Gwen Harwood’s poetry is very powerful for its ability to question the social conventions of its time, positioning the reader to see things in new ways. During the 1960’s, a wave of feminism swept across Australian society, challenging the dominant patriarchal ideologies of the time. Gwen Harwood’s poems ‘Burning Sappho’ and ‘Suburban Sonnet’ are two texts that challenge the dominant image of the happy, gentle, but ultimately subservient housewife. Instead, ‘Burning Sappho’ is powerful in constructing the mother as violent to reject the restraints placed on her by society, whilst Suburban Sonnet addresses the mental impact of the female gender’s confinement to the maternal and domestic sphere. Harwood employs a range of language and …show more content…
Instead, the alliteration of “pours prussic acid” presents sharp diction to emphasise the concept of violence in regards to the mother. As a result, the reader is positioned to reassess the image of the caring, gentle mother, instead seeing the resulting emotionally repressed women as a direct reaction to the constraints placed on her gender. Language and imagery plays a dramatic role in portraying relationships and feelings/thoughts of the persona. Whilst in ‘Burning Sappho,’ the mother’s attitude towards tasks is portrayed as emotionless (“the child is fed, the dishes are washed, the clothes are ironed and aired,”), language is utilised within ‘Suburban Sonnet’ to construct the mother’s mental state and situation as dire. “Zest and Love drain out with soapy water.” The use of two personal, passionate adjectives and the depiction of them being physically overcome by soapy water directly link the mother’s loss of feelings and fiery emotion to the household chores and duties. For example, she “scours crusted milk,” as a part of her role as mother and housewife as the reader is positioned to reject this requirement as a result of the huge impact to her quality of life (“Veins ache”). The literal image of a dead mouse symbolises the mother’s situation as the ‘soft corpse’ directly represents the mother, that is, emotionally dead as a result of the entrapment by society. The reader is positioned to fully
Gwen Harwood poems such as The Glass Jar and Prize-Giving illuminate concerns fundamental to human experience including life, death, spirituality and human fall from innocence explored abstractly through the prism of childhood experience. The use of binary opposites, metaphors, similes, musical motifs and biblical allusions allow for a multiplicity of responses and readings highlighting mythological, psychological, Freudian and feminist interpretation.
Female roles in society have often been minute. In Jewett’s “A White Heron” and Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother”, Sylvia and Mother demonstrate feminine empowerment. These two prominent female protagonists overcome the male influence in their life and society. Both defy social expectations of women and the obstacles that come with it. The authors express this through their similar use of symbolism and alienation. Jewett and Freeman use different examples of poverty, the motivation of society, and speech in their stories.
Sonja Livingston is a talented and unique young writer who uses an unusual structure in her work. Structure is the form that an author’s writing takes; how the sentences are formed and how they are placed together to create the work. In Ghostbread, her award-winning novel, Ms. Livingstone uses a freeform chapter structure that, while roughly in chronological order, is not necessarily linear. In chapter 3, Ms. Livingston speaks of her father, “I had no father” (6), and then in chapter 4 she speaks of a childhood friend, “My favorite person should have been Carol Johnson.” (7) Through the course of the book, Ms. Livingston chronicles her life from birth to age 18, but it is not a strict telling; she meanders and explores events as they are remembered, not bound by a rigid timeline. The structure of her work is unconventional and through that unconventional structure she gives the reader an experience that is more like poetry than a conventional novel. Towards the end of Ghostbread, Ms. Livingston contemplates the effect that her miscarriage and the revelation of her sexual activity will have on her relationship with her mother with this passage, “Sex. Pregnancy. Men. What were they to her? Failure? Freedom? Power? Paths she followed, but did not prescribe. At least not aloud.” (212). The use of partial sentences and imagery are elements commonly associated with poetry and it gives
Gwen Harwood’s, ‘Father and child’, is a two-part poem that tempers a child’s naivety to her matured, grown up attitude. Barn Owl presents a threshold in which the responder is able to witness the initiation of Gwen’s transition. The transformation is achieved through her didactical quest for wisdom, lead by her childhood naivety and is complimented through ‘nightfall’, where we see her fully maturate state. The importance of familial relationship and parental guidance is explored in father and child, as well as the contrasting views on mortality and death. Barn Owl depicts death as a shocking and violent occurrence while the second poem, nightfall, displays that death can be accepted, describing the cyclical and
Gwen Harwood’s poetry endures to engage readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation. Gwen Harwood’s seemingly ironic simultaneous examination of the personal and the universal is regarded as holding sufficient textual integrity that it has come to resonate with a broad audience and a number of critical perspectives. This is clearly evident within her poems ‘At Mornington’ and ‘A Valediction’, these specific texts have a main focus on motif that once innocence is lost it cannot be reclaimed, and it is only through appreciating the value of what we have lost that we can experience comfort and achieve growth.
The author displays Estrella’s emotions using figurative language in this excerpt. For instance, the phrase “the face of a crumpled up Kleenex and a nose like a hook” shows how at first Estrella’s thoughts were childlike. On the other hand, the phrase “weighed the significance it awarded her” shows Estrella’s newfound maturity, understanding, and appreciation. Figurative language exhibits the advancement of the character’s development. As a result, the reader can see a drastic change in the character comparing the two phrases that contained figurative
This shows that, although the worth of these objects was measly, they seemed to fill up the whole table, and in a way the narrator’s world. The narrator describes her mother’s appearance as having “tightly braided hair turning white” and convey that her mother has endured much hardship throughout her life. She also uses words such as “flung”, “crowds”, and “quick” to describe her mother’s actions, suggesting a sense of fervor and urgency when it came to handling
Loss is one of the central ideas presented in Gwen Harwood’s reflective sonnet, “In the Park” and W. H Auden’s elegy, “Stop all the Clocks”. Harwood’s poem provides readers with a glimpse into the life of a struggling woman who has lost her identity to motherhood, and this grief contrasts Auden’s narrator who is anguished at the death of his lover.
Throughout history, Australian has always been perceived as a land of men. This is due to the colonization of Australian during the eighteen and nineteen century, where men are seen inferior to women. They also are domesticated within the house duties that the society has influence because of their gender. Although, Henry Lawson “the drover wife” and The Chosen Vessel” by Barbara Baynton challenges the Australian society through Australian literature by placing women in harsh environments. The drover wife is short stories about women who face the new obsolesce while living within the harsh environments. The Chosen Vessel has a similar aspect of the drover wife but the lead female experience the harness of the environment, which lead to her death. Both women display their own straights and heroics while facing their fears, through their selfless action. They are both portrayed of women of the bush but their fate had stored different outcome for both women. This essay will examine both the drover wife and the chosen vessel both contain a simple plot, but it expands on many issues of gender expectation and domesticated within the household role of the expectation of women. It will also examine the religious aspect of the historical narrative that has been seen within both bush stories.
Nancy Bayley was a key player in the study of child development throughout her long career. Nancy was born September 1899 in the Dalles, Oregon. Bayley did not go to public school until she was eight years old due to poor health. When she did start school, she was able to catch up very quickly. She attended the University of Washington with plans on teaching English. She took an introductory psychology course taught by Edwin R. Guthrie, a well-known behavioral psychologist, which sparked her interest in the field and she decided to continue studying psychology. She completed and received both her bachelor of science and master or science degrees in psychology at the university of Washington. In 1926 she had her master’s thesis published in Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology. Also in 1926 Bayley acquired her doctorate from the university of Iowa. With her doctorate, she decided to further her research on mental and physical growth and early mental abilities. Bayley’s career spanned over 60 years, where she worked on many well-known studies of development.
The maternal melodrama derives from several late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth- century theatrical proto-types. Although there are many narrative variants, the basic plot concerns a mother who is suspected of adultery and expelled from her home, thereby becoming separated from her children. She suffers degradation, sometimes becoming a drug addict or a prostitute. After a long period of separation, she again encounters her children who do not recognize her. (INSERT MLA)
Written Case #1: Vera Bradley in 2014: Will the Company’s Strategy Reverse Its Downward Trend?
The modernist movement’s portrayal of alternate perceptions of reality is a response to the violence that corrupts the twentieth century. The repercussions of several wars inspire citizens to rebel against traditional standards of morality, necessitating for artistic reformation. The movement includes diverse female writers who evaluate experiences with gender inequality to reinvent literature. Hilda Doolittle is the archetype of modern writers; Her rebellious, experimental identity emits independence and originality. She expresses the subjugation of the female sex by utilizing abstract literary techniques. In the poem “Helen,” Doolittle manipulates the parts of speech to exploit the
Describing her battle between self-contentment and societal approval as “a melding of shapes in a hot rain” (‘The Eye-Mote’ -1959) – a metaphor illustrating disorientation – Plath displays her fatal struggle to accept her assigned role. Read universally as the contemporary futility of womanhood, Plath echoes the words of the feminist, Chandra Nisha Singh, who by arguing that ‘hegemonic indoctrination’ and the ‘conventional and inevitable marriage plot’ leads to the sacrifice of women’s ‘felt desires’ and ‘character innovations’, conveys that female domesticity is destructive. Similarly, in ‘Morning Song’, Plath “[stands] around blankly as [a wall]”; the passive, empty adverb “blankly” recertifying this notion of individual loss. Although the personal focus of her poetry may be interpreted as a premeditated attempt at the 1970s feminist movement in which the feminist argument switched from ‘attacking male versions of the world to exploring the nature of the female world’ [P. Barry], Plath’s exemplification of her lost self-value displays instead the inflexibility of the patriarchal reestablishment. As the post-war focus returned to marriage and domesticity, women lost hope as their new rights appeared to vanish. Describing the experience as “the wind gagging [her] mouth” (‘The Rabbit Catcher’ – 1965), the epitome of
ABSTRACT: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962) occupies a distinct place among Georgian poets. His name is associated with such poets as Rupert Brooke, Edward Marsh, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon. He has written a large number of poems on diverse themes like nature, love, unemployment and the sufferings of common people, old age and childhood. Besides, the plight of women also gets expression in some of his poems like “Agatha Steel,” “The Operation,” “The Call,” “The Wound” and many others. “The House of Candles” is such a poem that deals with the predicament of a woman in bearing an illegitimate child. Man and woman are equally responsible for the act of sexual intercourse out of wedlock. If this mating results in pregnancy of woman, it cannot be called an act of chance or accident. Unfortunately, society is of two minds towards female sexuality and in such circumstances women are blamed and all the punishment and criticism are meted upon them. No one cares for the man who is responsible for such condition of a woman. In fact, the society is real culprit for the predicament of women. In this article, an attempt has been made to discuss Gibson’s “The House of Candles” from the