poem, a pregnant woman is compared to something we'd like to eat, like red fruit or a fresh loaf of bread. Abundance, this poem seems to say, can be attractive. Unless you are that abundant thing.

The word fat is used to refer to a purse, but since purse is a metaphor for our pregnant speaker, this means that she considers herself to be fat. This is the most negative word we've seen used to describe the speaker's large size so far in this poem. But hey, at least she's getting straight to the point.

Sometimes, mean people call large, ugly woman "cows." Jumping off from the negative word, "fat," in the prior line, we are starting to feel less and less positive about the abundant belly of our pregnant speaker. When she's a melon, or a ripe red fruit, we can see her large size as pretty, but thinking about her as a cow in calf is not quite flattering.