The steaming kettle (Symbol)
The steaming tea kettle in lines 17-18 stands out as a vivid image, evoking our senses of hearing, sight, and even touch (if we imagine its heat and steam). It is also the only distinct simile or metaphor in the otherwise highly literal, conversational poem. The unruly kettle, seemingly threatening to explode its lid/container, symbolize the speaker's emotional inner life, which strains and pushes against the invisible societal barriers of "wifehood." The shift in line 13, where the poet shifts from short, condensed syntax into a twelve-line run-on sentence, is the point at which we could say this emotional inner life "boils over" or out of its kettle. The kettle's shrieking sound, like a "train," symbolizes the speaker's own ideas (evoking the idiom "train of thought"), piercing the silence that is expected of women under patriarchy.
Domestic chores (motif)
The primary recurring image system in the poem is the home, considered the domain of the wife: maintaining clothes, ironing, a maid's duties, the act of making tea. The poem is immersed in this setting, providing a backdrop for the speaker to critique.
