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Feminism in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich: A Comparison of Her Early and Late Poems
Cimalová, Natalie ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
This BA thesis examines the development of feminism in the poetry of Adrienne Rich between the 1950s and the 1990s. Feminism in Rich's poetry took years to develop from strict formalism in the 1950s that only alluded to the unequal status of women in patriarchal society, to bold free verse and feminist attitudes in the 1970s, and finally to an engagement with marginalization of certain groups of people due to their race, nationality, class or religion. Rich examined the marginalization of women in society already in her first collection, A Change of World (1951), through poems such as "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" or "An Unsaid Word," which are characterized by the perfection of form. Formalism was still a prominent hallmark of the poems in Rich's second collection, The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems (1955), but a certain loosening of Rich's style, deviations from the tight stanzaic structure and a bolder approach to criticizing male authority over women can be seen in these poems. This concerns for example poems "Living in Sin" and "Perennial Answer," which address traditionally assigned gender roles. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, there was a major change in Rich's poetry, because it became significantly radical both in terms of feminism and free-verse. This significant shift is most prominent in...
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