Conscientious Objector

Edna St. Vincent Millay, called Vincent by her sister Norma and others who knew her as part of the Greenwich Village scene, is often categorized with other LGBT+ poets like Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore. According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Dickinson and Millay’s “encoded lesbian content can be understood through a combination of extant biographical evidence [...] and a knowledge of homoerotic tropes created by or available to the poets in their lifetimes” (797). Millay was openly bisexual, especially during her time in Greenwich Village. Furthermore, the Princeton Encyclopedia editors describe how Millay, Moore, and other female poets published “poetry that challenged traditional gender conventions, demanded or predicted greater rights for women, protested patriarchal oppression, and asserted women’s empowerment” (481).

“Conscientious Objector” was published during the interwar period between World War I and World War II, and reflects tropes seen in other literary works from this era. For instance, the tropes of patriarchal oppression and masculinity associated with war can be found in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, which was published 10 years prior to “Conscientious Objector.” The interwar period also saw the development of other modes of art aligning soldiers with

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