A Study Of Motherhood In Gabriela Mistral’s Poetry

Gabriela Mistral was the first writer in Latin America to win the Nobel Prize for literature. It is the passionate love, deep mother love and humanity in her works that moved the readers and achieved world-wide fame. Most of her poetry are on the theme of motherhood. From the feminist perspective, this paper focuses on poems of Gabriela Mistral’s anthology Tenderness, with combination of archetype theory and the author’s personality analysis to cast light on motherhood connotation and characteristics. With the thorough analysis and demonstration of motherhood theme, motherhood consciousness and motherhood writing in Gabriela Mistral’s works, this paper restitutes motherhood in the deep rooted patriarchy and male-centered society, enriches the motherhood nature under the sight of literary and cultural study, reinforces the value and significance of motherhood.The body of the paper consists of five chapters:Chapter One generalizes the current research status home and abroad of the motherhood in Gabriela Mistral’s poetry, demonstrates the purpose and methods and proposes the research direction and highlight; Chapter Two explores the motherhood nature and elaborates the motherhood position and situation under the mixing and dislocation of woman instinct, wife instinct and motherhood instinct; Chapter Three discusses the poet’s motherhood is symbolized as "Virgin Mary", which is converted as the purposes, features and counteraction of the other in the patriarchy society. Chapter Four analyzes the courses, features of poet’s motherhood consciousness based on eco-feminism theory with the archetype analysis and the poet’s personal experience and feminity. Chapter five summarizes the significance and limitations of poet’s motherhood writing and the motherhood research in Gabriela Mistral’s poems. Taking motherhood as basis continues to face arduous efforts.