A Solitary Tree's Fight for Individuality and Autonomy: A Discussion of Edna St Vincent Millay's Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree

Abstract or Introduction

Mankind is known for making the world subject to itself, mankind has gotten itself
involved in every imaginable aspect of life. We believe ourselves to govern nature: We build
artificial islands, we try to defeat diseases and death, we experiment with genetics to create
new life according to our ideals – not yet the lives of human beings, but those of plants and
animals. For centuries our ancestors have been selecting suitable cows and bulls for
reproduction in order to get promising breeds; they have been mingling different varieties of
corn to receive better harvests, to name but a few examples. Another method of changing
plants into another variety is grafting, a process that is not primarily used to change genetics,
but to combine features of several plants into one. “Grafting is a way to change a large tree
from an old to a new variety. It is also a method of using a root system better adapted to soil
or climate than that produced naturally by an ungrafted plant” (Rothenberger, 1). Edna St
Vincent Millay suggests in her poem Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree that women in the
previous century had to bear a very similar fate to that of a tree to-be-grafted: Society wanted
women to be housewives, to obey and represent their husbands, to care for the family and to
forget about any ideas of developing their selves – as soon as this would go beyond
housekeeping. Therefore, women were brought up to put aside their own interests and to be
good wives and housekeepers; they were brought up to adapt to social restrictions, just like a
tree is grafted to better adapt to a certain environment, cut short of all branches that would
develop in another direction. However, the protagonist in Millay’s poem rejects the
traditional role of a housewife; she tries to escape and fights for individuality and autonomy
in opposition to being grafted. [...]