Eunice de Souza "Advice to Women" |Poem|Summary|Questions|

Advice to Women

by Eunice de Souza

A Complete Study Guide

Section 1: Bibliographic Details

Writer: Eunice de Souza (1 August 1940 – 29 July 2017)
Nationality: Indian-English
Published: 1994
Collection: Selected and New Poems (1994)
Total Lines: Twelve (12)
Total Stanzas: One (single continuous stanza)
Rhyme Scheme: Free verse; no fixed rhyme scheme. Occasional end-rhyme: 'surprise' and 'eyes'
Rhythm / Meter: No regular metrical pattern. Lines are uneven in length. The rhythm is conversational and direct.

Eunice de Souza was born in Pune, India, into a Goan Catholic family. She earned an MA from Marquette University, Wisconsin, and a PhD from the University of Mumbai. She taught English at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and served as Head of the Department until her retirement. She is recognised as one of the foremost Indian women poets writing in English. Her notable poetry collections include Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), These My Words (2012), and Learn From The Almond Leaf (2016). She remained unmarried throughout her life, a personal choice that deeply informs the feminist perspective of her poetry.

Section 2: The Full Poem

Advice to Women

— Eunice de Souza

Keep cats

 if you want to learn

to cope with the otherness of lovers.

Otherness is not always neglect —

Cats return to their litter trays

when they need to.

Don't cuss out of the window

at their enemies.

That stare of perpetual surprise

in those great green eyes

will teach you

to die alone.

— from Selected and New Poems (1994)

Section 3: Line by Line Explanation

Line 1: "Keep cats if you want to learn"

The poem opens with a direct imperative. The speaker addresses women plainly and without ceremony. The verb "Keep" is a command. It signals a voice of authority, someone who has already learned what she is about to teach. The conditional phrase "if you want to learn" makes the advice voluntary. The speaker is not forcing knowledge upon her reader. She is offering it to those who are willing to receive it. The line is deliberately simple. It does not begin with the language of love or romance. It begins with practical advice about a domestic animal. This choice is itself significant. The speaker refuses to romanticise relationships from the very first word.

Lines 1–2: "Keep cats if you want to learn / to cope with the otherness of lovers."

The enjambment across these two lines creates a natural pause. The reader completes the thought as she reads on. The key word here is "otherness." This is not a word commonly associated with romance. It is a philosophical term. It refers to the quality of being separate, foreign, and distant from another. In the context of love, "otherness" describes the emotional distance that lovers sometimes maintain. The speaker is not describing cruelty. She is describing a deeper, quieter form of emotional absence. The word "cope" is equally important. One does not cope with joy. One copes with difficulty. From the very first sentence, the speaker frames love as something that must be endured as much as enjoyed.

Line 3: "Otherness is not always neglect —"

This line performs a careful qualification. The speaker does not claim that lovers are always negligent or malicious. She draws a distinction between distance and deliberate neglect. A lover who seems remote is not necessarily indifferent. The em-dash at the end of this line invites the reader to pause before the explanation that follows. The speaker is being precise. She does not wish to make women angry at their lovers without cause. She wishes to give them understanding. Understanding, the poem implies, is more useful than anger.

Lines 4–5: "Cats return to their litter trays / when they need to."

The comparison between cats and lovers is made explicit here. Cats are known for their independence. They do not come when called. They come when they choose to. They return to their litter trays not out of loyalty but out of necessity. The speaker applies this logic to lovers. Men, she implies, return to women when they have a need. This need is largely physical and emotional. The comparison is unflattering. It reduces romantic return to a form of biological urgency rather than genuine affection. The line break after "trays" gives the phrase "when they need to" its own weight. It stands alone as a statement of blunt truth.

Lines 6–7: "Don't cuss out of the window / at their enemies."

The tone shifts slightly here. The speaker becomes more instructive and almost sardonic. The image of a woman leaning out of a window and cursing is specific and vivid. It suggests a woman who has lost her composure. She is publicly expressing her pain and anger. The speaker advises against this. The word "cuss" is informal and colloquial. It is deliberately placed in a poem that is otherwise measured. Its presence creates a small jolt of recognition. Most readers understand what it feels like to want to shout at someone who has caused pain. The instruction not to do so is both practical and feminist. Dignity, the speaker implies, is more powerful than rage.

Lines 8–9: "That stare of perpetual surprise / in those great green eyes"

These are the most visually striking lines of the poem. The phrase "perpetual surprise" is almost paradoxical. A cat's wide, unblinking eyes give the impression of constant astonishment. Yet a cat is not actually surprised. It is simply observing. This combination of apparent emotion and actual indifference is central to the poem's meaning. The "great green eyes" create a vivid image. Green has associations with envy, with nature, and with a certain cool detachment. The stare is not warm. It does not invite closeness. It simply looks, without judgment and without love.

Lines 10–11: "will teach you / to die alone."

These are the most striking lines in the poem. The enjambment slows the reader down. The phrase "to die alone" arrives with full weight after the pause created by "will teach you." The finality is deliberate. The speaker does not offer consolation. She does not suggest that love will eventually reward patience. She concludes that the lesson of the cat's stare is the acceptance of solitude. To die alone is presented not as a tragedy but as an inevitability. The cat's indifference teaches women to stop expecting emotional reciprocity. It prepares them, the speaker argues, for the ultimate reality of human separateness.

Section 4: Summary 

Eunice de Souza's "Advice to Women" is a short yet powerful poem of twelve lines. It is contained within a single stanza. The poem offers counsel to women about how to manage the emotional distance of romantic partners. The speaker begins with a direct command: "Keep cats if you want to learn / to cope with the otherness of lovers." The poem does not begin with declarations of love or longing. It begins with practical instruction. This choice is deliberate. The speaker positions herself as someone who has already learned this lesson and now passes it on.

The central concept of the poem is "otherness." This word refers to the emotional separateness that a lover can display. It does not always mean neglect, the speaker clarifies. Cats, the poem observes, return to their litter trays when they need to. This behaviour mirrors that of lovers. They return when driven by need, not necessarily by tenderness. The comparison between cats and lovers is the extended metaphor at the heart of the poem. Cats are independent, self-contained creatures. They do not offer unconditional loyalty. They accept care on their own terms. The speaker suggests that women study this behaviour carefully, not to imitate it, but to understand it.

The poem then shifts to a specific image. The speaker advises women not to cuss out of the window at their enemies. This is a vivid, almost comic picture. It shows a woman who has allowed her pain to push her toward public anger. The speaker counsels restraint. The cat does not react with outrage. It observes. It maintains its composure. This is the behaviour the speaker recommends. Women who lose their dignity in the expression of their pain gain nothing, the poem implies. The composure of the cat is a form of power.

The poem ends with its most sobering image. The "stare of perpetual surprise" in the cat's "great green eyes" will teach women "to die alone." The speaker does not soften this conclusion. There is no promise of eventual happiness or romantic redemption. The cat's blank, wide-eyed gaze is a lesson in indifference. It teaches women to accept that emotional self-sufficiency is not merely a choice but a necessity. The poem, written in free verse, uses simple language to deliver a complex feminist message. It refuses the conventions of the love poem. It offers, instead, a clear-eyed account of romantic reality. Its brevity makes it sharper. Every word carries purpose.

Section 5: Analysis 

"Advice to Women" is an example of feminist poetry at its most restrained and precise. De Souza writes in free verse with no regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. The form suits the content. The poem does not dress itself in the ornamental language of traditional love poetry. It speaks plainly. Its language is conversational. Yet its ideas are not simple. The poem challenges the way women are conditioned to respond to emotional neglect in relationships. Rather than counselling anger or despair, it counsels understanding and self-possession.

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The extended metaphor of the cat is the poem's principal literary device. Cats are independent, self-serving animals. They return to their owners when they require something. The speaker draws a direct parallel with male lovers. This parallel is unflattering to men, but the speaker is not primarily concerned with condemning them. She is concerned with teaching women. The metaphor of the litter tray is particularly precise. It is not a romantic space. It is a space of basic necessity. The speaker implies that when lovers return, they return out of need, not devotion.

The poem also uses imagery with great care. The "stare of perpetual surprise" in the cat's "great green eyes" is a striking visual. It captures the quality of cool, detached observation. The cat is always watching, but never emotionally engaged. This is the model the speaker presents to women. The poem's final line, "to die alone," is its most audacious statement. It does not present solitude as failure. It presents it as the natural conclusion of a life lived with clear understanding. De Souza, who chose to remain unmarried, writes with the authority of personal conviction. The poem is brief, direct, and deeply serious in its feminist purpose.

Section 6: Imagery and Symbolism

The imagery of "Advice to Women" is drawn entirely from domestic life. This is a deliberate choice. De Souza does not reach for grand or abstract symbols. She uses the familiar figure of the household cat. The cat is perhaps the poem's most important symbol. It represents the emotionally unavailable lover. Cats are beautiful and companionable, but they are not fully given to their keepers. They move between affection and indifference with ease. They return when they need something. They leave when they choose to. This behaviour is presented as a model for women to study, not because it is admirable, but because it is realistic. The cat teaches women to stop expecting what will not come.

The image of the litter tray is deliberately unromantic. The speaker compares the lover's return to the cat's return to its toilet. This is a calculated reduction of romantic sentiment to physical necessity. It is one of the poem's most pointed observations. The window is another important image. The woman who cuses out of the window is visible, exposed, and undignified. The window represents the boundary between the private self and the public world. The speaker advises women to remain on the inside, composed and contained. Finally, the image of the cat's "great green eyes" carries symbolic weight. Green is traditionally associated with envy and with a cold, watchful intelligence. The "perpetual surprise" in those eyes is a symbol of permanent emotional detachment. The cat never truly sees the person in front of it. Lovers, the poem implies, can be very much the same.

Section 7: Twenty Most Important Short Questions and Answers

Q1. Who is the poet of "Advice to Women" and when was the poem published?

Answer:

The poem was written by Eunice de Souza, an Indian English language poet, literary critic, and novelist. She was born on 1 August 1940 in Pune, India, and died on 29 July 2017. The poem was published in 1994 as part of her collection Selected and New Poems. De Souza taught English at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and is widely regarded as a significant voice in Indian feminist poetry in English.

Q2. What is the central theme of the poem?

Answer:

The central theme of "Advice to Women" is emotional self-sufficiency in the face of romantic detachment. De Souza advises women to prepare themselves for the "otherness" of lovers. This otherness refers to the emotional distance that partners sometimes maintain. The poem argues that women must learn independence and composure rather than anger or dependence. The ultimate lesson of the poem is the acceptance of solitude as a natural and dignified human condition.

Q3. What does the word "otherness" mean in the poem?

Answer:

The word "otherness" is a key term in the poem. It refers to the quality of emotional separateness displayed by lovers. A lover who exhibits otherness does not fully emotionally engage with his partner. He remains psychologically distant. The speaker is careful to note that "otherness is not always neglect." It is, rather, a fundamental difference in emotional orientation between partners. The poem asks women to understand this quality rather than to react to it with anger or despair.

Q4. Why does the speaker advise women to keep cats?

Answer:

The speaker advises women to keep cats as a form of emotional preparation. Cats are well known for their independence and indifference. They return to their owners only when they have a need. They do not offer unconditional affection or loyalty. By living with a cat, a woman learns to accept the behaviour of a creature that is present but not fully given. This, the speaker argues, is a useful training for dealing with the similar behaviour of lovers.

Q5. What is the extended metaphor in the poem?

Answer:

The extended metaphor of the poem compares cats to male lovers. Throughout the poem, the behaviour of cats is used to illustrate the behaviour of emotionally distant partners. Cats return to their litter trays when they need to. Lovers return to women when they have a need. Cats observe with wide, unfeeling eyes. Lovers maintain emotional detachment in a similar manner. This metaphor runs through the entire poem. It allows de Souza to make a pointed comment about male behaviour without ever stating it directly.

Q6. What does the litter tray represent in the poem?

Answer:

The litter tray is a deliberately unromantic image. In the poem, the cat's return to its litter tray represents the lover's return to the woman. The comparison is intentionally unflattering. The litter tray is a place of basic physical necessity, not warmth or affection. By comparing a woman to a litter tray, the speaker suggests that lovers return out of need rather than love. The image strips romantic sentiment away and replaces it with a blunt, unsentimental reality.

Q7. What does the phrase "perpetual surprise" suggest?

Answer:

The phrase "perpetual surprise" describes the expression in a cat's wide, unblinking eyes. A cat appears permanently astonished, yet it feels no genuine surprise. The expression is a biological feature rather than an emotional response. The speaker uses this phrase to describe a quality of permanent emotional detachment. The cat is always watching but never truly seeing. The poem suggests that emotionally distant lovers carry a similar quality. Their apparent attentiveness conceals a fundamental indifference.

Q8. What is the significance of the image of the green eyes?

Answer:

The "great green eyes" of the cat are a vivid and carefully chosen image. Green is traditionally associated with envy, with coldness, and with a certain watchful intelligence. The eyes are described as "great," suggesting their size and power. Yet the stare they produce is one of detachment rather than warmth. The image presents the cat as simultaneously beautiful and emotionally inaccessible. This combination mirrors the speaker's view of the emotionally distant lover: attractive but fundamentally unreachable.

Q9. What does the poem's ending suggest about love and solitude?

Answer:

The poem ends with the stark statement that the cat's stare "will teach you / to die alone." This is the poem's most direct and sobering conclusion. The speaker does not offer romantic consolation. She does not suggest that patience will be rewarded with love. Instead, she presents solitude as the inevitable lesson of life with an emotionally distant partner. The poem asks women to accept this reality with the composure of a cat rather than the anguish of a broken heart.

Q10. What is the form and structure of the poem?

Answer:

"Advice to Women" is a twelve-line poem arranged in a single stanza. It is written in free verse, meaning it has no fixed rhyme scheme or regular metrical pattern. There are two words that rhyme near the end of the poem: "surprise" and "eyes." The lines vary in length. De Souza uses enjambment frequently, allowing sentences to flow across line breaks. End-stopped lines are used at points of particular emphasis. The form mirrors the content. The poem is direct, unadorned, and deliberately free of conventional poetic decoration.

Q11. What is the significance of the poem's title?

Answer:

The title "Advice to Women" signals the poem's purpose directly. It frames the speaker as an experienced voice offering counsel. The word "advice" implies wisdom earned through experience. The phrase "to Women" identifies the intended audience. It is a poem written by a woman for women. The title also subtly challenges the tradition of poetry written about women by men. Here, a woman speaks directly to other women, on her own terms, about their shared experience of romantic life.

Q12. What role does the imperative mood play in the poem?

Answer:

The poem opens with the imperative verb "Keep." It also uses "Don't cuss." These commands establish the speaker's authority. She is not suggesting or wondering. She is instructing. The use of the imperative mood creates a tone of firm, experienced counsel. It gives the poem the quality of practical advice rather than personal confession. The speaker has already arrived at these conclusions. She now transmits them to her reader without hesitation or apology.

Q13. What is enjambment and how is it used in the poem?

Answer:

Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or phrase across a line break without a pause or punctuation. De Souza uses enjambment throughout the poem. The opening lines "Keep cats if you want to learn / to cope with the otherness of lovers" are a clear example. The reader must follow the thought from one line to the next. This technique creates a sense of forward movement. It also allows certain words to carry extra weight by appearing at the beginning of a new line, where the reader's eye naturally pauses.

Q14. How does the poem reflect a feminist perspective?

Answer:

The poem reflects a feminist perspective in its refusal to accept the traditional romantic narrative. It does not ask women to be patient and hope for love to improve. It acknowledges the reality of emotional neglect in relationships and offers women a strategy for self-preservation. The strategy is not bitterness. It is understanding and independence. The poem also challenges the conventional form of the love poem. It uses domestic imagery and plain language to speak about women's emotional experience with clear-eyed honesty.

Q15. What does the image of the window suggest in the poem?

Answer:

The image of a woman cursing "out of the window at their enemies" is vivid and specific. The window represents the boundary between the private world of the home and the public world outside. A woman shouting from a window is exposing her pain and anger to public view. The speaker advises against this. To cuss out of a window is to lose composure and dignity. The speaker recommends the self-containment of the cat, which observes without reacting. Dignity, the poem implies, is a more powerful response than rage.

Q16. Who are the "enemies" referred to in the poem?

Answer:

The "enemies" referred to in lines six and seven are the rivals or successors of the woman's former lover. The speaker advises women not to cuss at these figures from their windows. The enemies are not presented in detail. They are mentioned only as objects of the woman's anger. The speaker's point is clear. Directing anger at rivals is undignified and unproductive. The woman should focus on her own composure rather than on those who have caused her pain.

Q17. How does de Souza use simple language to achieve a complex effect?

Answer:

De Souza's language in "Advice to Women" is plain and direct. She avoids ornamental diction and complex metaphors. Words such as "keep," "cope," "return," and "die" are common words. Yet the poem's meaning is layered and serious. The simplicity of the language makes the ideas more striking. When the speaker says "to die alone," the plainness of the words gives the phrase its full force. Complex ideas, expressed in simple language, arrive with greater impact than those wrapped in elaborate phrasing.

Q18. What is the tone of the poem?

Answer:

The tone of "Advice to Women" is one of cool, unsentimental authority. The speaker does not sound angry, bitter, or sorrowful. She sounds experienced and composed. There is a mild irony in the poem, particularly in the comparison between lovers and litter trays. There is also a controlled bleakness in the final lines. The speaker accepts difficult truths without dramatising them. This composure is itself a reflection of the poem's central message. The speaker models the very behaviour she recommends to her reader.

Q19. What does the poem suggest about the nature of male love?

Answer:

The poem suggests that male love is characterised by "otherness," a fundamental emotional separateness. Men, like cats, return to women when they have a need. Their return is driven by necessity rather than devotion. The poem does not present this as deliberate cruelty. It presents it as a feature of emotional orientation. Men are not condemned in the poem. They are observed, much as the cat is observed. The speaker offers understanding rather than accusation. This understanding, she implies, is what women need to protect themselves.

Q20. What is the historical and biographical context of the poem?

Answer:

Eunice de Souza was born in 1940 in Pune, into a Goan Catholic family. She never married, a personal choice that is reflected in the poem's endorsement of female independence and solitude. She published "Advice to Women" in her 1994 collection Selected and New Poems. As a feminist poet writing in English in India, she occupies a particular position. She addressed the experience of women in a patriarchal society with directness and wit. Her decision to remain unmarried gave her poem the authority of lived conviction.

Section 8: Five Most Important Five-Marks Questions and Answers

Question 1 (Lines-Based)

Explain the significance of the lines: "Keep cats if you want to learn / to cope with the otherness of lovers."

Answer:

These opening lines of "Advice to Women" establish the central metaphor and the central theme of the poem simultaneously. The imperative verb "Keep" signals that the speaker is a figure of authority. She does not invite or suggest. She instructs. The conditional phrase "if you want to learn" preserves the freedom of the reader. The speaker does not force her wisdom upon anyone. She offers it to those who are ready to receive it. The word "learn" is important. Love, the speaker implies, is not simply an experience. It is a subject of study. Women must approach it as pupils if they are to survive its demands. The key word in these two lines is "otherness." This is not a word drawn from the language of romance. It is a philosophical term. It names the quality of being fundamentally separate from another person. The speaker does not call this quality cruelty or neglect. She calls it "otherness," which is a gentler and more precise description. Lovers, the poem implies, are often emotionally elsewhere even when they are physically present. The woman who understands this will not be destroyed by it. The cat, with its well-known independence, is the teacher the speaker recommends. These lines, simple in their diction, contain the entire argument of the poem. They prepare the reader for the unsentimental instruction that follows. They ask women to approach love not with blind hope but with educated understanding. The enjambment that connects the two lines draws the reader forward, enacting the very quality of patient persistence that the speaker endorses.

Question 2 (Lines-Based)

Analyse the lines: "That stare of perpetual surprise / in those great green eyes / will teach you / to die alone."

Answer:

These closing lines of "Advice to Women" represent the poem's most powerful and most disturbing statement. The enjambment across all four lines slows the reader considerably. Each line break creates a pause. The reader reaches "to die alone" only after passing through the image of the cat's gaze. This structural choice is deliberate. The reader must pass through beauty before arriving at the bleak truth that follows it. The phrase "perpetual surprise" is one of the most striking in the poem. A cat's wide, round eyes give the impression of constant astonishment. Yet the cat feels no genuine surprise. The expression is biological rather than emotional. It is a stare that looks without truly seeing. De Souza uses this observation to describe a quality in lovers: the appearance of attentiveness that conceals actual indifference. The "great green eyes" are beautiful. The word "great" suggests their size and power. The word "green" carries associations with envy, with a certain cold intelligence, and with the natural world's indifference to human feeling. The eyes are arresting but not warm. They do not invite closeness. They observe without participating. The final phrase, "to die alone," is the poem's most audacious statement. The speaker does not soften it. She does not promise that patience will lead to love. She tells women that the lesson of the cat's indifferent gaze is the acceptance of ultimate solitude. To die alone, in this poem, is not presented as a failure. It is presented as a truth that must be faced. The poem's feminist argument is fully concentrated in these lines. A woman who has understood the lesson of the cat will not be destroyed by the knowledge that she will die alone. She will be prepared for it.

Question 3

How does de Souza use the cat as a symbol in the poem?

Answer:

In "Advice to Women," the cat functions as the poem's central symbol and its governing metaphor. De Souza chooses the cat with precision. Among domestic animals, the cat is uniquely associated with independence, self-containment, and emotional aloofness. Dogs are loyal. They offer unconditional affection. They return because they are devoted. Cats return when they need to. This distinction is the foundation of the poem's argument. The speaker advises women to keep cats not because cats are lovable companions, but because cats are teachers of a necessary lesson. Cats exist on their own terms. They accept care without fully surrendering to their caregivers. They are present without being available. This quality of selective presence mirrors the behaviour of the emotionally distant lover that the poem describes. The cat's return to its litter tray is a particularly pointed symbol. The litter tray is not a place of warmth or affection. It is a place of biological necessity. When the speaker compares the lover's return to the cat's return to its litter tray, she is making an unflattering but honest point. Lovers return when they have a need. The stare of the cat, described as a "stare of perpetual surprise" in its "great green eyes," is the symbol's final dimension. The cat watches without judgment and without warmth. Its gaze teaches the woman who studies it that true emotional reciprocity may not come. The cat, therefore, is simultaneously a model of comportment, a mirror of the lover's behaviour, and a teacher of ultimate solitude. De Souza uses this everyday domestic animal to carry an enormous weight of feminist insight.

Question 4

What is the significance of free verse in "Advice to Women"?

Answer:

The choice of free verse in "Advice to Women" is entirely consistent with the poem's content and its feminist argument. Free verse carries no obligation to rhyme or to maintain a regular metrical pattern. It liberates the poet from the formal conventions of traditional English verse. De Souza uses this freedom deliberately. The poem's refusal of formal constraints mirrors its refusal of the conventional romantic narrative. Just as the poem does not follow the rules of the love poem, it does not follow the rules of traditional poetic form. The form and the content reinforce each other. The poem's language is conversational. The lines are of uneven length. Some are very short: "when they need to" and "to die alone" are brief and forceful. Others are longer and more explanatory. This variation in line length creates a rhythm that is natural rather than imposed. It sounds like speech. It sounds like advice given directly, without ornament. The use of enjambment, which appears throughout the poem, further contributes to this quality of directness. Thoughts flow across line breaks as they do in natural speech. Yet de Souza is not entirely indifferent to sound. The words "surprise" and "eyes" create a near-rhyme near the poem's end. This small moment of sonic alignment draws attention to the crucial final image. The form of the poem, therefore, is not simply an absence of convention. It is a positive, deliberate choice that supports the poem's argument and its tone. Free verse, in this poem, is a form of independence. It is the poetic equivalent of the self-sufficiency that the speaker recommends to her reader.

Question 5

How does "Advice to Women" challenge the conventions of the traditional love poem?

Answer:

"Advice to Women" challenges the conventions of the traditional love poem at every level. The traditional love poem celebrates romantic feeling. It uses elevated language to describe the beloved and the experience of love. It frequently promises devotion, eternity, and mutual completion. De Souza's poem does none of these things. Its subject is not the beauty of love but the difficulty of it. Its central image is not a rose or a sunrise. It is a cat returning to its litter tray. The poem does not speak of a beloved. It speaks of "lovers" in general, without naming or praising any individual. The language of the poem is plain and direct. De Souza uses simple, common words. There is no ornamental imagery beyond the carefully chosen image of the cat's green eyes. The poem does not seek to move the reader through sensuous language or emotional appeal. It seeks to inform the reader through observation and instruction. The speaker's tone is not passionate. It is composed and clear-eyed. The traditional love poem is often written by a man to a woman, placing her in a position of passive object. This poem is written by a woman to women. The speaker and the audience share a common experience. This is itself a challenge to the conventional dynamics of the love poem. Furthermore, the traditional love poem typically ends with an affirmation of love's permanence or its consolation. "Advice to Women" ends with "to die alone." This is not consolation. It is a clear statement of emotional reality. The poem is, in every sense, a counter-poem to the tradition it implicitly addresses.

Section 9: Three Most Important Fifteen-Marks Questions and Answers

Question 1

Discuss "Advice to Women" as a feminist poem. How does de Souza challenge the traditional representation of women in love poetry?

Answer:

Introduction

Eunice de Souza's "Advice to Women," published in 1994, is one of the most precise and powerful examples of feminist poetry in the Indian English literary tradition. The poem is twelve lines long and written in free verse. Its brevity does not diminish its force. On the contrary, the poem's compactness gives it the quality of a well-sharpened instrument. Every word serves a purpose. De Souza, who taught English literature at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and who chose to remain unmarried throughout her life, brought to this poem the authority of personal conviction. She wrote not as a theorist but as someone who had thought deeply about the emotional realities of women's lives. The poem addresses a subject that is central to feminist thought: the unequal emotional dynamic between men and women in romantic relationships. It does so without anger, without sentimentality, and without the consolatory gestures that might soften its message.

Body

The poem opens with a direct instruction: "Keep cats if you want to learn / to cope with the otherness of lovers." The imperative verb "Keep" positions the speaker as a figure of authority. She has already learned what she is about to teach. The word "cope" is equally significant. One does not cope with joy. One copes with difficulty. From its very first word, the poem refuses the romantic idealisation of love that dominates much traditional love poetry. The word "otherness" is a philosophical term. It describes the fundamental emotional separateness of another person. The speaker does not present this as an aberration. She presents it as a feature of romantic life that women must understand. This is itself a feminist act. It refuses the narrative that tells women their love will eventually transform their partners. It refuses the promise of emotional reciprocity that the love tradition has long offered women as consolation. The cat metaphor is extended through the poem with great precision. Cats return to their litter trays "when they need to." The litter tray is an unromantic image. It is a place of basic physical necessity. By comparing the lover's return to the cat's return to its litter tray, de Souza makes a pointed claim: lovers return out of need, not devotion. The speaker does not ask women to leave their lovers. She asks them to understand them accurately. This is the feminist intervention. It replaces romantic illusion with clear-eyed knowledge. The poem continues by advising women not to cuss "out of the window / at their enemies." This image is vivid and specific. A woman shouting from a window is publicly exposing her pain. She is losing the composure that the speaker values. The advice not to do this is not simply a counsel of dignity for its own sake. It is an argument for women's power. The woman who maintains her composure retains power. The woman who expresses her anger publicly surrenders it. This is a feminist insight about the cost of emotional display in a world that does not value women's emotions. The poem culminates in the image of the cat's "stare of perpetual surprise" in its "great green eyes." This image captures the quality of beautiful indifference. The cat's eyes are striking and watchful, yet they do not communicate love or recognition. The speaker tells women that this gaze "will teach you / to die alone." The final line is the poem's most challenging statement. It does not offer romantic consolation. It offers something harder and, the speaker implies, more honest: the knowledge that emotional self-sufficiency is not merely an option but a necessity. This is a feminist argument against dependence. De Souza asks women to face the truth of their situation and to build their lives on that truth rather than on the false promises of romantic convention.

Conclusion

"Advice to Women" challenges the traditional representation of women in love poetry at every level. In the traditional love poem, women are objects of admiration and desire. The male speaker addresses the female beloved. The poem celebrates her beauty or mourns her absence. De Souza's poem inverts this entirely. A woman speaks to women. The male lover is observed from a distance, through the lens of the cat metaphor, rather than addressed or celebrated. The poem's form, free verse without ornamental language, is itself a rejection of the poetic conventions that have historically been used to contain women's experience within the boundaries of the beloved, the muse, or the mourned. De Souza's poem is not a poem of longing. It is a poem of instruction. It does not ask women to be more loving or more patient. It asks them to be more knowing. In this, it stands as a significant contribution to feminist poetry in English. Its message is as relevant today as it was in 1994.

Question 2

Analyse the use of the cat metaphor in "Advice to Women" and explain how it contributes to the poem's meaning.

Answer:

Introduction

A metaphor is one of the most fundamental tools of poetry. It allows the poet to speak about one thing by speaking about another. In "Advice to Women," Eunice de Souza constructs a single extended metaphor that runs from the first line of the poem to the last. The metaphor compares male lovers to cats. This comparison is not incidental. It is the entire architecture of the poem. Every observation the speaker makes about cats is simultaneously an observation about lovers. The choice of the cat, rather than any other animal, is precise and deliberate. The cat is a creature uniquely suited to carry the meaning de Souza wishes to convey. It is beautiful. It is companionable. It accepts care without surrendering itself fully to its caregiver. It returns when it needs to. It watches without emotional engagement. These qualities make it a perfect mirror for the emotionally distant lover that the poem describes. The metaphor does not require the speaker to make any direct accusation. It allows the poem to speak its difficult truth through observation rather than argument.

Body

The metaphor is introduced immediately. "Keep cats if you want to learn / to cope with the otherness of lovers" establishes the comparison in the poem's first two lines. The cat is not simply a pleasant companion. It is a teacher. The quality it teaches women to understand is "otherness," the fundamental emotional separateness of lovers. The poem then develops the metaphor through a series of specific observations. "Otherness is not always neglect," the speaker clarifies. This is a moment of precision within the metaphor. The speaker does not wish women to conclude that all male emotional distance is cruelty. It is, she insists, partly a natural condition. Cats are not cruel. They are simply independent. The next development of the metaphor is the most pointed. "Cats return to their litter trays / when they need to." The litter tray, as already noted, is a place of physical necessity rather than affection. By introducing this image into the metaphor, de Souza makes a specific claim about the nature of the lover's return. He returns to the woman as the cat returns to its toilet: driven by need rather than by love. The word "need" is used without irony. The speaker acknowledges the reality of the lover's return. She does not deny that he comes back. But she insists that women understand why he comes back. This understanding is what the metaphor is designed to produce. The metaphor reaches its most powerful expression in the poem's final image. The cat's "stare of perpetual surprise" in its "great green eyes" is not a neutral observation. It is the culminating symbol of the metaphor. The cat's eyes are beautiful but cold. They watch without warmth. They observe without recognition. The speaker says that this gaze "will teach you / to die alone." The metaphor, at this point, moves beyond comparison. The cat's stare becomes a direct instruction in how to accept the reality of emotional solitude. The metaphor of the cat, therefore, serves three functions in the poem. It describes the behaviour of lovers without direct accusation. It provides women with a model for their own emotional behaviour: the cat's composure and self-containment are implicitly recommended. And it leads women to the poem's final and most difficult truth: the acceptance of solitude as a human condition.

Conclusion

The cat metaphor in "Advice to Women" is a masterpiece of economy. De Souza uses a single, familiar, domestic image to carry an argument of considerable complexity. The metaphor works because the cat is a creature that is genuinely known to most readers. Its independence, its selective affection, its physical beauty, and its emotional inscrutability are all recognised qualities. By placing these qualities in the service of her feminist argument, de Souza allows the poem to speak its truth without appearing to lecture. The cat simply is what it is. And the lover, the poem implies, simply is what he is. The woman who understands this will not be broken by it. She will learn, like the cat, to carry herself with dignity and composure. The metaphor, finally, is both a description and a recommendation. It tells women what to expect and, implicitly, how to respond.

Question 3

Examine the theme of emotional independence in "Advice to Women" with close reference to the poem's language and imagery.

Answer:

Introduction

The theme of emotional independence is the deepest and most sustained concern of Eunice de Souza's "Advice to Women." The poem does not celebrate romantic love. It does not mourn its absence. It counsels women to build a life that is not dependent on the emotional reciprocity of lovers. This is a demanding message. It asks women to relinquish a set of expectations that are deeply embedded in both cultural tradition and personal feeling. De Souza does not deliver this message through abstraction or theory. She delivers it through the concrete, specific language of everyday domestic life. Every image in the poem, the cat, the litter tray, the window, the green eyes, is drawn from the ordinary world. Yet each image carries a precise emotional and philosophical weight. The poem's argument for emotional independence is not cold or dismissive. It is, rather, an act of care. The speaker wishes women to be free of the pain that comes from expecting what cannot be reliably given.

Body

The poem's argument for emotional independence begins with its first word. "Keep" is a verb of active agency. The speaker does not tell women to wait, to hope, or to love more patiently. She tells them to do something. Keeping cats is a practical activity. It requires engagement and commitment. The speaker is asking women to take deliberate steps toward their own emotional education. This is the first expression of the independence theme: independence begins with action, not with passive endurance. The concept of "otherness" is central to the poem's treatment of emotional independence. The speaker explains that the otherness of lovers is "not always neglect." This distinction is important. A woman who mistakes distance for neglect will respond with anger or despair. A woman who understands distance as a quality of her lover's nature will be able to maintain her own composure. The ability to make this distinction is itself a form of emotional independence. It frees the woman from the trap of over-interpretation, from the habit of reading personal rejection into what is, in fact, an impersonal quality. The image of the woman cursing "out of the window" is the poem's most explicit portrait of emotional dependence. A woman who shouts at her lover's enemies from a window has lost control of her inner world. She is reacting to external events with public anger. The speaker advises against this. She recommends, implicitly, the behaviour of the cat: watchful, contained, and self-possessed. The cat does not cuss. It observes. Emotional independence, the poem implies, is expressed through restraint and composure rather than through the suppression of all feeling. The final image of the poem presents emotional independence in its most complete and most challenging form. The cat's "stare of perpetual surprise" in its "great green eyes" will teach women "to die alone." To die alone is not, in this poem, a failure. It is a truth. The emotionally independent woman is one who has faced this truth and accepted it. She does not organise her life around the hope of a love that will save her from solitude. She accepts solitude as part of the human condition and builds her life on that understanding. The poem's language supports this argument at every point. The words are plain and unadorned. There is no appeal to romantic sentiment. The imagery is domestic and familiar. This plainness is itself an expression of independence. The poem does not dress its message in beauty to make it more palatable. It speaks clearly, as a friend or teacher would, and trusts the reader to receive what is offered.

Conclusion

"Advice to Women" presents emotional independence not as an ideal to be aspired to but as a necessity to be prepared for. De Souza does not romanticise solitude. She does not suggest that independence is easy or painless. She suggests, rather, that it is the only honest response to the emotional realities that the poem describes. The poem's form supports its theme. Free verse, with no obligation to any formal convention, is itself a form of independence. The speaker, like the cat she recommends, operates on her own terms. She does not conform to the expectations of the love poem. She does not offer comfort. She offers clarity. The poem ends, as it begins, with a direct statement. "To die alone" is the final phrase. It is also the final image of independence: a woman who has understood the lesson of the cat's gaze and who has built, on that understanding, a life that is fully and honestly her own. De Souza's poem is not a counsel of despair. It is a counsel of strength. In its twelve short lines, it offers women a rigorous and generous education in the art of living with clear eyes and a composed heart.