The Last Day Of The Year :: essays research papers fc

In the poem The Last Day of the Year, Annette Von Droste-Hlshoff uses imagery and references to God to express the feeler of the end of the year. The poem, however, seems to reflect the imminent exemption of women from a patriarchal society. This poems imagery and outside references suggest that it is in fact a plea for the end of the suffering of women, and that the coming of their empowerment is near. The triple things that I will use to prove this point are how one year represents the time of womens oppression, how she speaks directly to men in the poem, and how she makes divine references to represent the freedom of women.Droste-Hulshoff says in line one of this poem, The year at its turn (Droste-Hulshoff, 1). Throughout this poem, she uses the year to represent a period of time that is coming to an end. Referring to the introduction in the innovation Reader, Droste-Hulshoff was a woman yearning for the freedom to be herself (Caws, 2002). This forces the reader to consider th at she is using the time period of the year as the time of womens oppression. She feels that the time of the oppression is coming to an end. I wait in stern silence, O deep night Is there an open eye? (Droste-Hulshoff 5-7) is one example of how she considers the era of womens oppression at its end. some other example is the following quote My life breaks down somewhere in the circle of this year. Long have I known decay. Yet my heart in love glows under the huge stone of passion (Droste-Hulshoff 37-42). She has felt this persecution for all of her life, but she still prospers as a individual and waits with short patience for her time to come.At one point in this poem, Droste-Hulshoff speaks to an unidentified second party. You, child of sin, has there not been a hollow, secret quiver each day in your enraged chest, as the polar winds reach across the stones, breaking, possessed with slow and insistent rage? (Droste-Hulshoff 24-31). Continuing under the assumption that this poem w as created to show the iniquities of sexism, one could vex men in place of you in the preceding excerpt. I believe this to be a likely case because of the references to your savage chest (Droste-Hulshoff 27) and the words speaking of self-denial and rage, all considered by society to be very masculine traits.