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  • Essay / Feminism and Gender Roles Presented by Hilda Doolittle

    Hilda “HD” Doolittle uses highly allusive imagistic poetry to redefine gender roles and contradict the characterization of women as delicate and fragile. HD draws inspiration from ancient Greek literature to integrate strong, non-traditionally feminine women into its own current culture and reinscribe traditionally feminine figures - Helen of Troy, the Roses or Mother Mary - into tougher, more masculine roles. Her poems, full of natural images, use Whitmanian elements to say that women must flee to the natural world to rid themselves of their feminine role. Additionally, her style draws inspiration from classical modernism, defined by TS Eliot's “Tradition in Individual Talent,” as it confronts ancient traditions and customs regarding religion and the status of women. HD's "Wash of Cold River" blends harsh natural images with classic archetypes of female fragility as well as Greek and Christian allusions, deifying nature and human experience in a Whitmanian style and following the critique of "Traditional in Individual Talent” by TS Eliot. and the reinvention of the traditional religious order, ultimately apotheosizing a newly hardened idea of ​​femininity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIn “Wash of Cold River,” HD depicts a unique image of the natural world blending “delicate” femininity and “icy” harshness and , thus assimilating classically paradoxical ideas. Starting from the antithetised description of a "cold river in a glacial land" filled with hot, Greek "Ionian water", HD immediately mixes two natural opposites, creating the forefront of mixing abstract and artificial ideas. HD places "delicate flowers...with the texture of camellia..." -- a common symbol of femininity -- in this harsh landscape and describes them as "frozen", metaphorically redefining the status of woman and emphasizing the freedom of action of the natural world. furthermore, the poem describes hybrid river flowers as "colder than a rose", separating them from the archetype of pure femininity and beauty, showing that classically feminine women will not necessarily change themselves, but that a new type of woman is emerging. . This very theme is reiterated as HD moves from the flower of the river to the flower of the wind, asserting that it "retains not only the breath of the north wind" but that it retains "no other" . Rather than "freezing" a feminine, "delicate" flower and, as such, simply adding harsh, "cold" characteristics, the "wind flower" is instead imbued with non-feminine characteristics, creating a whole new type of woman. By blending archetypes of the feminine with descriptions of toughness and toughness, all in the natural world, HD contrasts and reinvents the meaning of femininity in modern society. Having confronted and reinvented the traditions and customs of the modern world, HD draws inspiration from both Whitman's deification of the natural world and "Tradition and Individual Talent"'s call for poetry as a new religion, venerating the figure of the new feminism that she creates in “Wash”. of Cold River. After describing and constructing the image of flowers as an example of hybrid femininity, the image begins to take human form, developing "intimate hands and thoughts." But, rather than becoming a woman, she becomes a "rare, beautiful, pure" but "unattainable" statue, a copy of the real idol - suggesting that this example of extravagant femininity cannot exist in the real world but must be imagined through “pure rapture” or assent to heaven. This idea that such.