Feminism
The clear central theme of "Wife" is feminism: the speaker's resistance to misogyny in the form of the expectations placed on wives. Limón situates the poem in a historical context of the feminist movement explicitly, quoting from a 1971 manifesto. Her critiques come across in several lines during the poem: in 7-8, she notices that being a wife is made to sound like a job. The quote that follows satirically states that a wife is the person who cleans and maintains the husband's clothes. The speaker compares wives to maids and uses a list of verbs to show that wives are expected to stay in the constant action of service: "A wife that does, fixes, / soothes, honors, obeys." Then, she includes a litany of modifiers for "wife" in lines 13-14: "Housewife / fishwife, bad wife, good wife," showing that wives are rarely allowed to just be wives; they are always judged, categorized, and qualified. The speaker addresses this culture of misogyny from a position of confusion and need, searching for a word that better suits the full human complexity and vulnerability of who she is. Unlike lesbian separatists and other feminists who have historically sworn off relationships with men in order to retain full autonomy, Limón's speaker searches for a feminism that allows her to be deeply in love with her husband (which she is) without that relationship compromising her autonomy in any way. She seeks a feminism where being a wife is compatible with having turbulent emotions and eschewing the stereotypical role of homemaker or maid.
Melancholy
Sadness and harsh emotions appear in lines 15-20, painting a picture of a woman beset with grief. The poem does not say explicitly where this melancholy originates—though we can guess that a culture of deeply rooted misogyny may have a role—but makes it clear that the speaker needs room for these emotions to express themselves in her life. One of the attributes of the archetypal "wife" is emotional stoicism: there is no space in the patriarchal model for a woman to be emotional, sad, or to break down because she must at all times be the perfectly responsive attendant to the physical and emotional needs of her husband and children. But as a full-time poet whose job it is to probe human experience, Ada Limón is clearly someone who must allow herself to feel the full spectrum of emotion. In addition to a feminist manifesto, the poem "Wife" is also a defense of melancholy, an argument that feeling dark emotions does not invalidate the value and love in our lives.
