"The Harlem Dancer" Analysis Continued...

Here's my analysis for the next four lines of "The Harlem Dancer":

As the poem progresses, the dancer starts to embody elegance rather than the distaste one would expect of a night club dancer. She is “graceful and calm,” showing that she isn’t part of the excitement around her. In fact, her calmness suggests that she is physically, but not psychologically, in the night club. The dancer is also depicted as wearing “light gauze,” a translucent material that is often used to wrap up wounds. The wearing of gauze could symbolize the presence of emotional wounds. The speaker elaborates on the dancer’s wounds after the seventh line. To the speaker, the dancer was a palm tree, strong and able, and was “lovelier for passing through a storm,” as the dancer became more beautiful through the hardships she faced. The gauze mentioned earlier may represent covering up the wounds from her past suffering. Another contrast is established as the reader learns that the speaker appreciates the dancer for her inner strength while the audience values her for her outward beauty.