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The scene depicted in William Waring Cuney’s poem—a woman at the sink toiling away amid stacks of greasy plates in the kitchen of a city diner—hardly promises beauty. That is the thematic thrust of the poem. It is not the beauty of the woman, as the poem offers no physical description of the woman. Rather, the poem reveals how completely unacknowledged that beauty is to that woman. How easy, the speaker cautions, for people to allow themselves to be diminished by their environment. 

The poem, then, plays a thematic variation on the adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The speaker sees what the character does not: her beauty. The woman of color washing dishes in the restaurant kitchen “does not know / her beauty” (Lines 1-2). She does not see what the speaker sees. 

The tragedy in the poem, then, is the woman’s lack of perception. Beauty is not the issue. Seeing beauty is at the emotional core of the poem. The poem challenges the reader to disregard what so cripples the woman’s perception: the circumstances of her working-class life, the menial work, the dingy kitchen, the crowded streets outside. The speaker challenges the reader to see what the poet sees, the grandeur, the delight, the sheer glory of this immigrant woman washing dishes, a beauty that cannot be limited or defined by the conditions of her life.