When We Dead Awaken by Adrienne Rich Essay Example

tried to make money, whether to be independent or because they were abandoned by their spouses, didn’t have too many options. As Rich noted, “… woman who are washing other people’s dishes and caring for other people’s children, not to mention woman who went on the streets last night in order to feed their children” (Rich 9). She claims how women are doing whatever they can to be independent like men, even if it means doing self-degrading things.

Rich is trying to point out on how no matter how hard and self-determined women can be, whether it comes to working, or their normal lives, they can never be as successful and independent as the male just because they are female. Females couldn’t be successful mostly because they were discriminated by the males who felt intimidated. This societal rejection could be a motivation towards the female behavior towards inequality. The discriminated society she lived in was explained by using her own writings and those of Bernard Shaw’s.

In Bernard Shaw’s play, written in 1900, he states that, “…women can die into luxuries for men and yet can kill them…” (Rich 6). This perhaps means, from Shaw’s point of view of experience, that no matter how wealthy women’s spouses are (what males think brings happiness to women), the mistreatment and neglect they receive will keep them unsatisfied because they want equality. She uses Shaw’s play to illustrate how women urge to seek self satisfaction and success, to be able to stand up for what they believe and to be treated as equals with men.

To show that Rich stood up for what she believed in she used a metaphor through

one of her poems. When she was a student she wrote a poem called “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”, and in it she describes herself and other women as one of her aunt’s “tigers”. She says how “They do not fear the men beneath the tree…” and how they will go on “striding, proud and unafraid” (Rich 10). This is significant because this foreshadows how she breaks away from a stereotypical woman by escaping discrimination from man and society towards her and other women.

This “breaking away” set an example to other women; by her act of civil disobedience, such as being more successful than men by becoming a writer and standing up to the men who treated women differently, her voice began to be recognized and so did women. By doing so, she looked at the society she lived in and how it acted and became a role-model to aspiring women. Rich believes the male dominated society categorizes women as a lower class. She declares “this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society” (Rich 7).

Rich reasons that women searching for individuality is the start of escaping male supremacy and becoming equal to males. Because Rich believes women are treated differently, it indicates that there is going to be a change in the concept of sexual identity towards the stereotypical gender roles. When women started to hear about Rich they began to explore their own potential that the male civilization ignored. Later on Rich believed that women who were starting to make a difference towards society were switching their gender roles

by surpassing the male.

In the essay she claimed that “…middle-class women were making careers of domestic perfection, working to send their husbands through professional school, then retiring to raise large families” (Rich 9). She argued how women are supporting their spouses when the men are dependent and how women later put their dreams on hold when they start a family. But men don’t have the same sympathy towards the women’s careers, when they have children they don’t let them continue ‘their careers of domestic perfection’, instead they make the women become dependent on them.

This is ironic towards the male and female roles because now the male is portrayed not as dominate because he needs the support of his spouse and is reliant until he uses his spouse to become independent. Male dominance comes from affecting others, it doesn’t come from the male individually because there is nothing to dominate if it’s just that male himself to take care of. Rich explains, “The charisma of man seems to come purely from his power over her and his control of the world by force, not from anything fertile or life-giving in him” (Rich 7).

She agrees that this ‘power over her’ is how males treat women as possessions and that ‘his control of the world’ is the male society together and how men build upon that power to feel control. She also says that men are denying their biological power ‘from anything fertile or life-giving’ because they are not like women who have to do be the “bearer of his seed” (Rich 8), showing how males repress women through their dominance. Being that Rich lived through this society,

she was treated differently compared to the rest of the women.

From Rich’s personal experience, she lived quite the opposite from the “average woman” during her childhood, such as having a good education and having male role models like her father and teachers that helped educate her while she was growing up. Rich admits, “My own luck was being born white and middle-class in a house full of books, with a father who encouraged me to read and write” (Rich 9). She illustrates how lucky she was growing up, being that she had access to the tools for learning and a strong mentor to keep her going.

So for about twenty years she wrote for her dad, who “criticized and praised” (Rich 9) her, which helped her become who she is today. This makes the reader wonder: would she have had written this essay if she didn’t have that type of ‘luck’? Because of her childhood she had the knowledge to stand up for women through her writings. Rich argues that in order to show the world that she is a great writer she has to be diverse compared to the male writer.

She says, “I am not saying that in order to write well, or think well, it is necessary to become unavailable to thers, or to become a devouring ego. This has been the myth of the masculine artist and thinker; and I do not accept it” (Rich 13). She believes that she will be able to write equivalent to the male writer without having to be isolated or arrogant like them. This connection depicts the beginning of a revolution. A revolution that women, not only

in society but in writing as well, will begin to stand up to the discrimination of society by empowering themselves.

To demonstrate her dispute, she argued that the stereotypical and prejudice male society which dominated women was affective by illustrating the use of literary history, personal experience, and the self-empowering women. She showed how males were dominant but when the women - including Rich – rebelled, the gender roles were reversed; therefore women started standing up for themselves and being more independent, and men had to rely on women to help them get to their career.

It also told what Rich’s childhood life was like and how her success started by breaking away from the “average woman”. Adrienne Rich is among the most prominent poets of the century and in her essay she made it clear that women didn’t have economic, political and domestic rights as she grew up but as an individual she broke out from the confinement and showed how other women can too. Upon delivering her essay her legacy will continue in history as a female who helped start a new revolution for women.