| One of Robert Frost's greatest contributions to poetry involves the provocative exploration of the ongoing gender conflict between women and men. Like his modernist contemporaries, Frost acknowledged through his poetry that the human quest for knowledge and meaning of existence requires uncensored interaction between women and men and that, only through honest dialogue that validates the moral imperatives of each gender can mutual understanding and compromise emerge. This new level of interaction creates respect for differences and accepts equality of genders, thereby allowing a fertile future between the sexes. The self-contained and self-absorbed endeavors of the male in the quest for knowledge of the world and of the self are undeniably limited by the conspicuous omission of a woman's voice. Few poets, however, have braved the dangers to a man's psychic stability that a woman's moral imperatives present when women can articulate their rejection of social denigration, whether based on science, poetry, or scripture. Robert Frost reveals that the first step to understanding one's role in the world begins with understanding one's role with each other as equal women and men, often a poetic endeavor, but not with the sell-serving creations or interpretations of religion or science. Through a specific textual analysis of Frost's "Wild Grapes," "A line-Storm Song," and "A Servant to Servants." I intend to demonstrate that ultimately the women in Frost's poetry emerge as powerful moral authorities who challenge the privileged role of men in society and threaten to raze the social institutions created by men and in which women serve the function of biological reproduction through which men perpetuate the illusion of omnipotence and the vanity of claiming to represent a god in the patriarchal design of sexual politics. |
