Point of View

The point of view in “Mock Orange” is close first-person narration by the unnamed speaker, who is speaking directly to the unnamed “you” in the room with her. From the very first line, the poem asserts the importance and fierceness of the speaker’s point of view when she says emphatically “I tell you” (1). The first person narration indicates that the speaker is putting her personal experience on display, even when she uses more general terms to describe that experience. For example, when she speaks about sex, she says “the man’s mouth / sealing my mouth” (6-7). She continues to speak about gender roles as phenomena that impact her directly, indicating that she is personally frustrated about the broader role that these prescriptions play in society.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker uses the first-person plural, saying “we were made fools of,” purportedly meaning herself...