Response To Motherhood

Motherhood: a phenomenon as old as time, each experience as unique and different from the others. Many female poets, such as Sylvia Plath, Gwen Harwood, and Judith Wright, have used poetry to reflect on their own reality and their many complex emotions towards motherhood. Although the poets express their relationship with the concept differently, using a variety of techniques, such as imagery, metaphors, expressive language and symbolism, similar joys and struggles of motherhood are revealed.

Motherhood begins at the conception of the child and its growth inside the woman’s body; this creation of a new life and a world are explored by Plath’s and Wright’s poems. In Woman to Child, Wright expresses the joy of creating a life using plant
Harwood explores this in her poem Mother Who Gave Me Life, the relationship between mother and daughters, and the bond that is passed on “backward in time to those other / bodies, your mother, and hers / and beyond”. Harwood is reflecting on her own relationship with her mother using homely imagery to grieve her loss and to express the timeless importance of mothers. She describes her mother as “fine threadbare linen / worn, still good to the last”, “a fabric of marvels folded / down to a little space”. Even dying, her mother “was folding a little towel”, an image of her mother’s homeliness and wisdom. Furthermore, in An Impromptu for Ann Jennings, Harwood discusses the importance of mothers supporting mothers with imagery, “keeping our balance somehow through the squalling disorder”. Similarly, Wright wrote that “all time lay rolled in me, and sense” when describing pregnancy as a metaphor as a connection to her mother and other mothers of both past, present, and future. For Wright, she and her child are a part of the chain of the motherhood, “the link that joins you to the night”. Plath, however, does not feel she is worthy of such a connection, even though she experiences it, because she does not feel that she is a real mother, as written in The Night Dances and Morning Song. Plath feels that “their
We stand round blankly as walls”. These are often the worries of young parents, the growing understanding of the tremendous responsibility of raising a child. Harwood draws attention to her sacrifices using metaphors and imagery in her poems An Impromptu for Ann Jennings. She reflects on her struggles in An Impromptu to her friend about the many-sided roles and responsibilities a mother takes on, “all Caesar’s debts are rendered in full to Caesar”. Harwood is trying to convey to the reader that although they have lost “those lives they have surrendered, the love, the fruitfulness”, they are “content to know: our children walk the earth”, that the sacrifice is worth it. Wright, in Woman To Child, expresses her feelings towards the end of her pregnancy and the birth of her child using metaphors. Even though her child will “dance in living light”, she will still “hold you deep within that well / you shall escape and not escape”. Although the child will grow up, she will always feel that strong worry and connection for it as she did during