Boxing Day Gwen Harwood Analysis

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This essay will be looking at and examining the theme of characters having or going through a Journey, and how they are conveyed by author, Gwen Harwood, in her poems, ‘Suburban Sonnet: Boxing Day’ and ‘In the Park’. With the journeys in these two poems seemingly being written as reflections, where the characters are going through and struggling with the journeys they’re undertaking, I’ll be looking at what the journeys in these poems are representing and what they are showing readers about the characters who have had them.
The Harwood’s poem, ‘Boxing Day’ (2003), is centred on a mother, who is cleaning up after her children the day following Christmas. The mother figure in this poem is represented as a person who is ‘too tired to move’ and in this state, is reflecting on a life of past happiness she once may have enjoyed. In the opening stanza, the mother is portrayed as a traditional 1960’s housewife, ‘framed in the doorway: woman with a broom’, which reads almost as a position that carries a stigma for women being seen as more than just housewives to cook, clean and keep her family happy.

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