A Woman Mourned By Daughters
Adrienne Rich's A Woman Mourned By Daughters is an evocative poem in which two sisters struggle to connect with their deceased mother. This poem is divided into many parts, beginning with the death of the mother and progressing backward in time to when the women were young girls.
Mourning in the Kitchen
The poem continues with the two daughters "mourning" in their mother's kitchen over her death, but they are not weeping or angry (lines 1-3). The daughters are "spent" (tired and drained) from all the burdens that their mother put on them before and after her death (Kirszner and Mandell 12).
A Continuous Presence
The second section of the poem, which are lines 4-10, describe the deceased mother as a continuous presence in the lives of her daughters. The daughters feel so burdened with the power that their mother still exercises over them, even though she is deceased as they cry out that "we groan beneath your weight" (Kirszner and Mandell 12).
The Frail Elderly Woman
In the third section, lines 11-14, the girls proceed in speaking about their mother as an elderly woman, frail and weak, "a straw blown on the bed" (Kirszner and Mandell 12). The women describe their mother while on the deathbed as "a corpse pulled from the sea" (Kirszner and Mandell 12).
The Burden of the Past
The poem's fourth section, lines 15 to 20, make it apparent that what upsets the daughters now that their mother is gone is not the fact that she is deceased, but all the things that their mother did to them. Knots form in their throats as they contemplate how their mother used to treat them, as illustrated in the line "what rises in our throats like the food you prodded in" (Kirszner and Mandell 12).
Piled up Responsibilities
More so, the daughters are left with piled up responsibilities as discussed in the fifth section. The daughters are not pleased with the new responsibilities. They are very hateful towards their mother, and the tasks she left them are only burdens. The daughters have the feeling that they are still being pushed around by their dead mother. Even the responsibility of looking after their elderly and sick father is perceived as a chore rather than a blessing.
The Guilt of Disobedience
The final section of the poem (lines 29-33) basically suggests that if the girls do something that is not exactly how their mother would desire, then they would get punished. The guilt feeling would haunt them down from their mother's grave if they failed to do tasks the way their mother did them or would have wished to be done.
The Complex Relationship Between Mother and Daughters
Markedly, in this poem, Adrienne Rich makes the mother the auditor and the two daughters the speakers. In some ways, the approach makes the audience feel sorry for the deceased mother, yet in others, one feels sorry for the two daughters and all that they have gone through and now have to endure for the rest of their lives. Probably, the poem would have been written utterly different if it were in the views of the deceased mother instead of the two daughters. All in all, the poem discusses the inherent and eternal bond between a mother and her daughters who do not like her, but they can never change the fact that she will always be their mother.
Work Cited
Kirszner, Laurie, and Stephen Mandell. COMPACT Literature: Reading, Reacting,Writing. Nelson Education, 2015.
