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In Home of Mercy How Does Harwood Highlight the Repression of Females Within Society?

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Gwen Harwood sent a hostile message to the Bulletin Newspaper in 1961. This was a protest against, what Harwood believed to be, an inherent sexism within the journalistic sphere. In Home of Mercy how does Harwood highlight the repression of females within society? Gwen Harwood underlines the repression of women within society in Home of Mercy by expressing the restrictions that these girls face. The poem brings forward the way society view young females in the 1960s that act ‘indecently’ in societies view. Harwood is opposed to these views and believes that injustice has been done to these girls simply because they are not in a ‘traditional’ and ‘respectable’ marriage. Harwood uses descriptive language, religious imagery and irony to …show more content…

Other religious imagery used is of the angels that “wrestle [the girls] with brutish vigor”, this shows to the reader that these girls are haunted by their past. Were you would expect an angel to be compassionate and have a pure nature you find them brutishly wrestling, which encompasses the thought of society that have seeped into their dreams, giving them no escape from guilt. Harwood evoke sympathy for the girls that have no escape from their punishment. In conclusion, in Home of Mercy Gwen Harwood highlights the repression of females within society by emphasizing the restrictions put on the girls within the Magdalene Asylums by using descriptive language that shows the dehumanization of the girls and women. Harwood also conveys the hypocritical nature of the Magdalene asylums that were originally set up to be rehabilitation assistance, and stresses how the religion is acting duplicitous and deceiving. Overall Harwood evokes the suppression of women within society using the example of the Magdalene

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