Analysis of "35/10"

Thesis: In Sharon Olds’s poem “35/10”, the speaker’s opinion shifts from mournful of her own childhood to hopeful for that of her daughter.

The title of the poem suggests that a thirty-five-year-old mother reflects nostalgically on her own childhood.

• Upon reading the first three lines of the poem, it is evident that the title refers to the ages of the mother and her daughter, respectively.  This is clear essentially as soon as the reader hears mention of the daughter from the point of view of the mother
• The title suggests that the main focus of the poem is the relationship between an aging mother and her maturing daughter, although it is unclear from the title what that relationship may be.

In the beginning of the poem, the speaker focuses on her own negative features.

• The author ends the first line by describing the daughter’s hair as “brown,” which, while not explicitly ugly, is not a particularly exciting color.  This lack of excitement allows the word “servant” to stand out amidst the diction surrounding it.  The speaker uses the word to describe herself, and the word connotes the mother’s submission to an aging process that she cannot control.
• The mother continues to point out her own flaws, such as the increasingly defined wrinkles in her neck and the drying of her skin (lines 6-9).

As the poem progresses, the tone shifts from pessimism to optimism.

• Instead of focusing on her own negative features, the speakers attention turns toward her daughter, a “moist / precise flower on the tip of a cactus” (lines 10-11).  This image may represent the daughter’s youth, a flower, emerging from the body of her mother, whose body is, like a cactus, externally rough and pointy, even though it is filled with precious water under the surface.
• The mother likens her daughter’s maturing ovaries to “hard-boiled yolks”, which symbolize new life and energy.  Her depiction of her daughter’s youth displays her newfound positive outlook on what it means to grow older.