My Canadian Lit prof has this wonderful, wonderful thing she does with our class where she signs out one of the computer labs, gives us a question and makes us write two page mini-essays in fifteen minutes on questions she gives us that class. [Note: sarcastic tone is definitely implied] We wrote another one of these today, and mine was supremely stupid. Of course, I figure that no one can expect to find genius in 400 words that I rambled off in fifteen minutes, and I'll get a 1.5/2 regardless of what I write, so I thought I'd include a small sample of the asinine stuff my brain comes up with when I have fifteen minutes.

The use of the flower and nature imagery in Malcolm’s Katie is another factor that lends to a feminine reading of the poem. Its very excess makes it more palatable to the standards of Crawford’s canonical period, in what is presumably a style favoured more by women. At the very least, it can be said to play into the stereotypes of the sort of thing women ought to be reading, with the sexual and erotic connotations of the poem veiled by its pastoral language.

Ultimately, where Malcolm’s Katie fails as a feminist poem is simply through Katie. The only glimpse that the reader has of her strength is her continued loyalty to Max regardless of all evidence to the contrary. Aside from that, Katie is merely as Crawford’s flowery words portray her to be: a delicate flower, slowly settled by age. As a
result, like Katie, the poem is feminine rather than feminist.