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Theme Of In The Park By Gwen Harwood

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How and why is the social group of women represented in a particular way within the poems of Gwen Harwood?

The social group of women is often focused on by Gwen Harwood as the themes of motherhood and domestic life play an integral role in many of her poems. These themes define a stereotypical role for women representing them as subordinate in a male dominated patriarchal society. Through a range of poems such as In the Park, The Violets and Prize Giving, Harwood portrays women as subservient, inferior and with the main purpose to be household mothers and wives. This portrayal though, is based in society’s expectations during Harwood’s time and her later poems even develop to contain more hope for societal progression through occasionally defying these stereotypes. …show more content…

In The Park explores this stripping of one’s identity as it reflects on the darker side to motherhood by using imagery to create an empty and unhappy scene in the park. The first stanza describes how her main role is to be there for her children and that she is now just an empty shell of what she once was. The hyperbole “They have eaten me alive” (Harwood, pg.23) is evidence of this as the woman reflects on her motherly role and that her life is no longer hers. The Violets is an another example of presenting women in this stereotypical role as the mother stays at home with the child while the father is out working as the bread winner. “Into my father’s house” (Harwood, pg.91) enhances these gender roles as the house is considered solely owned by the father and not the parents together. Through presenting women in this light to the reader, Harwood represents them as subservient to the stereotypical gender role of motherhood developing the genteel view of

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