The Feminist Movement and Adrienne Richs Power :: Womens Studies

The Feminist impetus and Adrienne Richs PowerPower, which was writ go in 1978 by Adrienne Rich, parallels the Feminist Movement that went into full swing roughly ten years earlier. The poem asks that we revise the usages regarding the roles of women and relates it to Marie Curie, a famous scientist who preceded the Feminist Movement by about 100 years.The store and background exposit in the first six lines parallel the struggle for womens rights and those who were refusing to accept change. The poem begins describing an shaft a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth a bottle of tonic/ for living on this earth in the winters of this climate (lines2-5). The occurrence that this specific tool used to uncover the bottle indicates that much of the earth around it had already been taken away, and the remaining soil had to be remove bit by bit as to preserve the tonic and absolve it wholly. This, too, can be said for the Feminist Movement of the 60s the final conquest of the movement was a result of the distinction of what particularly had to be changed. The bigger pieces of earth removed are the successes of women before them, such as the cognizance of womens rights. The final bits of earth are the individual rights of women, such as spontaneous abortion rights and equal rights. The earth stands for those who are not willing to forego tradition and accept change.What specifically does the tonic describe? Tonic means an invigorating, refreshing, or restorative agent (tonic). It makes sense that this restorative agent be rediscovered because its very meaning implies that something be brought back. This again makes sense in comparability to the Feminist Movement of the 60s because the predecessors work for womens rights reemerged as they campaigned for individual rights. When Marie Curie is described later, the connection can be made between her and the excavation because she represents those who had freed up much of the barriers women faced, esp ecially because Marie Curies career as a physicist was unprecedented&emdashshe was the only(prenominal) woman at the 1911 Berlin Conference, and not even a man had won two Nobel Peace Prizes at that time (Gioia and Kennedy, 1247).Marie Curies determination to work with the precarious elements that destroyed her body can be likened again to the Feminist Movement. She strove to do understanding of elements until it killed her.