The Laundry Woman
after Charlotte Mew
In the attic room she sorts the linens with fingers worn as the wooden tubs her eyes on the grey fabric unfolding like the lives she’s seen from her window the spinster’s lace the widow’s black the young wife’s silk and the child’s soft muslin
her own life a flat expanse of duty no fold or crease to mark its passage only the steady beat of the iron and the smell of steam and clean cloth
in this dim light she finds a solace a world of order in the tangled sheets a sense of purpose in the endless task of washing and wringing and hanging to dry
I took from Charlotte Mew her focus on the inner lives of women on the margins of society and her use of sensory details to convey emotional intensity. I applied these elements to the life of a laundry woman, a figure who would have been familiar to Mew but not directly addressed in her work.