A Solitary Tree's Fight for Individuality and Autonomy: A Discussion of Edna St Vincent Millay's Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree

Zusatztext

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Stuttgart (American Studies), language: English, abstract: Mankind is known for making the world subject to itself, mankind has gotten itselfinvolved in every imaginable aspect of life. We believe ourselves to govern nature: We buildartificial islands, we try to defeat diseases and death, we experiment with genetics to createnew life according to our ideals not yet the lives of human beings, but those of plants andanimals. For centuries our ancestors have been selecting suitable cows and bulls forreproduction in order to get promising breeds; they have been mingling different varieties ofcorn to receive better harvests, to name but a few examples. Another method of changingplants into another variety is grafting, a process that is not primarily used to change genetics,but to combine features of several plants into one. Grafting is a way to change a large treefrom an old to a new variety. It is also a method of using a root system better adapted to soilor climate than that produced naturally by an ungrafted plant (Rothenberger, 1). Edna StVincent Millay suggests in her poem Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree that women in theprevious century had to bear a very similar fate to that of a tree to-be-grafted: Society wantedwomen to be housewives, to obey and represent their husbands, to care for the family and toforget about any ideas of developing their selves as soon as this would go beyondhousekeeping. Therefore, women were brought up to put aside their own interests and to begood wives and housekeepers; they were brought up to adapt to social restrictions, just like atree is grafted to better adapt to a certain environment, cut short of all branches that woulddevelop in another direction. However, the protagonist in Millays poem rejects thetraditional role of a housewife; she tries to escape and fights for individuality and autonomyin opposition to being grafted. [...]

Weitere Details