Comparison Of Elvira Shatayev And Pantasia

Adrienne Rich has two poems called “Power” and “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev” both these poems are about women who once were oppressed and told that they couldn’t follow their dreams. Rich wrote about them paying the price to follow those dreams. In the poem “Power” she talks about the famous scientist Marie Curie, and how she found both elements Polonium and radium. She also discovered radioactivity, which means that she was working with radioactive elements her whole working life. The radioactive elements caused her to get sick and eventually die. In her poem “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev” she talks about Elvira Shatayev who lead a group of women hikers to climb a mountain all on her own. They ended up not being able to make it through
In the past she had always climbed a mountain by following her husband, and never actually climbing it for herself. So when she got a group of women who felt the same way and climbed that mountain she realized that she is her own person and can do what she wants to do. Even though she didn’t survive the climb she empowered all of the women on the climb and many more that heard the story. She risked her life to climb a mountain for herself, she didn’t climb it because her husband told her too, she did it because she wanted to. She climbed that mountain for herself, and women doing things for themselves didn’t happen very often in that time. Rich says, “I have never seen my own forces” (5), which is Elvira saying that she has never known how strong she actually was, until she went up the mountain. She might not have made it down the mountain but she wouldn’t have traded how she felt even if it meant surviving. She chose herself and her dreams, instead of what society thinks. Climbing that mountain was a powerful experience that stayed with her and her story, and still empowers women who read it today. Her story will continue even though she is gone, because she climbed that mountain for her and no one else. Both poems show the power of a determined woman. Each woman had something that they wanted to do so badly that they even sacrificed their life for it. Marie worked with those elements even though they were killing her because she wanted to better the science community and was determined to learn as much about those elements as possible. She was determined, and paid the price of her life for it. However, I believe that the price was worth it, her continuing her research inspired other women to do research on their own, which means that more women are involved in the science