What Kind of Woman

Song Meaning

The song opens with a stark, spoken-word scene of a distressed mother and child discovering a newborn, immediately establishing a tone of crisis and confusion. The initial sung lines, "What kind of woman / Would do such a thing?" are directed outward, questioning the actions of another. This sets up a dramatic irony, as the subsequent lyrics reveal the speaker's own complicity and desperation, hinting at a profound personal crisis that mirrors the external one. The central tension arises from the speaker's self-recrimination and her struggle to reconcile her actions with societal expectations. She questions her husband's absence and her own naivete, lamenting his "lists" that offered no practical guidance for her overwhelming situation. The lyrics suggest a profound sense of abandonment and a feeling of being ill-equipped to handle a crisis, leading her to question her own identity as a woman and a wife. A striking element is the contrast between the speaker's initial judgment of an unnamed "woman" and her eventual realization of her own similar desperation. The repeated phrase "What kind of woman" shifts from an external accusation to an internal, agonizing self-interrogation. The imagery of "maids" and "hired help" with their own lives beyond the speaker's suggests a dawning awareness of the complex realities of others, a empathy that seems to emerge from her own profound suffering. This song's power lies in its raw, confessional tone and the way it unravels the speaker's identity through her crisis. The shift from judging another to confronting her own actions creates a deeply human portrait of desperation and regret. The lyrics effectively use spoken dialogue and sung introspection to build a narrative of profound emotional turmoil, leaving the listener to ponder the circumstances that drive someone to such desperate measures.