Gwendolyn Brooks Diversity

Words: 1438
Pages: 6

The Diversity of Suffering Captivity, silence, and shame are all endeavors that women face in their daily lives. The never ending relentless misconceptions and unforgiving ideals that define women through appearance, sexuality, and expectation of obedience. This battle versus society fought by women in a harsh time period of gender restriction is conveyed through “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton and “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Both written in the early 1960’s, “The Mother” imparts a heart-rending confession about her compelled abortions. The speaker reveals her bitter regret that she has contained within her soul after she is faced with the mental impact of several abortions. She atones for the deaths of her children through the soft tenderness …show more content…
Always being pushed down by the system and expected to just give without complaint. Women become skillful in their endurance to create resilient individuals, ones who thrive to give life to the world and individuals who use their whole effort to care for those around them. Their duty is unmistakable for providing to a community, but it is also their right to galvanize a society at the equal standing of any living creature, whether it be man or animal. Although written in very different perspectives, Anne Sexton and Gwendolyn Brooks bring a sense of their own experience as women to the discussion. They present us the physical compositions of female hardship seen in society today and in the past. The differences in both poems could be the one woman is a mother and the other a rebellious woman or the experience of abortion and that of freedom, but that doesn’t change the similarities that coexist in that moment. The similarities present themselves as the similar message portrayed through each poem. The universal message of women that feel the pressures of society and wish to create equality or stabilization within their own lives. A society where women can choose to be whoever they want and to have the option to express their sexuality without outside disturbances. Just as the speaker in “Her Kind” states “A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind”(Sexton lines 13-14). A woman does not represent the labels and judgment placed on her. If the woman wishes to be free and follow her own aspirations, it does not mean she is a witch or an ugly hag. It is a large misconception as Sexton conveys in which women are trying to express through their own will and as