The most prevalent theme throughout Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself 51 and Judy Grahn’s, Ella in a square apron, along highway 51 is “strength” and \u201cindividualism\u201d in terms of femininity and masculinity, respectively. Grahn’s collection of poems illustrates the experience of what it means to be a “common woman” during a time shaped by patriarchal values and sexist stereotypes.<\/p>\n
Grahn compares the Common Woman (Ella) to “as common as a rattlesnake.”\u00a0 Ella is dangerous, powerful, and violent; she embodies the animal’s strength, as described in lines 6-7.<\/p>\n
“She keeps her mind the way men keep a knife-keen to strip the game down to size.”<\/p>\n
Although she puts on a strong exterior, the problem persists as the reader is given specific insight into her abusive past in line 16.<\/p>\n
“once, she shot a lover who misused her child.”
\n“Before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced
\nand given the child away.”<\/p>\n
Although Ella shows her strength as a woman and mother, society wins by entitling men to control even when the situation is their fault. \u00a0Ella’s child is taken from her, and she is left alone as a victim of patriarchy.<\/p>\n
In Walt Whitman’s section 51, there is the theme of possibility. The poem opens with a new chance by stating.<\/p>\n
“The past and present wilt\u2014I have fill’d them, emptied them.And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.”<\/p>\n
The speaker is striving for a new future and desires to manifest this experience through self-identity, something that Ella rejects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The most prevalent theme throughout Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself 51 and Judy Grahn’s, Ella in a square apron, along highway 51 is “strength” and \u201cindividualism\u201d in terms of femininity and masculinity, respectively. Grahn’s collection of poems illustrates the experience of what it means to be a “common woman” during a time shaped by patriarchal … Continue reading What does Ella’s future hold?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4651,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}