In Home of Mercy How Does Harwood Highlight the Repression of Females Within Society?
Gwen Harwood sent a hostile message to the Bulletin Newspaper in 1961. This was a protest against, what Harwood believed to be, an inherent sexism within the journalistic sphere.
In Home of Mercy how does Harwood highlight the repression of females within society?
Gwen Harwood underlines the repression of women within society in Home of Mercy by expressing the restrictions that these girls face. The poem brings forward the way society view young females in the 1960s that act ‘indecently’ in societies view. Harwood is opposed to these views and believes that injustice has been done to these girls simply because they are not in a ‘traditional’ and ‘respectable’ marriage. Harwood uses descriptive language, religious imagery and irony to convey the hypocritical nature of the asylums, religion and society itself.
There were many restrictions placed on the women in 1960s. The girls of the Magdalene Asylums are an example of this, as we see through Harwood’s portrayal of the strict and conservative surroundings controlled by the nuns. In the first stanza Harwood emphasizes the suppressing nature of the convent by using descriptive language such as “By two and two” and “Neat margin of the convent grass”. Harwood alerts the reader to the forced order that is put on the girls; the nuns hold a tight control over them as if they are young children made to hold hands as they cross the road. Harwood uses a sonnet form to symbolize the restrictions. Furthermore she writes the poem in a sonnet form to represent the challenges created by these restrictions for both herself and for the girls that she writes of, with their “intolerable weekday rigor”. This shows the blindfolded view that the nuns have, believing that what they are doing to these girls, by making them work in laundries, is right and for the girls benefit. In Home of Mercy the girls are dehumanized in the descriptive language that Harwood uses. The poet uses the expression “counted as they pass” to express
In Home of Mercy how does Harwood highlight the repression of females within society?
Gwen Harwood underlines the repression of women within society in Home of Mercy by expressing the restrictions that these girls face. The poem brings forward the way society view young females in the 1960s that act ‘indecently’ in societies view. Harwood is opposed to these views and believes that injustice has been done to these girls simply because they are not in a ‘traditional’ and ‘respectable’ marriage. Harwood uses descriptive language, religious imagery and irony to convey the hypocritical nature of the asylums, religion and society itself.
There were many restrictions placed on the women in 1960s. The girls of the Magdalene Asylums are an example of this, as we see through Harwood’s portrayal of the strict and conservative surroundings controlled by the nuns. In the first stanza Harwood emphasizes the suppressing nature of the convent by using descriptive language such as “By two and two” and “Neat margin of the convent grass”. Harwood alerts the reader to the forced order that is put on the girls; the nuns hold a tight control over them as if they are young children made to hold hands as they cross the road. Harwood uses a sonnet form to symbolize the restrictions. Furthermore she writes the poem in a sonnet form to represent the challenges created by these restrictions for both herself and for the girls that she writes of, with their “intolerable weekday rigor”. This shows the blindfolded view that the nuns have, believing that what they are doing to these girls, by making them work in laundries, is right and for the girls benefit. In Home of Mercy the girls are dehumanized in the descriptive language that Harwood uses. The poet uses the expression “counted as they pass” to express