(Love Song, With Two Goldfish)

The notion of gender roles and gender stereotypes illuminate the goldfishes’ failed relationship in “(love song, with two goldfish).” The field of gender studies and its corresponding gender theories applies theoretical frameworks related to gender to the analysis of literature and other works of art. This critical lens examines how gender roles can impact characters, their relationships, and their behaviors as well as the reader’s experience.

In Chua’s poem, both the male and the female goldfish have reasons to want to escape the bowl and both goldfish must live with the reality of their confinement; the goldfish differ, however, in their reactions to their situations. The male goldfish ruminates on his situation and distracts himself with a fantasy about his female companion; when he and his female companion begin a relationship, he only imagines talking about “their deepest secrets” (Line 16) when they have escaped the bowl, but he does not talk with her about these secrets. Some typically masculine stereotypes depict men as the uncommunicative gender, especially when juxtaposed against the more stereotypically communicative female gender.

At the same time, the female goldfish uses her anthropomorphized sexuality to attract the male goldfish and to hold his interest.