The work of Sara Teasdale captured the hearts of many Americans through her lyrical simplicity and delicate craftsmanship on the major themes of love, beauty, and death. Her poetry was often quoted, parodied, and set to music by the public. They awarded her the Columbia University Society Prize and the Poetry Society of America Prize in 1918 for her poem collection title Love Songs. However, her major success as a lyrical poet proved true when her work continued to sell posthumously. Throughout Teasdale’s lyrical poetry, she depends heavily on metaphors and personification, simple diction, and romantic imagery to produce a melancholy tone and to gain a sympathetic response from her reader on the impossible feat of satisfying the contrasting needs of her Puritan and Pagan ways of life.
Sara Teasdale was the daughter of the puritan, Midwestern Victorian couple: Mary Elizabeth Willard and John Warren Teasdale. Her father, John, was a prosperous St. Louis wholesaler; while her mother, Mary, “strove for perfect middle-class rectitude” (Drake). Teasdale’s parents constantly fretted over her, due to her frailty and constant chronic illness. Willard and Teasdale sheltered, protected, and educated their daughter in the best private schools. This closeness with her parents greatly influenced Teasdale’s priorities and “left her almost obsessed with propriety and dependent both emotionally and financially on her domineering mother and father, whom she idolized” (Lipscomb). Throughout her life, Sara Teasdale sought out a marriage like her parents’ – one that was socially acceptable and economically secure. However, the conservatism and conventional puritan child had hidden pagan instincts. This side of Teasdale had “an ecstatic love of bea...
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Born on December 25, 1921, Clara grew up in a family of four children, all at least 11 years older than her (Pryor, 3). Clara’s childhood was more of one that had several babysitters than siblings, each taking part of her education. Clara excelled at the academic part of life, but was very timid among strangers. School was not a particularly happy point in her life, being unable to fit in with her rambunctious classmates after having such a quiet childhood. The idea of being a burden to the family was in Clara’s head and felt that the way to win the affection of her family was to do extremely well in her classes to find the love that she felt was needed to be earned. She was extremely proud of the positive attention that her achievement of an academic scholarship (Pryor, 12). This praise for her accomplishment in the field of academics enriched her “taste for masculine accomplishments”. Her mother however, began to take notice of this and began to teach her to “be more feminine” by cooking dinners and building fires (Pryor, 15). The 1830’s was a time when the women of the United States really began to take a stand for the rights that they deserved (Duiker, 552). Growing up in the mist of this most likely helped Barton become the woman she turned out to be.
After witnessing Abigail’s affair with Detective Len Fenerman, Susie recalls when as a young child, her mother used to tell her tales of mythology, such as Zeus and Persephone, rather than princess fairytales like most mothers would. The young mom liked to recount these stories because “she had gotten her master’s in English―having fought tooth and nail with Grandma Lynn to go so far in school―and still held on to vague ideas of teaching when the two of us were old enough to be left on our own” (Sebold 149). As mentioned, becoming a mother to Susie and Lindsey forced her to press pause on her ambitions to step further in her career and education. However, she held on to these dreams since there would be an opportunity to carry out what she had planned when her children grew up and no longer needed round-the-clock attention or care. These hopes were quickly crushed after the birth of Buckley, the third child in the Salmon family. Abigail realizes that she would be forever constrained to motherhood “since suburban life, for women, meant commitment to home and family, to house care and child care” (Hacht 143). Since she became a wife and mother in the late 1950s, Abigail Salmon represents how many women felt during the Seventies as ideologies of feminism and motherhood clashed. To these women, domesticity
In the 17th century, many Puritans emigrated to the New World, where they tried to create a brand new society. They moved to New World because they were being persecuted in England for their religious beliefs, and they were escaping to America. The women were immigrating to America to be the wives of the settlers this demonstrates that women were expected to live in the household for the rest of their lives. Women in Puritan society fulfilled a number of different roles. History has identified many women who have had different experiences when voicing their beliefs and making a step out of their echelon within society’s social sphere. Among these women are Anne Hutchinson, and Mary Rowlandson. And in this essay I will
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