Whitman, Eliot, and "A Wash of Cold River": H.D Doolittle's Synthesis of Transcendentalism and Modernism Anonymous 11th Grade

Hilda “H.D” Doolittle uses heavily-allusive imagist poetry to redefine gender-roles and contradict the characterization of women as delicate and fragile. H.D pulls from ancient Greek literature to write strong not-traditionally-feminine women into her own current culture and re-inscribe traditionally feminine figures -- Helen of Troy, roses, or Mother Mary -- in tougher, man-like roles. Her poems, full of natural imagery, take on Whitmanian elements to say that women must flee to the natural world to shed their feminine roles. Additionally, her style draws from classic modernism, defined by T.S Eliot’s “Tradition in the Individual Talent,” as it confronts old tradition and customs regarding religion and the status of women. H.D’s “Wash of Cold River” mingles harsh natural imagery with classic archetypes of feminine fragility as well as Greek and Christian allusion, deifying nature and the human experience in a Whitmanian style and following T.S Eliot's “Traditional in Individual Talent” ’s criticism and reinvention of traditional religious order, ultimately apotheosizing a newly-toughened idea of femininity.

In “Wash of Cold River,” H.D describes a single image of the natural world blending together “delicate” femininity and “...