Judgement and Hypocricy
Manhattan Kansas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQfOXGg5et4 Listen to the lines. The writer is using Manhattan Kansas as a metaphor for how society at one time treated women who had children out of wedlock. How the woman is more to blame than the man was. The line, " The folks in Manhattan didn't want me or my bundle, so I took my child and caught an evening train," is about society as a whole. The writer put a conservative spin on it by using the conservative Midwest as a metaphor. That line is powerful. It goes from there to the woman being alone and struggling with a child, and becoming indignant to being outcast and taking pride in herself, with the line, " at least I didn't beg him, I'd rather wash my dishes, it makes me feel if my hands are clean." That indignation goes on with the line, "sometimes I stand here thinking about a man, back home in Kansas, and how the folks just turned away in shame, I stare down through the soapsuds, reach down...