255 lines
16 KiB
Plaintext
255 lines
16 KiB
Plaintext
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w _____ ____ 1 4 222 "Patriachalism, Progeny and Pain: w
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D // | \ 11 44 2 Adrienne Rich and the Prison D
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* || ____ | || | 1 444 222 of Marriage" by fastjack *
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G || || \ / | || | 1 4 2 issue #142 of "GwD: The American Dream G
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w \\___// \/\/ |____/ 111 4 222 with a Twist -- of Lime" * rel 05/05/05 w
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"Snapshot of a Daughter-in-Law" is Adrienne Rich's poem of the burden of
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domesticity and the feelings of helplessness she suffered through during her
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marriage. Rich examines her marriage through her poetry to give herself the
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voice she lacked as a mother of three and homemaker in the 1950's. Rich
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herself recounts the experience in _Arts of the Possible_ by saying "I had a
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sense that women didn't talk to each other much in the fifties-not about their
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secret emptiness, their frustrations" (Rich 19-20). Her writing throughout
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1958-60 in "Snapshots" was "...a longer looser mode than I'd ever trusted
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myself with before" (Rich 23). Outside of the realm of traditional formality
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in her verse, such as that used in "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" she was able to
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express frustration in a more compelling, more truthful way. The poem moves
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through several parts, 10 "stanzas" in all and explores a variety of themes.
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Stanza 1 is about loss of beauty and tradition. Rich's voice in this seems to
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be addressing herself and her mother simultaneously. She speaks of "You,
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once a belle in Shreveport with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
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still have your dresses copied from that time" (Rich 1-3). Her mother, a
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southern belle, is unable to leave behind the traditions of old. Her dresses
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remain fixed, flowing antebellum styles that emphasized femininity through use
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of binding corsetry, awkward shoes and acres of lace. Her mother's skin was
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like that of a peach flower and surely like that of a peach, easily bruised,
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needing to be carried softly in padded containers, wary of bruising from the
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sharp edges of the world.
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In the second and third parts of stanza 1, Rich's voice seems to speak
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more of her present situation. She moves from the past of her mother's life
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and into hers, still keeping her mother involved. Her mother's mind "molders
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like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumor,
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fantasy" (Rich 7-9), bringing to mind parlors of southern women gossiping
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about who did what at the latest cotillion or box social. Those days are
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gone, yet surely her mother remembers all the whispered half-truths, giggled
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innuendos that marked southern social life. More than her mother however,
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Rich is "crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime
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of your life" (Rich 10-11). Both Rich and her mother should be in the prime
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of their life, her mother causally remembering the gold of her past, while
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Rich should be enjoying her role as a mother and homemaker. Both of them
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instead are cut by that "knife edge" that is the reality of "mere fact".
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Instead of being able to enjoy what she has accomplished according to societal
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norms, the poet has become nervous and angry in her repetition of daily
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chores, doing the dishes and going her own way in the last two lines of
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stanza 1.
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Stanza 2 takes on a decidedly darker note. It is filled with imagery of
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depression, self-mutilation, schizophrenia and disassociation. The poetry
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begins with the daughter-in-law "Banging the coffee-pot in the sink" (Rich 14)
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like a child slamming doors to express rage at its parents that cannot be
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articulated. Immediately "she hears the angels chiding" (Rich 15) her to do
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things that are decidedly un-angelic. Rich's angels command her to be
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selfish, to give in to lust and gluttony and to forgo her care for others as
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she is the only one worth saving. They tell her to cast off the shackles of
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marriage and run to be truly free.
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Hearing angels could be seen as an entry into a dissociative state, which is
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characteristic of deteriorating mental health. These dissociative states are
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"an altered state of consciousness akin to physical and emotional anesthesia"
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(Strong 2) and are often characteristic when the sufferer feels powerless or
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out of control of their life. Rich writes "Sometimes she's let the tapstream
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scald her arm, / a match burn to her thumbnail, / or held her hand above the
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kettle's snout / right in the wooly steam." (Rich 20-3). The infliction of
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physical pain is common as a method to control mental anguish. Researcher
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Armando Favassa argues "Cutting...gives people a way to manage inner
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states, converting chaos to calm, powerlessness to control" (Strong 43).
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Self-mutilation, like poetry, is a secret language; difficult to understand or
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comprehend from the outside without training in finding meaning. Stanza 2
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ends with Rich noting that the only part of her that retains the capability of
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feeling pain is her eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul, the witnesses
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to her station in life, the way she is able to observe her loss of feeling and
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self and yet the pain they feel is that of irritation caused by grit, not the
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deeper pain she knows in inside of her.
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Stanza 3 changes gears into a meditation about nightmares, reproductive
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freedom, female empowerment and internecine conflict between women. Rich
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states, "A thinking woman sleeps with monsters" (Rich 36). The thinking she
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does during the day when performing domestic duties has begun to bleed over
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into her dreams. Her subconscious is now at the fore and the monsters she
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sublimates during the day are able to move freely throughout her sleeping
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hours. "The beak that grips her, she becomes" (Rich 37) brings to mind the
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mouths of baby birds feeding from the beak of their mother. Those beaks, her
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children, become the ties that bind and hold her in the nest unable to fly
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free as a bird can.
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Reproductive rights and the ability of a woman to control her destiny as she
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would her womb surface in line 31. The reader sees "the female pills, the
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terrible breasts" (Rich 31) and knows that it talks about motherhood. This
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line has some interesting parallels with Eliot's _The Wasteland_, wherein two
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women speak: "It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. / (She's had
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five already, and nearly died of young George.) / The chemist said it would be
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all right, but I've never been the / same" (Eliot 159-62). Is Rich speaking
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of abortion and breast milk that would never be drunk by a child? More likely
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she is speaking of Norethindrone, the first female contraceptive invented two
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years before "Snapshots" was started, and which gave women an unprecedented
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amount of sexual freedom. When Austrian-American Carl Jerassi created
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"The Pill," he gave women control over the thing that had been the
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responsibility of men: pregnancy.
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Rich takes female empowerment themes farther with her invocation of Boadicea
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in line 32. Boadicea, the legendary female warrior who led her people in
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revolt against Gaius Caligula, a sexually depraved and corrupt man, is
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pictured crouching beneath orchids and foxheads. The warrior woman's power is
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concealed beneath a decidedly feminine floral arrangement. The ability of a
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woman to be powerful is further evidenced in the translation of Bodicea's
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name: She who brings victory.
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From her examination of what could be possible for a woman to achieve Rich
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shows the reader what she sees currently among women: "Two handsome women,
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gripped in argument, / each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream / across the
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cut glass and majolica / like Furies cornered from their prey" (Rich 33-6).
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Women, who have so much power hidden under the orchids of potential fail to
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use it, instead they squabble and bicker. Ad feminam is defined as "Appealing
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to irrelevant personal considerations concerning women, especially
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prejudices," and Rich brings the point home to her readers. She takes the
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knives that other women have stabbed her in the back with and drives them
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right back into the source. There seems to be puzzlement in Rich's voice in
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stanza 3, comparing women to Furies and noting that the knives they stab one
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another with are rusted, which is indicative of old fights. The last lines of
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the poem further underline this as Rich calls women "ma semblable, ma souer!"
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(Rich 39), (my similar, my sisters) is a desperate cry to unity.
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The author continues on in this vein in stanza 4, with the admission that
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women, and Rich herself see this disunity in each other. That women know the
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gifts that lie dormant in them fail to come to fruition is a spiritual thorn,
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continually being sharpened by frustration. Rich knows that in herself as
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well as others they remain tied to domestic tasks, sedentary lifestyles
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"Reading while waiting/ for the iron to heat, / writing" (Rich 43-4) and
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failing to strike while the iron is hot, when change should happen. The
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reader would be remiss not to notice that what Rich is writing is "My Life has
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stood-a Loaded Gun-" (Rich 45), and that she is like that loaded gun: Ready
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to go off and cause damage, to burst free as bullet leaves a chamber. Jellies
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that sit static in a pantry, yet still have the energy to boil and scum, to
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continue chemical reactions and putrefy, emphasize the motion implied in the
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gun. The writer is "iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird" (Rich 48) to
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show again that she wants to fly free, but instead continues to be weighted
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with the tedium of "dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life"
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(Rich 49).
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Stanza 5 is a short stanza about what Rich is supposed to do, and what she is
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supposed to present to the world: she is supposed to have a sweet smile and a
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sweet laugh, to shave her legs to be beautiful to her husband. The act of
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shaving makes her legs shine like a mammoth tusk, and like a mammoth tusk she
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should be as delicate and unreachable as a museum exhibit. She is also a
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prisoner of the old concepts of groomed beauty as surely as the tusk is a
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prisoner of the velvet ropes that hold it on a pedestal.
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Stanza 6 gives Rich's feminine side a chance to shine through. In the first
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part she shows us Corinna who is able to play the lute. Corinna is Rich, with
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her gift of music equaling Rich's gift for words. Of course the gift, the
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power of this talent is still seen in a man's eye. Her gift is a pale
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imitation of what men are. "...Corinna, following in the footsteps of men,
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cannot call her music her own, just as a woman writer attempting to imitate
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the masters denies her own literary voice" (Dixon 3).
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Rich continues to use a bird as a symbol showing it "Poised, trembling and
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unsatisfied, before / and unlocked door, that cage of cages," (Rich 60-1) and
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although the door is not bolted it forms a prison nonetheless. Her
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"fertilisante douleur", her pain is absolute and paralyzing and she is kept
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there by preconceived ideas of "love" and "natural action". Nature has shown
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her the household books, the ledgers of what should be done that she never
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bothered to show to men, and this knowledge continues to hold Rich, no matter
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how she struggles or hurts.
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Stanza 7 begins with a quotation by "a woman" that Rich does not name. The
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reader could assume that it is the voice of Rich taken from outside the poem
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to make a point. The quotation tells the reader that one must have something
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rock solid to cling to in life, in order to make it bearable. The author had
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her life as a housewife, but it was her life as a writer that she was able to
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keep as something that was the bedrock of life. Rich, by remaining in her
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life of domestic toil is only partly brave or good and understands only part
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of her world. She is conflicted by her desire to fly and the need to stay as
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taught by society. Rich, however, in trying to reconcile these two parts of
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her soul is trying to understand her life whereas "Few men about her would or
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could do more," (Rich 75). The backlash because she tries to understand and
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make vocal her problems with this life causes those outside of her to label
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her with hateful names.
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Rich begins stanza 8 with a quote, presumably from _Enlightenment_ writer
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Denis Diderot. In it Diderot states that she/women will die at fifteen which
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was considered a marriageable age for young women. Eyes, the window to the
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soul, are being closed and then blanketed with steam. The eyes are obscured
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in two ways, doubling the sense of loss that Rich must have felt at the time.
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She goes on to write that "all that we might have been,/ all that we
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were-fire, tears, wit, taste, martyred ambition-" (Rich 81-3). These fine
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things are tamped down in order to make a new life with a man, but still they
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stir at the bottom of memory, waiting to come to the fore of life. The
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daughter-in-law has sacrificed her ambition and passions to the "normal" life
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that she was always told to have, and this becomes more apparent as mid-life
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with flagging and possibly sagging bosom reminds her of what was.
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Stanza 9 gives the reader further insight into Rich's conception of the male
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dominated world. Even time is a male, prone to slip into his cups while
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looking at women as invalids or saluting only their beauty, never their minds.
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Their body is what matters to time and history although their bodies are weak,
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only for display. Time only praises half-hearted attempts by women and sees
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them as slatterns who are to be forgiven for simple transgressions. Of
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course, as Rich is quick to point out, those who dare to cast off that mold or
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to strike out on their own must fear retribution. The author brings the
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horrors of war into the household as graphic examples of what waits for women
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who "cast too bold a shadow", confinement, tear gas, shelling. It is
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interesting that Rich uses as punishment those things that men typically use
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against other men, taking the post World War II violence that many of them may
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have brought home with them and opening the home makers life to them.
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"Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" ends with Rich giving in to some of her
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thoughts of escapism and perhaps a small jibe at the longer form she used in
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the poem. It begins with "Well, / she's long about her coming, who must be /
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more merciless to herself than history" (Rich 108-10). The poem draws to a
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close and Rich is telling the reader that she is the one who has to deal with
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all of these conflicting emotions, and that nothing history can say about her
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will ever equal the conclusions she had to reach by herself. One startling
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shift in her voice is the change from a bird wanting to be free to a
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helicopter. The reader could see a bird gracefully flapping to gain altitude
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and fly away whereas a helicopter literally beats the air into submission with
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its rotors. A helicopter flies not by working within the natural realm as
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birds to, but by rising through sheer force. A helicopter is a mechanized,
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powerful, masculine thing. Rich's cargo is not a nebulous promise but
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something real and concrete, that can be held and delivered. Most importantly
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she calls the promise "ours" (Rich 122) showing that she was able to escape
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and so can other women.
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-Works Cited-
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Bunch, Bryan. _The History of Science and Technology: A browser's guide to
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the great discoveries inventions and the people who made them from the
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dawn of time to today_. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004. (p 565).
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Eliot, T.S. _The Wasteland_. Michael North ed. New York: Norton Critical
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Editions, 2001.
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Miller, Dusty. _Women who Hurt Themselves: A book of Hope and
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Understanding_. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
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Rich, Adrienne. _Arts of the Possible_. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.,
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2001.
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Scott, Manda. _Dreaming the Eagle_. New York: Bantam Dell, 2003.
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Southam, B.C. _A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot_ sixth ed.
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Orlando: Harcourt and Brace, 1996.
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Strong, Marilee. _A Bright Red Scream: Self Mutilation and the language of
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pain_. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
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--- -- - -- --- -- - -- --- -- - -- --- -- - -- ---
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Issue#142 of "GwD: The American Dream with a Twist -- of Lime" ISSN 1523-1585
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copyright (c) MMV fastjack/GwD Publications /---------------\
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copyright (c) MMV GwD, Inc. All rights reserved :EAT YOUR FINGER:
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a production of The GREENY world DOMINATION Task Force, Inc. : GwD :
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Postal: GwD, Inc. - P.O. Box 16038 - Lubbock, Texas 79490 \---------------/
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FYM -+- http://www.GREENY.org/ - editor@GREENY.org - submit@GREENY.org -+- FYM
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