material Flashcards
Key themes
- Parent - child relationships
- Social change
- Past vs present
- Gender roles
Key features
- Nostalgia
- Pleasure within sadness
Handkercheifs
Act as a symbol for the past and the speakers memories of her mother
“mopping the corners of your greif”
- the idea of not being emotional (links to the theme of social change)
- generational difference, gender roles - women are not allowed to live for themselves and have to act as a mother to the family, taking care of them
“scrubbed against my face”
Speaker’s nostalgia
“ponce”
“ten bob notes”
colloquial dictation of the previous generation - humorous conversation
“male ones: serious and grey”
Traditional gender roles
“closed department stores”
“shuttered the doors of family stores”
Larger social change, lost features of an older society
- Loss of community
“shuttered the doors of family stores”
“Greengrocer George”
““friendly butcher”
Loss of community - Stands for a time where people were more interconnected
“every mother, fencing tears”
Gender roles - The mothers life is dedicated to the care of children
“I miss material handkerchiefs”
Speaker’s nostalgia
“was killed in TVs lassitude. And it was me who turned it on”
Changing gender roles - the speakers life is not dedicated to her children and she is taking time for herself (to write this poem)
- She can express her own emotions
“But it isnt mine, I’ll let it go”
Mixed and conflicting feelings about the loss of the “hidden history”
“uncertainty”
“uncertainty” in gender roles, community and identity
“This is your material to do with, daughter, what you will” - Final message and line of the poem
- Direct address/speech
- We are in the present and not in the past, you need to lead your own life
