Burning Sappho Quotes

Housewife + Motherhood

“The child is fed, and sleeps. The dishes / are washed, and the clothes are ironed and aired.”

Motherhood + Inner Rage

“Something like hatred forks between / my child and me.”

Inner rage + Outer Peace

“Inside my smile a monster grins / and sticks her image through with pins.”

Housewife + Outer Peace + Inner Rage

“Invisible inside their placid / Hostess, a fiend pours prussic acid.”

Housewife

“My husband calls me, rich in peace, / to bed. Now deathless verse, good night.”

Housewife + Inner Rage

“In my warm thighs a fleshless devil / chops him to bits with hell-cold evil.”

Pursuing Passion

“All is required, until one wins, / at last, this hour. I start to write.”

Pursuing Passion

“Right now. Orion first begins / to show. Day’s trivial anger cease.”

Summary

The poem exposes the hidden, violent rage of a female writer whose creative tendencies are systematically suppressed by the suffocating routine of motherhood and marriage. Through a series of dark mental fantasies, the poem contrasts the housewife exterior expectations with her inner desire to destroy the domestic forces trapping her.

Global Sentence

Gwen Harwood is a renowned female Australian poet from the 1960s who wrote on identity, the feminine experience and the arts.