Women in Poetry

In the panel Women in Poetry given by three students of an advanced English class in the English student conference they discussed how women were portrayed in poems written years ago, but may still be applied today. The poems taken as reference were "Rape"by Adrienne Rich, "Mirror"by Sylvia Plath, and "The Nymphs Reply to the Shepperd" by Sir Walter Raleigh.

The first poem discussed "Rape" by Adrianne Rich was written in 1972 describes the helplessness a woman feels toward the person that raped her. Rape is not an action based just upon lust nor sex, it is much more profound. It acts upon the feeling of power. It is a desire to demonstrate power, is about shaming and destroying another person for the only reason to show power. In the poem we see how the woman struggles with the fact that she is the victim and is paying for a crime that she did not commit. As she was left to confess was the rapist, in this case a cop with need to show power, did to her as he rides around the town in his horse, without no one knowing what he had done.  She is left with a sense on incomplete due to the fact that the courts will not act upon the rapist.

The second poem "Mirror"by Sylvia Plath the narrator is a mirror in a women bedroom. It talks about itself as on who tells the truth and is objective. Even though it says that the women needs  it and that it won't go one day without her going to see it and that in some days she prefers to go under the effects of the moon or a candlelight the truths is that the mirror also needs the women. This is so because as the day passes and the mirror is left to reflect a blank and steady space such as a wall, it has nothing to describe nor analyze. Once the woman passes besides it , it is able to describe and analyze and give meaning to the world.

  

The last poem "The Nymphs Reply to the Shepperd"by Sir Walter Raleigh is obviously a response to something preciously written, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love by Christopher Marlowe. Raleigh argues that time does pass and thats why we should meditate on the consequences before acting on impulse.