Born Gwendoline Nessie Foster on 8 June 1920 into a self-sufficient family that was full of music, philosophy, religion and language, Gwen had many early influences in her childhood that were clearly going to have an effect on her later life. Gwen's family had strong connections with music and it became a very important part of her life, causing her to aspire to become a musician. Gwen's grandmother introduced her to poetry and she began to write her own in the 1950's. Soon after, she learnt the German language to establish a wider reading of poetry and involve the language in her own works. Gwen married a linguist named William Harwood in 1945 and then moved around the Southern parts of Tasmania where she lived until her death in December …show more content…
She reflects on a similar situation in the same poem that displays her selfishness, natural attachment to possessions and inability to share as a child, "and knew I could slip in a k / or an i for a y and lose, / but did not, and sixty years / can't change it;" where she won a spelling prize and obtained her "coveted, worthless prize." (Harwood, 2001, p.179).
Harwood also recalls events during her childhood that portray the blissful ignorance a child has and how things can innocently influence can change them. "When I was a small child we lived in the country...and my friend Alice and I had a special cubby under the tank stand...there in which lived the beautiful Queensland green frog, and they seemed to like us, we loved them, and we used to sit under there cuddling them in our hands and talking to one another and listening to the people talking up on the veranda at the back...we had a continual stream of remarkable adult conversation. We did not understand what much of it was about." (Melbourne Writers' Festival, 1992). 'The Secret Life of Frogs' is one of Harwood's most emotive poems
Heaney continues to do this by glorifying the frogspawn, using alliteration “jam pots of the jellied specks”. This creates a soft and gentle rhythm for the reader, portraying Heaney’s fascination with nature a child.
In “The Author to Her Book,” Bradstreet is inundated in indecision and internal struggles over the virtues and shortfalls of her abilities and the book that she produced. As human beings we associate and sympathize with each other through similar experiences. It is difficult to sympathize with someone when you don’t know where they are coming from and don’t know what they are dealing with. Similar experiences and common bonds are what allow us to extend our sincere appreciation and understanding for another human being’s situation. In this poem an elaborate struggle between pride and shame manifests itself through an extended metaphor in which she equates her book to her own child.
As a result, she lacked confidence in her education. She stated, “My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present day affords and which even our common schools now afford. I was never sent to any school; I was always sick.” Even though she did not attend a formal school it did not put her out of reach of a proper education (Peterson, 9).
Childhood is arguably the most exciting time of a person’s life. One has few responsibilities or cares, and the smallest events can seem monumentally thrilling. Often, people reflect on the memories of their youth with fondness and appreciation for the lessons they learned. Sarah Orne Jewett captures this essence perfectly in the excerpt from “A White Heron.” Jewett uses many literary devices, including diction, imagery, narrative pace, and point of view to immerse the reader in familiar feelings of nostalgia and wonder, and dramatize the plot.
Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned an M.F.A. from the same institution.
A. She wrote this poem after she found out the she had acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of ten. When she found out she said thoughts flew her mind making her think that what was she going to miss? She thought that she’ll miss school, her graduation, growing up and going to college, falling in love, getting married or walking down the aisle or even have a child.
‘The Secret Life of Frogs’ is a poem that delves into the childhood perception of war, in particular World War I, and the experiences of their fathers. ‘The Secret Life of Frogs’ deals with the idea of misunderstandings incurred when children attempt to understand adult concepts. This is evident through the use of punning. The term ‘Frog’, which is frequently used throughout the poem adds amusement to the text because to the readers, it not only translates literally to a frog, but also represents the rival French people in the war through a negative light. However, the narrator, who is also one of the children in the poem, does not understand this other meaning attached to the term ‘frog’. This can clearly be seen in the final sentence
As a little girl, I saw the world in the best light simply because innocence clouded my judgement. As a child, I was innocent of mortality, as a teen hope, and as a young adult love. However, later on that innocence took on the role of ignorance. Not in the sense of not being knowledgeable or educated on the matter, but rather knowing it all too well that I choose not to acknowledge it. Innocence can be served as an instrument to block out surroundings when problems arise. It is an illusion of reality to protect what the individual desires to be true to what is actual. In Wendy Cope’s poem “Reading Scheme,” Cope writes about an affair more from the perspective of children by using the villanelle form to illustrate the inability of the
Yvonne Daniels, also known as the first lady of radio, is an influential women who paved the way for more women to become disc jockeys. In her 30 plus year career in radio she worked at WYNR, WCFL, WSDM, WLS-AM, WVON, WGCI-AM/FM , and WNUA. Daniels was an African American “broadcast pioneer”.
Rachel Botsman’s theory of collaborative consumption is made up of different systems that interact within the different social systems of social work individually and simultaneously. The idea of collaborative consumption is a way for individuals to swap, barter, rent, and purchase items from the convenience of their home or while on the go (2010). From a micro system, Botsman is referring to the individuals who are actively participating in collaborative consumption. By bringing individuals together on a micro level in order to share resources, Botsman’s theory demonstrates how people can work together. Whereas, from a mezzo system Botsman’s theory works to bring any small group together under some common ground. An example of a mezzo system
Gwen Harwood, a contemporary female poet, born in Brisbane Australia in the 1920 's, wrote her poetry during a time where Australian society held dominant gender ideologies that focused on domesticating women. A widely held belief of a passive, nurturing mother figure who looked after her children and complied with her duties as a 'house-wife ', whilst men were viewed as the sole source of income and had a minimal nurturing role with children, was shared, along with ideas of male superiority, and of masculine qualities being superior to feminine qualities, both of which were only expected to be embodied by males and females respectively. The construction of people, places and institutions through poetic conventions in Harwood 's poetry allows the audience to identify these cultural beliefs in conventional gender roles and expectations within 1950 's Australian society in particular. These constructions critique the attitudes and values of the time, especially where women are concerned, and thus position the audience to reject the patriarchal assumptions of the time. Her poems Suburban Sonnet and Prize Giving are can be perceived as radical interpretations and criticisms of the views of the time they were written in, and attest to Harwood 's own beliefs of female independence and placing value on feminine and masculine roles and qualities equally. Harwood grew up with the main female figures in her life being her mother and grandmother, who were both very independent; her
Through my personal reading of Harwood’s poem ‘The Glass Jar’, I view it as an examination of maturation – the inevitable change driven by painful experience. The title itself is symbolic of the fragility of childhood and innocence. The author believes that the destruction of the young child’s naïve, beautiful world of ‘field and flower’ is inevitable. She believes that his simplistic,
Particularly in 'Barn Owl' and 'The Spelling Prize', Harwood examines children's sadness as they go on their journey from innocence to experience. As time progresses and children begin their development towards adulthood, certain experiences and the way they respond to them can have a significant impact on their growth. In reference to the poem, 'Barn Owl', Harwood suggests that through experiencing and seeing it with their own eyes, they begin to realise the horror of reality. It can have an impact on children's growth as it will be a memories that will be with them permanently. Harwood goes on a journey where she transitions from being an 'obedient, angel-mind' child into a child who has unwittingly tortured an innocent creature. The fact that
"You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. Over and over, we are told of the limitations on choice--"it was the only way"; "They persuaded me" and verbs of necessity recur for descriptions of both the mother's and Emily's behavior. " In such statements as "my wisdom ! came too late," the story verges on becoming an analysis of parental guilt. With the narrator, we construct an image of the mother's own development: her difficulties as a young mother alone with her daughter and barely surviving during the early years of the depression; her painful months of enforced separation from her daughter; her gradual and partial relaxation in response to a new husband and a new family as more children follow; her increasingly complex anxieties about her first child; and finally her sense of family balance which surrounds but does not quite include the early memories of herself and Emily in the grips of survival needs. In doing so she has neither trivialized nor romanticized the experience of motherhood; she has indicated the wealth of experience yet to be explored in the story’s possibilities of experiences, like motherhood, which have rarely been granted serious literary consideration. Rather she is searching for
Louise Mallard is Kate Chopin short story's protagonist. As noted earlier, Louise has a heart trouble during the time when her friends are to break her husband's death news to her. She reacts to the news despite her heart condition with a flood of grief. She quickly retreats to her room which indicates repressiveness which she is accustomed to. She briefly feels guilt out of experiencing joy at the freedom which is brought by the death of her husband. She is later faced with some complex mix of love and resentment emotions which are elicited by the thoughts of Brently's tenderness with absolute control of her life from her husband. She ultimately welcomes her independence which she has newly found and then takes on the newly self-possessed individual's life. This essay will emphasize my argument on how the story shows some aspect of mental change in character, and I will identify where this starts in the character, what happens to cause the change, what the change is, and the consequences of this change for the character.