1) In the poem Marie Curie is used as correspondent to the general figure of feminine experience, or rather as an example of it. Do you believe this "famous woman" represents an image of success? Does her denial, as a sign of endurance, grant her a victory or does her death signify an impossibility of a changeable world?
2) Rich offers us an image of a woman holding in her "suppurating" fingers a test-tube with a substance that is source of both energy and death. How can we compare it with the difficulties that arrise in dealing wih power?
Júlia Rodrigues
2)Quando falamos de poder numa maneira generalizada, isto é, em relação a ambos os sexos, qualquer um tem o risco de sofrer as consequências que vêm em conjunto com poder. No entanto, no poema é a perspetiva da mulher que é explorada e portanto será nessa que me focarei. Os homens sempre tiveram a possibilidade de estar em cargos com poder, ao contrário das mulheres, que tiveram de lutar e continuam a lutar muito, ainda nos dias de hoje, para se inserirem nessas mesmas posições, querendo obter igualdade. Esta igualdade é algo constantemente tratado nos poemas desta poeta. Como não existia esta igualdade, as mulheres que ansiavam por este poder e efetivamente conseguiam tê-lo, estavam em posições muito mais vulneráveis. Tanto podiam ter imenso sucesso e energia, como a substância que estava dentro do tubo providenciava, que no caso de Marie Curie era a sua fonte de poder, ou podiam não conseguir completar os seus objetivos e mesmo morrer, algo que a substância também oferecia. Esta substância, que fazia parte do estudo de Marie Curie, que como sabemos era uma mulher extremamente inteligente e com poder, pois tinha a capacidade de estudar conteúdos científicos complexos, levou à sua morte. Sendo assim, algo que lhe dava poder e mérito também foi algo que lhe terminou a vida, mas, penso que esta mulher considerou que ter poder e uma posição digna num mundo povoado por homens, por mais curto que fosse, era muito mais relevante do que viver uma vida longa mas ignorante.
ReplyDeleteIt sort of seems that her death amplifies her achievements. We have in the poem a contrast between a 100 year old tonic that cured everything and real science - real power - in the hands of a woman. The struggle Marie Curie goes through by denying - that denies (emphasis on the word denying, precisely because it is put alone in a line/verse) the source of the wounds that killed her seems to underline metaphorically the complexion of, as a female, walking a rewarding but apparently unreachable path.
ReplyDeleteIt's as if Marie Curie died for a cause - in this case a scientific cause, which made her carry on a legacy of honor. I do see her endurance as a sign of victory, for her death may have been caused by the same source as her power, but she did own that power.
Remains, however, the question of whether it was worth it.
Curie's death is without a doubt ironic. She was killed by the same element that gave her a life. She became someone because she discovered what in the end killed her. That is pretty similar to what happens with power.
ReplyDeleteThe substance in the test-tube that is able to give life but also death is power. People spend their lifes working just to get a little bit of it and then they always want more. The more they want the bigger they fall.
Power can be great. As soon as people feel it they are enebriated by it, "poisoned". Power can also be too much and be the cause of someone's demised if not dealt with properly.
Like Marie Curie denied "her wounds [that] came from the same source of her power" most people do not anticipate their downfall in their search for power that guided their whole lifes.
Ana Beatriz Pinto