Point of View

“Dear Charles Perrault” is told from the first-person point (“I”) and the fourth-person point of view (“we”). The first and final stanzas use the specific first-person voice, while the intervening stanzas use the fourth-person “we” and “us” to describe women as a whole. This structural choice creates the sensation of the individual and the collective being one and the same. While describing the norms and lessons of Perrault’s work, the “we” pronoun is used; for men like Perrault, women are a homogenous entity. At the poem’s turn when the speaker reclaims her personal power, she does so through the “I” pronoun — by embracing her individuality and autonomy.

Language and Meaning

The poem purposefully uses simple, accessible language with little that would alienate the average contemporary speaker. Notably, the poet eschews the majority of the poem’s punctuation; new sentences are cued by capital...