¶ … Proletarian Portrait" is a poem by William Carlos Williams that presents a brief snapshot of a working class woman, a proletarian. She is bogged down by two stigmas: class and gender. Because the reader has no other cues of the woman's identity, it is also possible that she is not white, either. Being of the non-dominant culture would make the woman an emblem of the underclass, presuming the setting is in North America or Europe. Williams's poetic portrait depicts the harrowing effects of labor in the capitalist system, sending a strong Marxist message warning about problems such as alienation. Williams uses poetic devices including irony and imagery, in order make strong social commentary about alienation and class conflict. The capitalist wage structure has beaten the dignity out of the woman featured in "Proletarian Portrait." A sense of heaviness, loneliness and sadness pervades the imagery in "Proletarian Portrait," allowing Williams to achieve social commentary with unusual structure, irony, and imagery. One of the ways Williams gives the poem a heavy feeling is by describing the woman as being "big" in the first line. The reader is therefore introduced to the woman right away as a heavy creature who is burdened or symbolically weighed down by her work. There is no contrasting imagery of lightness, which makes the short poem seem even heavier. Because one of the focal points or motifs of the poem is a shoe, the reader's attention is drawn to the ground. Similarly, the setting is on the street and the reader's eye is also...

Being continually drawn to the ground and the woman's shoe makes "Proletarian Portrait" have a heavy feeling.
Furthermore, the heaviness of the ground and foot imagery is coupled with symbolism related to the nail. The woman takes off her shoe to get a nail out of it. Thus, the central image of the poem raises the question of why there was a nail inside her shoe. Usually, people step on nails and they are stuck in the outer sole of the shoe. In this case, the woman has a nail inside her shoe. The imagery of the nail inside the shoe is both symbolic and literal. Because the reader knows that the woman is a proletarian worker, it can be inferred that the nail got there in her workplace. She is still wearing her apron, which also signifies that she either just got off work or is on a break. The nail inside the shoe might also serve a symbolic function. She pulls it out of her insole, meaning that the nail was hidden. Symbolically, the woman is hiding her pain and keeping it inside herself. The symbolism of keeping something inside also has a heavy feeling. Her pain and suffering are weighing down the woman. At the end of the poem, the narrator also states that the nail "has been hurting her" for what seems like a long time.

In fact, the poet uses the "ing" form of the verb throughout "Proletarian Portrait" to impart a sense of heaviness and endless…