These final lines of "Leda and the Swan" are of utmost importance in understanding the poem as a whole. They present to the reader a question, not rhetorical as its predecessors in the second stanza, but one that must be answered by the reader.
Leda here is completely "mastered" by Zeus' inherent "power" as God and as a male entity, and it seems that her struggles have indeed been futile, but Yeats does not end it at that, although he easily could have. Instead, Yeats wonders whether or not, in those harsh moments, Leda understood her role as Helen's mother, as the vessel of destruction and death in the future proposed by lines 10-11. Did she understand that it was she who must bear this physical and mental burden, she who must be and would be held accountable for her children, she who must bear the twisting of her story from one of rape and violence to one of love and lust?
This is the key to opening this subtle yet convoluted puzzle of a poem -- the true struggle is not a physical one as it is between Leda and her captor, but rather a metaphysical, metaphorical, and psychological one, grounded firmly in the societal norms of the time. Although this event is said to have happened far in the past, this male dominance is something that has permeated modern society long after its inception through Leda's encounter with the swan, and Yeats recognizes this in his unique rendition of "Leda and the Swan". Man is "indifferent" or ignorant of the struggles of women, who must bear the responsibility of reversing or equalizing this dominance that has too long rendered women all but powerless in the face of politics, domestic life, and nearly every aspect of their being. Interestingly, Yeats does not proclaim himself any different; his own poetry, spanning all periods of his writing, reflects his own tendency to objectify women or to place them in marginalized roles, such as "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" (see below for more examples). Instead of preaching any ideals he himself may hold, Yeats instead turns the reader into an active part of the poem, addressing them directly. The poem's meaning is thus altered strictly depending upon the reader -- poetry in its purest form.
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