Gwendolyn Brooks The Mother, Phenomenal Woman

In America, the twentieth century marked the beginning of a pivotal age that contained many social and political reforms for women. Feminists around the country each presented unique ideas for women’s rights, most of them through influential writings and speeches. Margaret Sanger was an undeniably significant contributor who made a huge impact on the future of women’s civil liberties. A nurse with a prolific writing career, Sanger delivered her speech “The Children’s Era” in 1925, a text that advocates for the use of contraceptives to improve the lives of mothers and children. Throughout the speech, she employs the use of analogies to provide clarity to her purpose and deliver a lasting message that women’s bodies must be controlled if they are to effectively fulfill their maternal obligations. Sanger also incorporates two of the Aristotelian appeals, logos and pathos, to accentuate the plight that mothers and children must face despite an accessible solution. The careful application of diction throughout her speech also emphasizes her three main rhetorical strategies. These rhetorical devices support Sanger’s overall message of maternal empowerment and convince her hesitant audience to fully accept her progressive ideals.

"The Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a sorrowful, distressing poem about a mother who has experienced numerous abortions. While reading the poem, you can feel the pain, heartache, distress and grief she is feeling. She is both remorseful and regretful; nevertheless, she explains that she had no other alternative. It is a sentimental and heart wrenching poem where she talks about not being able to experience or do things with the children that she aborted -- things that people who have children often take for granted. Perhaps this poem is a reflection of what many women in society are feeling.

Attention Getter: “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” –Margaret Sanger

Brooks creates a horrific imagery that abortions are terrible; and in the poem “The Mother “,she mirrors herself to reality to show the missed opportunities of a child, that women who have aborted their children, will miss. In the poem, it pinpoints a woman’s experience of aborting a child, and then feeling guilty about it, as a mother. In contrast to the author of the poem, Gwendolyn Brooks is a woman who has also aborted a child numerous of times, feels relentless. She communicates with her audience, women, through the poem to recap what the unborn children would become in the future such as singers and workers. “You were born, you had body, you died. It is you never giggled or planned or cried.” When Brooks talk about the missed opportunities that women will never see, she refers to a mother with treacherous experiences. Symbolically, she reflects as a role model for all women who have undergone the situation.

The following chapters address four dominant emotions through which abortion is conveyed. Chapter 2 discusses the “maternal happiness” frame, perceiving women’s happiness as only achievable through motherhood, and thus positioning abortion as a choice that goes against women’s “feminine nature”. Chapter 3 explores “foetocentric grief” - another prevalent emotion in abortion discourses, that constructs pregnant women as mothers who go through the loss of their children. Widely employed in political discourse, the book reveals the effects of this frame on abortion policies and regulations. Chapter 4 examines the feeling of shame and the resulting silence that veils the experiences of aborting women.

“To the woman who wishes to have children, we must give these answers to the question when not to have them.”. This was an eloquent quote from Margaret Sanger that she delivered in her book, Women and the New Race. Margaret was a very prominent feminist and she believed that women should be educated by knowing they have the right to control what happens with their body. This person is considered, by Time Magazine, to be one of the most influential individuals of the 20th century, mostly due to her role sex education, birth control activism, and also for her writings pertaining to those issues. This is why Margaret Sanger was such an important individual. She changed course for women’s rights by advocating the legalization of the use of contraceptives

“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

The next minor claim Willis presents is that the life of an unborn child is less valuable than that of a woman who already has a history and has experienced life. According to Willis, a woman has more worth because she has “feelings, self-consciousness, a history, social ties” (2005, p. 515). By having to carry a baby, all of these important parts of her life are in jeopardy of being harmed (Willis, 2005). The concern Willis expresses for a woman’s life changing

She deduces that if a woman is about to make an abortion, and analyzes the limits and priorities of a soul, she will realize that a right has

When reading the poem Truth by Gwendolyn Brooks, readers are able to obtain an improved understanding when examining the author’s life and time as well as what influenced her opinions and writing. For example, readers learned that Gwendolyn Brooks wrote her poems with a political conscious that reflected the civil rights movement in the 1960s (Poetry is life distilled). This relates to a poem written by her called Truth. In a stanza the author states, “ Though we have wept for him, though we have prayed all through the night-years, what if we wake one shimmering morning to hear the fierce hammering of his knuckles hard on the door?” ( Gwendolyn Brooks, Truth, lines 7-13).

Directly addressing the aborted children, the mother is able to relate her experience to other women who may be contemplating abortion; perhaps the narrator is trying to warn other mothers with tone and diction:

The mother feels terror, fear, and panic over this loss that will supply the feelings of disestablishment and disintegration. This fear connects the audience to Laura’s character, since it is widespread fear and phobic pressure point for many mothers to lose a

The mother-daughter relationship is often scrutinized, publicized, and capitalized on. Whether from tell-all biographies, to humorous sit-coms, or private therapy sessions, this particular relationship dynamic gives some of the most emotion-activating memories. When female authors reflect and write about their relationships with their mothers, they have a tendency to taint their reflections with the opinions they have as an adult, reviewing the actions of their mother when they were young. These opinions set the tone of the story independently and in conjunction with the relationship itself and manifest in creative literary styles that weave an even more intricate story. Case in point, when reviewing the two literary works “I Stand Here

Maya Angelou said, “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow” (Wanderlust 1). The relationship a mother has with her child transcends all other relationships in complexity. Maternity largely contributes to the female identity in part because the ability to sexually reproduce is uniquely female. With this ability often comes an unparalleled feeling of responsibility. That is, mothers experience an inherent desire to protect their children from the world and guide them through life. Serving as a child’s protector then transforms a woman’s perspective, or the female gaze. While these protective instincts often arise naturally, they are also reinforced by the ideas society’s perpetuates about motherhood. Globally, women are expected to assume the roles of wives and mothers. The belief that motherhood is somewhat of a requirement assists in the subjugation of women and reinforces a plethora of gendered stereotypes. While some women enjoy the process of childrearing, others feel that having a family comes at an irreparable cost: losing sight of oneself. In response to the polarized views surrounding maternity, several authors have employed different writing techniques to illustrate the mother-child dynamic. Through the examination of three narratives, spanning fiction and non-fiction, one is able to better define maternity and the corresponding female gaze in both symbolic and universal terms.

Each basin I empty is a promise—but a promise broken a long time ago. I grew up on the great promise of birth control. Like many women my age, I took the pill as soon as I was sexually active. To risk pregnancy when it was so easy to avoid seemed stupid, and my contraceptive success was part of the promise of social enlightenment” (Tisdale 15). This quote emphasizes Tisdale’s respect for contraceptives. Being in the profession that she is in, Tisdale is often given no other choice but to consider the factors that has lead women to getting an abortion. Moreover, women find themselves in the predicament they are in due to their inability to realize that their choices are their responsibility. Instead of realizing that they simply may not be liable enough to care for a child or take on the “burden” of becoming a mother, they resort to abortions. Although those who perform abortions are not encouraged to take judgment on the women on surgical tables - nor is it what their job description entails - judgment still passes through in a way that shows women could have utilized contraception in a better way, which, stresses their negligence. Similarly enough, in “The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning”, when given an offly blunt answer, Rankine starts to realize the implications of racism. The narrator writes, “For her, mourning lived in real time inside her and her son’s reality: At any moment she might lose her