Condemnation of Gender Roles

An important theme of “Mock Orange” is a condemnation of gendered roles and behaviors. This theme is addressed in a straightforward manner in the poem’s second stanza, where the speaker describes the masculine trope of overpowering a woman during sex, rendering her a receptacle for male desire. The only reference to the female body is the speaker’s mouth, invoked only to be sealed shut by “the man’s mouth,” heightening the implication that in these gendered roles, a woman’s body exists only to be dominated by a man’s (6). In the fourth stanza, the speaker refers to the “tired antagonisms” of these separate roles that men and women have played throughout history, and she is disappointed in ever having thought that she could break free of them. The poem’s frustrated tone implies how ridiculous and infuriating the speaker finds...