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Madam and Her Madam: Summary | Langston Hughes | Neb Compulsory English Class 9
Madam and Her Madam by W. H. Davies
SUMMARY OF THE POEM
Madam and Her Madam by Langston Hughes
The poem "Madam and Her Madam" is quite ironic and was composed by the American poet Langston Hughes. This poem is about a maid and her madam. There are altogether six different stanzas in this poem. There are two main characters in this poem.
The speaker of the poem is a black woman whose name is Alberta. She works as a household maid. Here she has explained her duties and obligations in the house under the command of her madam. She has to perform a lot of household tasks for her employer, whom she calls "Madam." According to the speaker, she has to clean the twelve rooms of the house, cook meals three times a day, take care of the children, walk the dog around, and do the laundry tasks. She confronts her employer about this heavy workload, asking her madam whether she is trying to make her a "pack horse" out of her. This particular question here implies that the employer is taking advantage of her maid, Alberta, requiring her to do more work in her house.
The main speaker Alberta is an employee in the house. Her madam responds quite lovingly most of the time. She denies the charge of being rude to her employee. She claims her love for Alberta, saying, "I love you so!"
In the humorous last stanza, Alberta states that her employer probably loves her but that she doesn't return the sentiment. In fact, she says, "I'll be dogged if I love you." The speaker has a satirical tone here. She thinks that if there is so much love between her and her madam, she will cease to function in terms of doing her tasks in the house. Here, she feels right to be away from the concept of love for her madam. For her, her madam's love is a kind of burden. She knows very well that this particular love of her madam towards her is directly connected to her and her tasks in the house.
This shows the bitter reality of racism in the past, where black servants, as well as maids, had to do hard labour in white people's houses. The system of slavery during 1967 was quite illegal, but most black people were working in white people's houses. The white people used to treat their black workers in a very polite way to make them work hard. Black people had to work hard and perform their best for their masters. The slavery system was abolished, but the lives of black people were the same as before.
A. Match the following words/phrases in column A with their meanings in column B.
Column A Column B
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