The Modern Woman Ascending in Time

With the emergence of the modernist period we enter the realm of feminism. Female writers and poets began to challenge patriarchy and traditional notions of society regarding gender roles. Hilda Doolittle’s poem “Sea Rose” could be read literally or interpreted to embody the time in which it was written. In the latter of the two, “Sea Rose” can represent the helplessness of women in a sea of male-dominance. The rose may be small and vulnerable in such an open space, but it is precious.
The initial image of the rose is rough and limited. H.D. describes the rose as “harsh” and “marred” (1, 2). It is limited in the sense that it only has a “stint of petals” and it is sparse in its numbers of leaves. This image is contradictory to the traditional depiction of a rose as a beautiful, delicate, and fragile thing. Roses typically represent the nature of innocence in women as delicate and fragile beings. The significance in this portrayal then is that roses symbolically represent women in their more vulnerable and helpless states.
Yet, this image of the rose in the poem presents a new side of women. Because of the oppression and domination that women have suffered as a result of their gender in a male-dominated society, they are reduced to nothing such as the rose that has been reduced to a “meagre flower” (3). Women have been “marred” by the objectification of their bodies; “stunted” in their growth socially and politically; and “flung on the sand” as if they embodied no sense of power.
Although H.D. presents this image of the scarred woman, she illustrates how all these hardships have allowed women to become stronger. The rose may be “meagre,” but it is still “harsh.” Its harshness represents the modern woman who has grown resistant to ill-treatment. She has now become “lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind” (12-13). This image of a leaf ascending portrays how woman will now rise and the wind as the driving force behind it will serve as woman’s strength.