Gwen Harwood and Judith Wright are two female poets who hold a celebrated place in Australian poetry and culture. Their poetry offers an insight into the representation gender differences to which a society consciously or unconsciously subscribes. Through symbol, juxtaposition and powerful imagery, Harwood and Wright demonstrate the subservience of women to men in ‘Burning Sappho’ (“Burning’) 1968 and “Eve to her Daughters” (‘Eve’) 1963, but Harwood suggests possible change in ‘Prize Giving’ (1963). All three poems illustrate the tendency of society to categorize the roles and expectations of the male and female, thus providing an insight into social history in regards to gender.
Wright and Harwood explore the duality of emotions that surrounds
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The juxtaposition of language when describing males and females compares the females’ resentment to the males’ privilege. In both poems, the men are unapologetically self-confident; Adam has “turned himself into God”, his actions and decisions are faultless and are often described as justified by strong and un-ambiguous phrases such as “he had to”, “he must” and “he refuses to.” This language harshly contrasts Eve’s uncertain phrases such as “I would suggest,” “I observed” and “Perhaps”. Similar is the contrast between language used by the female persona and her husband in ‘BS’. The speaker’s rampant and vivid fantasies are hidden “inside her smile”, “invisible inside their placid hostess” and “in her warm thighs”. Her thoughts and desires are hidden from society, behind facades and niceties. Juxtaposing this repression and silence is her husband who ‘calls [her]’ to satisfy his sexual desires without any qualms as to what she may want, and who is described as ‘rich in peace’. The two poets’ utilization of submissive language in describing the female gender mirrors the powerful, assertive words in describing their male counterparts. By placing the male gender on a higher grounding, this represents the way in which the patriarchal society has favoured this gender over the disempowered female, …show more content…
The empowerment often dismissed attributes such as emotion and femininity is symbolized by the references to hands throughout the poem. In the poem’s third stanza, Eisenbart attempts to mask his ostentatious disapproval of the ‘humble platform’ he has ‘graced’ by ‘composing’ the pose of ‘Rodin’s Thinker’ so as to exhibit the figure of sophistication. Yet he comes to yield, against his own volition, to the exuberance of this blooming ‘titian’-haired female. Combined with a ‘grin’, she mimics his actions, ‘her hand bent under her chin in mockery of his own’. The speaker and the girl laugh at the expense of the Professor. Later, she ‘summoned by arrogant hands’ the ‘fullness of all passion or despair’. Her character represents the wholesomeness of femininity. Her ‘arrogant hands’ represent an air of assurance in daring to command this music that is normally reserved for ‘masters’, allowing her to transcend supposed qualities of ‘age and power’. The harmony of melody that she produces represents the voice of femininity, speaking for the ‘passion and despair’ felt by the speaker and each of the girls in the room. There is no allocation of a name to this
The Harwood’s poem, ‘Boxing Day’ (2003), is centred on a mother, who is cleaning up after her children the day following Christmas. The mother figure in this poem is represented as a person who is ‘too tired to move’ and in this state, is reflecting on a life of past happiness she once may have enjoyed. In the opening stanza, the mother is portrayed as a traditional 1960’s housewife, ‘framed in the doorway: woman with a broom’, which reads almost as a position that carries a stigma for women being seen as more than just housewives to cook, clean and keep her family happy.
“Who am I?” is the question raised by Gwen Harwood in her poem, ‘Alter Ego’. Gwen Harwood’s poems explore societal positions and expectations of women in the 1950s which are derived from her own experiences. Though most of her poems have an underlying theme of grief, loss, love and the passing of time, which is explored through her reflecting on her childhood, some are also about self-discovery. ‘Alter Ego’ and ‘The Glass Jar’ are two examples of poems about self-discovery. The 1950s wasn’t the greatest era for female creativity, might it be art or literature which is why most artists and writers sold their material under male pseudonyms as did Gwen Harwood.
As the world progresses, attitudes and values constantly change, like the wind. Flowing through the depths of our inner morality and beliefs. Welcome back to another episode of Poetry Aloud, where I talk about poetry… aloud. Today I will be discussing how Victorian poets are able to illustrate this changeable nature of attitudes and values within their world through highlighting our most prevalent desires that unlock the true beast of humanity, thus exploring humanity’s transforming perspectives as society progresses. Letitia (La tee sha) Elizabeth Landon’s The Marriage Vow highlights
Throughout a collection of Gwen Harwood’s poems is the exploration of women during the 1950’s-90’s and their roles in society as it evolved in its acceptance of allowing a woman equal say in her identity. (struggling to end this essay)
Throughout history, women have struggled with, and fought against, oppression. They have been held back and weighed down by the sexist ideas of a male dominated society which has controlled cultural, economic and political ideas and structures. During the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s women became more vocal and rebuked sexism and the role that had been defined for them. Fighting with the powerful written word, women sought a voice, equality amongst men and an identity outside of their family. In many literary writings, especially by women, during the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s, we see symbols of oppression and the search for gender equality in society.
Much discrimination and misogyny still permeate our social stratosphere, but while reading written words one cannot help but to be placed in the author’s shoes, and therefore accept their words as our own. Cain writes, “Many of the texts written by women during this time reflect the idea that there are natural differences between the sexes. Usually a female narrator…privately addresses a mainly female audience about issues that might seem mainly to concern women” (825). Because the text is written in a female voice, the reading adapts themselves to that voice, and gives credit to the
This poem talks about more than just a woman's life, it uses metaphors and words with simple meanings to add up to something greater. One of the first words I felt this way about was the word hairy. The point I feel the poet was trying to get across was the character's masculinity. Real men are hairy; one knows what that first hair on a boy's chest means it means that they have finally reached manhood. Another thing that stands out is how she talks about safety is what all women want and what all men are suppose to provide. Their duty is to provide and take care of their wives. So it sounds to me that Adam was keeping up his end of the bargain, so what was the problem? It sounds to me that Lilith needed some adventure. Maybe she was tired of cooking and cleaning and being a good wife while Adam got to go out and work.
However, Gawain's journey away from Camelot and back is framed by references, in the first and last stanzas, to the journeys into exile of Aeneas and of Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, that complicate this apparent opposition. As this paper will argue, this framework complicates the poem's presentation of gender and sexuality. Rather than a clear opposition between, say, marital sexuality and everything else, we find a situation in which potentially adulterous acts and kisses among men are vested with varied--and shifting--values. The poem uses references to the (imagined) British past to complicate any simple reading of the tale it tells in terms of sexual morality or transgression.1
As insinuated through her poem’s title, “A Double Standard,” Frances Harper examines a double standard imposed by societal norms during the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the different effects this standard foisted upon those of different genders. Harper’s poem is narrated by a woman who has been derided by society for her involvement in a sexual scandal, all while her male counterpart experiences no repercussions. By describing how her situation involving the scandal advances, delineating the backlash she receives for her participation, and reflecting on the ludicrously hypocritical nature of the situation, the speaker discloses the lack of control women had over their lives, and allows for the reader to ponder the inequity of female oppression at the turn of the 19th century.
Beton discovers men’s anger toward women by glancing through an apparently well-known Professor von X’s book titled The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex. The mere title makes her angry—outraged that the words could even form the title of a book, which, to Beton, is the natural response to “be[ing] told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man” (32). She does not know at first why men are so critical of women, but she does know that their arguments say more about them than they do about the women they write about. The books “had been written in the red light of emotion,” she says, “and not in the white light of truth” (33), meaning that the men Beton speaks of are responding to something—some feeling or condition that they, as a sex identifying with one another, are sensing, rather than merely expressing a natural fact as their rhetoric seems to suggest.
During the Victorian Era, society had idealized expectations that all members of their culture were supposedly striving to accomplish. These conditions were partially a result of the development of middle class practices during the “industrial revolution… [which moved] men outside the home… [into] the harsh business and industrial world, [while] women were left in the relatively unvarying and sheltered environments of their homes” (Brannon 161). This division of genders created the ‘Doctrine of Two Spheres’ where men were active in the public Sphere of Influence, and women were limited to the domestic private Sphere of Influence. Both genders endured considerable pressure to conform to the idealized status of becoming either a masculine ‘English Gentleman’ or a feminine ‘True Woman’. The characteristics required women to be “passive, dependent, pure, refined, and delicate; [while] men were active, independent, coarse …strong [and intelligent]” (Brannon 162). Many children's novels utilized these gendere...
...ive to males. This in itself indicates a gender expectation on the part of the reader, one that predisposes the reader to disbelieve and should lead us all to re-examine our motivations in deconstructing the text. Moreover, females and males alike colored Charlotte’s adaptation to her circumstances with a movement from a female role to a male role as if gender roles were intractable and binding from both the male and female points of view -- she wouldn’t be able to do it, despite the fact that quite possibly her own survival dictated she probably could have not done otherwise! Once again, logic dictates that we at least acknowledge that our inability to accept Charlotte’s account could be more of a reflection of our gender expectations than her twisting of the truth.
Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex: a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
To what extent does Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Medusa’ challenge stereotypical masculine and feminine attributes?