Symbol Analysis
In this poem, the needle is a big time symbol of prejudice against women, of the ways in which they were restricted in Bradstreet's time. Like in a lot of other cases of figural language in this poem, the needle represents a bigger set of ideas: women's work in general. Vocab alert: that kind of relationship, where the part stands for the whole, is called metonymy.
- Line 26: Our speaker's critics don't really care about the needle itself. It's what the needle represents. In this case, the needle stands for all the housework that they think she should be focusing on.