Angelina Weld Grimke Essay Research Paper The — страница 4

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presumably without having to restrict her lesbian inclinations): . . . What were I, father dear, without thy help? I turn my eyes away before the figure and Rejoice; and yet your loving hands have moulded me; . . . Through her father’s assistance, Grimk? repudiates her own self-molding and takes her dependent imprint from him. Finally, after depicting the care he has given her through her life, Grimk? gives her father her highest compliment, "You have been a gentle mother to your child." That is, the best she can say about her father is that he is almost a mother. This poem gives the impression that Grimk? and her father had no major disagreements in their lives, but that is belied by the opening passage in Grimk?’s first diary, started in July 1903 to record a lost

love involvement with an unnamed person. "My father and I have been having a hard time tonight over you, dear. I guess he is right and I shall try to give you up." Earlier in this entry, she writes, "I suppose I was a fool and oh how I wish that I had a mother!" Grimk?’s inability to portray her father as an adult male in her poem celebrating his fatherhood reveals her ambivalent feelings toward this man whose approval she could not live without but whose moralistic dicta appear to have greatly restricted her own sexual expression. The theme of children is almost as significant as the theme of mothers in Grimk?’s poetry and is usually linked, as in "The Black Child," with portrayals of the ways in which African Americans suffer oppression at the

hands of whites. "The Black Child" uses the image of a black baby playing in sunlight and then in shadow as an affecting extended metaphor of black life and external oppression. The poem opens: I saw a little black child Sitting in a gold circle of sunlight; And in his little black hand, He had a little black stick, And he was beating, beating, With his little black stick, The sunlight all about him, And laughing, laughing. By elaborating on this scene through the passage of the day, and by refusing to explain or interpret it, Grimk? increases the poignancy for the reader who alternately sees the poem as a metaphor of black life or as a realistic image of a black child playing. The image is so well formed, and the impulse to delight in it so strong, that the reader

almost hopes the poem is simple realistic truth to enjoy and appreciate without confronting the psychic and sociological shadow that alters and subverts the lives of black children. And he sat in the gold circle of sunlight Kicking with his little feet, And wriggling his little toes, And beating, beating The sunlight all about him, . . . . The shadow eases upon the black child slowly until at the end of the poem he is beating not the light but the shadows. In another poem about a black child, "Lullaby [(2)]," Grimk? includes her only attempt to write black diction in verse. She is not, in this instance, adept in the use of black diction, but the content of the poem reveals her attitude toward the limited possibilities available to black adults in the United States:

Ain’t you quit dis laffin’ yet? Don’ you know de sun’s done set? Wan’ me kiss dis li’l han’? Well, well, laf de w’ile you can, You won’ laf w’en you’se a man, Dere! Dere! Sleep! Sleep! Grimk?’s fiction is more stark in portraying the horror, the accents, and the future of black children. An infant is smothered in "The Closing Door," and in "Goldie" and "Blackness,’" an unborn child is cut from the womb of a lynched woman, revealing the full horror of African-American life in the United States. Grimk? wrote a few poems presenting her overall world view and background philosophy. Among these are "Life [(1)]" and "The Puppet-Player." In "Life [(1)]," for example, human beings are out of control of

the destiny of their lives and overwhelmed by the "Ocean, boundless, infinite" of life: Thou ne’er hast known nor dead nor living One single braggart man as master, . . . And some are lost on rocks relentless; And some are drowned mid storms tremendous, . . . The waters close again impenetrably:– Each one must make his way alone— And this is Life! "The Puppet-Player" is even more pessimistic and ascribes conscious and evil intention to the power that controls the world: Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player A clench?d claw cupping a craggy chin, Sits just beyond the border of our seeing, Twitching the strings with slow, sardonic grin. Other poems directly examine the value of life for the narrator. "Epitaph on a Living Woman"