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In “Crumble-Hall,” Leapor does not simply follow the literary conventions of the upper-class country house poem, rather she significantly rewrites them based on her identity as woman and laborer. For this reason, “Crumble-Hall” becomes the site of struggles in gender and class. By assigning Mira, a maid, the role of guiding the visitors through the inside of Crumble-Hall, Leapor criticizes the master of the house who neglects his social responsibility. Also by addressing readers’ attention to the laborers in the house, Leapor emphasizes that their hard labor makes possible the convenience and comfort the master of house enjoys. However, the feminine, maternal and working-class values Leapor suggests in the poem are not strong enough to become an alternative to the patriarchal and hierarchical authority that pervades Crumble-Hall. This reflects the artistic and social situations a working-class woman poet, like Leapor, faces in the male-dominant hierarchical contemporary society.
