Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask” first appeared in his 1895 collection, Majors and Minors. This title references the volume’s overall split between two groups of poems. Whereas Dunbar wrote one group in standard English (the “majors”), he wrote another group in dialect (the “minors”). With its very traditional use of the English language, “We Wear the Mask” clearly belongs to the “major” group of poems. In addition to using rigorously standard English, Dunbar chose to write the poem as a rondeau (pronounced RON-DOE, with equal stress on each syllable). Like the villanelle, the rondeau follows relatively strict schemes for both meter and rhyme. Also like the villanelle, the rondeau involves a refrain that repeats at designated points in the poem. In “We Wear the Mask,” Dunbar uses the structural rigidity of the rondeau to mirror the poem’s metaphor of the mask, the rigid expression of which helps sustains an illusion of emotional stability. The speaker describes how the marginalized community to which they belong has long worn a metaphorical mask. They wear the mask to conceal their vulnerability from the larger society that has oppressed them. Doing so enables them to preserve their dignity, but it doesn’t alleviate their suffering.

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