In “Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room,” William Wordsworth writes of the freedom found within voluntary confinement. He follows this line of reasoning to explain that artistic possibilities are offered within the confines of the sonnet—the form of “Nuns fret not.” Nearly 150 years later, Gwendolyn Brooks writes of a different kind of confinement, one which is imposed. In her poem “kitchenette building,” Brooks details how the African-American families who were forced into tiny apartments—kitchenette buildings—in the 1940s lost the ability to dream.

Milton’s Satan of Paradise Lost is a tortured character, wanting to experience good, but unable to escape the Hell that permeates his environment and his mind. As a living justification for the suffering and dissent of those who have fissured from Christian dogma, the base assumption within the narrative that this dogma is legitimate creates circular reasoning as to the upholding of God and the discrediting of the opinions of blasphemers.

Sylvia Plath explores mental illness in her poetry collection, Ariel, and novel, The Bell Jar, though the different literary forms of each affect her representations of the nuances of depression and anxiety. Plath’s poetry style is confessional, and so, she wrote to understand her own mind, stating in a 1962 radio interview: “I don't think I could live without [writing poetry]. It's like water or bread, or something absolutely essential to me. I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem when I'm writing one” (Plath).

The grammar turned and attacked me.
Adrienne Rich, “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”

In Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina (1725), Richard Steele and Joseph Addison’s The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714), and Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (1732), all three writers present female communities and private feminine space, but play with the boundaries of the public sphere in order to convey these spaces as liminal to suit their purposes.

Audience Analysis: The audience for this paper will be all people who menstruate. Even though my paper is specifically addressing solutions to period poverty, it is still an important issue for those who are unaffected because they can use their privilege to help those less fortunate by enacting these solutions. Furthermore, though period poverty is undoubtedly a global public health crisis, the scope of my paper focuses on the United States. So, my paper will likely be more relevant to menstruators in the United States.

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In 1998, the “world’s ugliest tiger” was born. He was a white Bengal tiger with a smashed-in-looking face that went viral, with the public incorrectly believing that he had Down syndrome. Kenny was the result of poor, recessive genetics that both of his parents had, because they were siblings (Davis). Animal traffickers and zookeepers routinely use inbreeding to create Bengal tigers with white-colored fur, an extremely rare phenotype that would never exist in zoos if it were not for captive breeding programs.

“If only the principle of color-blindness had been accepted by the majority in Plessy in 1896, we would not be faced with this problem in 1978. We must remember, however, that this principle appeared only in the dissent. In the 60 years from Plessy to Brown, ours was a Nation where, by law, individuals could be given ‘special’ treatment based on race.