"The Courage My Mother Had"?

Question

Can anyone help me figure out the time setting of this poem? I am lost...

Answer 1

if your taking about this poem

The courage that my mother had

The courage that my mother had

Went with her, and is with her still:

Rock from New England quarried;

Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore

She left behind for me to wear;

I have no thing I treasure more:

Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she'd left to me

The thing she took into the grave!-

That courage like a rock, which she

Has no more need of, and I have.

The Courage That My Mother Had” is Millay’s elegy to her mother. It is a somber commemoration. Much of the poem’s tension arises from two contrasting elements: the vividness with which the poet remembers her mother, and an awareness of her death that is present from the beginning of the poem until its end. The mother is described in the past tense, implying that she is now dead; however, some of the details suggest she is still alive — at least for the poet. For example, her courage “went with her,” but it “is with her still.” The juxtaposition of real death and imagined life produces a poignant sense of loss which grows over the course of the poem’s three stanzas. The sense of loss is all the greater because the death of the mother is only hinted at in the first two stanzas. She is “granite in a granite hill”; she “left behind” a brooch. It is not until the final stanza, when the poet mentions “the thing she took into the grave,” that death is confronted directly.

In the first two stanzas, the poet recalls her mother in a remarkably economical portrait. In two lines the poet suggests the complexity of her mother’s character, which comprised both “rock from New England quarried” and “the golden brooch” she wore. The first metaphor describes the mother’s courage. This is her most remarkable characteristic, emphasized by being mentioned both in the poem’s first line and in its concluding thought. The metaphor also associates the mother with a specific location and culture, evoking the steadfast, proverbial strength New Englanders are reputed to possess. In the second descriptive line, the brooch reveals a very different aspect of the mother’s character, a soft, feminine side. One can almost see an old photograph of the mother in her best dress.

The brooch recalls both the living mother and the fact of her death; it was the living mother who wore the piece, but the poet would not have it if her mother had not passed away. The paradox is underlined in the last lines of the second stanza. “I have no thing I treasure more,” she writes, “yet, it is something I could spare.” She values the brooch because it is a link to her mother, but she would gladly do without the jewelry to have her mother back with her.

Strength and Weakness

The moment she recalls her mother, the poet is intensely aware of her own weakness. As readers, we do not know why she feels this way. She only says at the very end that her mother no longer needs the courage she had, while the poet does. The mother’s courage is compared to “granite,” to “rock.” Rock, particularly granite, is strong and long-lasting — it can resist harsh forces for centuries. Granite, however, is not only strong, it is lifeless. Like the stone to which the mother is compared, she now lies buried in the granite hillside from which she sprung.

When the poet speaks of her mother, she implicitly does so as her mother’s child. Speaking from the perspective of a child, the poet sees her mother as the personification of strength, even limitless strength. “The courage that my mother had / Went with her and is with her still.” Even in death she has not lost her courage. As children often do, the poet feels weak, helpless, and afraid, and she admits her fear. She needs her mother’s courage. But instead her mother left her only the golden brooch, something pretty, delicate, perhaps a little old-fashioned. The brooch conjures up all those characteristics that are not strong. On the contrary, they are qualities stereotypically associated with femininity and helplessness — precisely the qualities that will not help the poet in her present state. The poet feels herself doubly weak: she is a child who needs protection, and at the same time she is a woman who fears she has inherited from her courageous mother only those characteristics associated with weakness.

Answer 2

me too