SOURCE: “Marge Piercy's Laying Down The Tower: A Feminist Tarot Reading,” in Ways of Knowing: Essays on Marge Piercy, edited by Sue Walker and Eugenie Hamner, 1991, pp. 101-10.

In the following essay, Bender explores Piercy's use of Tarot imagery and feminist perspective in Laying Down The Tower.

In the eleven poems of Laying Down the Tower, Marge Piercy takes a feminist perspective in interpreting the symbolism of the ancient Tarot. As the concluding section of To Be of Use, these poems show the development of the poet's feminist consciousness through the early 1970's. Over a decade later, they typify what historian Gerda Lerner noted when speaking on “The Rise of Feminist Consciousness” at Stephens College:

In discussing the rise of feminist consciousness, let us notice that it takes place historically in certain distinct stages: 1) the awareness of a wrong; 2) the development of a sense of sisterhood; 3) women begin...